Generating leads for businesses remains one of the most debated topics, everyone has their own theory and approaches they stand by with. Creative Zone invited James Gosling CEO, Pipeline Business Growth Services and Andrew Thomas, Managing Director, Nexa, to dwell into its deeper nuances and understand key elements of leads generation. Both the panellists are seasoned Sales and Marketing specialists with vast experience in diverse industries spread out in various parts of the Middle East.
The session jumped right into questions and answers, below are the highlights of the session
- Ask the right questions before investing big bucks .
According to James the business that do not work don’t lack a good idea, or hard work by its owner but is often the wrong market, ill-defined audience, flawed strategy or a combination of everything that leads to failure. Only 40% of businesses work and flourish. So when starting out, first look internally and ask yourself the right questions, like Do you know the inside out of the product, Why a certain market? Why this price? What is my main competition? Why am I going after these type of customers? While starting out many business owners only do a surface research of the market, they are not aware of many other smaller/medium sized companies whose products/services are almost or exactly the same as theirs. It is 100% crucial you have a well-define and a real USP, no matter how small it is.
- Which Social Media channels are the best to generate leads?
Understand this that people on any social media platform don’t primarily go there to see Ads and sponsored content. They go there to connect with friends, watch pictures or video that are of interest to them. Sure one has to have a presence and provide valuable content to your clients who do follow you but the approach has to customized and totally customer centric. Building your SEO can do a lot more than generic advertisements. Invest in SEO and then google AdWords. There need to be atleast 10-15 touchpoints to your targeted audience for them to engage with you. And if they do come to your website through the two ways mentioned, you can do remarketing when they visit any f the social media platforms. But in all this planning do not lose focus from the target audience; understand their behaviour, patterns and everything else that you can to get the desired results.
- How to generate leads for an E-commerce business?
Before you even start driving traffic to your website you need to make sure certain tools are in place, such as marketing intelligence, tracking user journey, cart abandonment etc. Do your homework to understand when you divert the traffic what happens after that, run some test. There are many softwares available that will tell you about the user journey when they visit your app or website. Google shopable ads are a good way to start, make your Instagram shopable too. Facebook is also introducing its shopping platform where one doesn’t have to leave the platform to shop. Target the audience well, whatever the medium be. Treat social advertising like going to a mall where you may end up buying only because you are there. Also make the site easy to use, there should not be more than three clicks to purchase the product. Having an e-commerce site is almost like running a retail shop, and in the end it is not about getting more traffic; one needs to focus on increasing the value of the basket.
- What is the best strategy to adopt for online marketing
This is a question that cannot have just one answer. A B2C company will have a totally different approach than a B2B one. But one thing that has not been working for a long time is cold calling and messaging. Making sales will entirely depend on presenting your product in front of the right audience at the right time and in the right manner. And it is surprising that after having highly advanced filtering and CRM tools, people still aimlessly message and call individuals that will never buy or show interest in their product. Stop doing that at once and instead invest your time and money in understanding your target audience, and instead of selling straight away build a relationship, give some value, engage with them on different platforms, create a story for them and then sell.
- What is a healthy conversion ratio?
The conversion ratio is healthy when it is what your business needs. If one is selling a product worth 2M a conversion rate of 3-4% is good. So don’t get hung up on attaining a specific conversion ratio, be pragmatic and set realistic target for yourself and your team. Another things that everyone must do is to use a good CRM system. Hubspot is a great platform to start with, one can access free CRM tools and upgrade to a paid version when your business allows you to. It is also important to keep the sheet updated with every movement of yours, put the timelines involved, steps you took to close the sales, follow up activity etc. Only writing marketing lead and conversion sin it won’t get you anywhere.
