Your Lead Generation Methods Have to Change

Read Brogans post and if you are thinking about following a blog, well this is one that I would Brogan is awesome. 

Lead generation is a fairly core activity to marketing. Sales people need leads to close sales. You might not always look at it in those baseline terms, but that’s the general process, right? Find people who want that thing you’re selling, be that Jesus or real estate, higher education or luchador masks.

Youbuild someone’s interest, you make the offer, you close the sale. That’s the basic cycle. Let’s talk about leads and how lead generation might have shifted in the last little while. I’m thinking that our tactics and strategies have been born out of yesterday’s “mild interest” methods, versus a shift, I’m thinking, to today’s “they presented a need” method.

SoundLike Your Plan?

Youhave a product to sell. To get interest, you look for your target market of prospective buyers and try to figure out what they are like. You then try messaging them using whatever forms work for you. Maybe you buy some door knockers with your offer on them, or you buy radio spots in the 6-9AM drive time sports radio markets of 14 key cities. Maybe you’ve got a website that tells people the same stuff you put in your direct mailing piece, so that you have brand consistency.

Somenumber of people limply respond to your call to action. They opt into the next wave and your sales process kicks in to try and close them before they lose interest. If they don’t close, you just keep sending them information, trying to keep the pulse of that lead alive by reinforcing what you’ve been sending them.

Inthis above model, you have to keep coming up with new offers, new ideas, new ways to make something seem interesting and pertinent. Think about Ford for a moment. They are out there trying to figure out what else to say about their new Ford Flex so that people will swing by and give it a chance. But the thing is, we the consumer aren’t exactly reacting that way any more.

Thatwas distraction marketing, or interruption marketing, as Seth Godin called it forever ago. That’s list building. And list pounding. And it’s not always bad to have a list, but how are you cultivating it?

The New Stuff

Ifyou’re Seth, you call it Permission marketing. If you’re Hubspot, you call it Inbound Marketing. You call it whatever you want to call it, but we’re in a world where the power of marketing is in the hands of the consumer more than the marketer right now, at least in the wide area of the sales funnel.

If you’re going to use social media tools to work on “wide funnel sales” opportunities, then you’ve got to make a conversion engine, something that moves me from “love your blog” into “want your product.” And that’s a lesson for another time.

Your Turn

So, you’re the pro. Tear me apart. What’s wrong here? Don’t say scale. This isn’t about scale. Look how good scale’s been treating you lately.

What’sgood and bad about these ideas to you?

Photo credit, Josh Staiger