There are a few key lead generation challenges that marketers face in 2021. These challenges revolve around finding customers, engaging customers and retaining them. The good news is, if you know where to focus your efforts, you can easily outdo your competition. Knowing the right tools to use is a huge part of the job.
Let’s dive in.
#1 Use Buyer Intent Data
Aggregated data is extremely powerful. This type of data shows buyer intent. Buyer intent, in turn, gives you clues about where people want to spend their money. It also tells you fairly accurately where someone is in their buying cycle. In other words, buyer intent data enables you to do personalized outreach. You gain an overhead view of what prospects are doing. This ultimately makes outreach much easier.
You can glean lots of powerful buyer intent data from your own website. But there are dedicated power tools out there that give you access to even more data. Tools like those offered by Leadsrain and Flowup make gaining this competitive edge easy.
Once you have this buyer intent data, you can use powerful tools like voice broadcasting to send mass messages. With voice broadcasting, you can instantly transmit prerecorded messages to interested leads. The message ends with a clear call-to-action, asking the recipient to press through to speak to a live agent. The key here is to use buyer intent data so you know when your leads are most receptive to these messages.
#2 Focus on Customer Retention
Customer-centric marketing is a powerful technique. While it may sound like another term of the week, in reality, it’s a powerful methodology that allows you to put customers first. Even better, it’s a tried and true method that’s been around forever. Ever heard of Zappos? The company, now owned by Amazon, started life as one of the first online shoe stores to make it big. How did they do it? They used customer-centric marketing—way back in the early 2000s.
When you engage in this marketing technique, you put customer needs first—sometimes above everything else. This may sound counterproductive. But the technique allows you to quickly build your brand and your market share. This increased resilience comes in handy in tough years like 2020. The top reason to engage, at least partially, in customer-centric marketing?
Competition is increasing all the time, and social media makes it hard to hide customer service slip-ups. It’s best to avoid them in the first place.
One tool that can help you with customer retention is a rich text messaging. With RTM, you can send images, audio or even video to existing customers. These brief messages can keep your brand top of mind and can give your customers a gentle nudge to buy from you again.
#3 Utilize MMS
A Multimedia Marketing Service, or MMS, is a powerful way to engage with users where they are. With MMS, you can send dynamic, interactive messages that entertain or inform. MMS empowers you to send texts that contain:
- Images
- Audio/visuals
- Website links
- Locations
This content-rich experience adds value to your outbound marketing campaigns. This in turn directly results in higher engagement. It’s a smart, simple way to energize or reinvigorate your campaign. Plus, smart MMS platforms allow you to respond to your target audience automatically based on specific keywords or other forms of rich media.
With robust reporting, you can glean insights into which types of MMS content your target market responds to. Over time, you can use this rich data to hone your campaigns, resulting in a higher click-through rate.
Note that a good MMS platform will enable you to use toll-free and international numbers, boosting your brand recognition and helping you reach your customers wherever they are.
#4 Automation is King
Companies like Leadsrain rely on machine learning and automatic processes to help clients save time, money and energy. These companies do the hard work for you so you can focus on what you do best: selling. It’s the smart marketer who understands that automation is here to stay. If your competitors are utilizing these advanced tactics and you aren’t, there’s a real chance that you could be left behind. In 2021, automation will become a bigger player than ever.
Strengthening Your Outbound Marketing Strategy
There are a few basic outbound marketing elements you must have in place before you shore up your lead generation efforts. At a minimum, make sure you are:
- Cold calling: Few people love the prospect of cold calling. But that cold calling is almost universally reviled is good news for you. If you’ll but do it yourself. If you think you’re making enough cold calls, you probably aren’t. Remember the law of averages. Call, call, call.
- Use the tools mentioned above: Take full advantage of MMS, rich text messages, and voice broadcasting. Power tools like these allow you to get more done with less, which saves you time and makes you more money.
- Warm cold leads first: Use SMS and ringless voicemail. Email can be effective, but you don’t want to focus exclusively on email. The danger here is that you’re only engaging with your prospect on the desktop, in one context. With SMS, you can engage your lead where they are, in a variety of contexts. You’re more likely to reach them at a receptive moment.
Finally, use a tool like FlowUp to create an automated follow-up system. Automated follow-up will increase interest in your product exponentially. A good, automated follow-up system will allow you to automate your:
- Drip campaign
- SMS
- RVM
- Press 1
By strengthening your follow-up process, you can effortlessly recapture your lead’s attention. Better yet, you can get them back on the phone before they check out your competition. Over time, this will greatly increase your sales.