Lead Generation Strategies That Start With "R"

Today we look at several lead generation strategies that start with "R":

RSS, or really simple syndication, is the easiest way to publish your content and distribute it throughout the web. It also allows you to re-syndicate other people's content. Tools like RSSInfo can grab content from other feeds and display them as part of your website in HTML. This has several advantages. Creating the feed only takes a few minutes. From then on, your website will have fresh content everyday. The converted HTML will contain search-engine friendly keywords. If you aggregate content from several good sources in your industry, you have now done your customers and visitors a favor because they don't have to go anywhere else. All of this increases your SEO, and drives more visitors to your site. Make sure you have a good call to action on your blog landing page so that you can convert visitors into leads.

Reference Program. We all talk about having a reference program, but the reality is that customer-focused marketing is often near the bottom of the priority list. However, if you have been following the work by Fred Reicheld and The Ultimate Question, you know that customer loyalty is a key indicator of long-term growth. Instead of having your key prospects call your best reference near the end of the sales cycle, why not videotape your top 10 customers and post the videos on your website? Organize the videos into 2 minute segments and then track which segments are getting the most hits and organize future marketing messaging accordingly. This now allows salespeople to point prospects to your references much earlier in the sales cycle, not burden your key customers, and ultimately close more business.

Recency. A recent study by Knowledgestorm showed that sales teams that wait more than 24 hours to contact a new lead have less than a 10% chance of reaching them. This is often one of marketing's biggest challenges. You create all the leads and get upset when sales does not follow up on them. By implementing lead scoring, you can filter out the tire kickers and browsers ahead of time and reduce the total amount of leads sales has to follow-up on. Adding in a autoresponder to your form, combined with an IVR phone message can instruct the prospect that you value their business and forward them to a landing page for specific instructions. Tactics like these can greatly help the response rate and make the visitor feel important, while guiding the salesperson to follow up on the most relevant leads right away.

Stay tuned for the letter S...