Building Lead Generation - A Consistent Supply Of High-Quality Leads Is Key To Small Business Success
Lead generation is something that all small business owners are aware of, but is rarely well understood. You want to have a constant flow of customers, but how exactly do you make this happen?
The Ability To Consistently Generate Leads is the Lifeblood of Any Small Business.
Too many small businesses focus most of their attention on just getting one or two more customers. Or, they're blasting off some big campaign to try and bring in a whole rush of new customers all at once. And true lead generation is ignored - to the detriment of the business.
You must stop viewing lead generation as a series of marketing events or campaigns. Really it's about beginning a dialogue with the right individuals or businesses to discover the opportunities that might exist for doing business together.
Not everyone who needs your product or service needs it right when they meet you or hear about you. An effective lead generation system will create a constant flow of potential prospects. Once you have a flow of possible prospects, you can continue to work them through your marketing and sales cycle.
Prospects are incredibly valuable! While most small business owners seem to have a good understanding of how valuable their customers are, very few have any understanding of just how important their prospects are. Without lead generation you don't get prospects. Without prospects you don't get enough new customers. Remember that every one of your customers had to start out as a prospect at some point.
A Lead Generation System Is Your Answer
That's why you need a lead generation system in place. You need to generate a constant supply of high-quality leads. Without these, your small business runs the risk of getting smaller and smaller until you no longer exist. Consider that every business will lose clients or customers for one reason or another.
To replace these lost clients or customers, you first need to generate leads. And to grow your business, you first need to generate leads. Then your marketing and sales systems need to keep the dialogue going.
It's about establishing credibility and trust while you're staying top of mind. With relevant and meaningful touches, a certain percentage of those prospects will turn into paying customers when the timing is right.
Building Lead Generation - Start by Creating More Compelling Marketing Materials.
Are you happy with your current marketing materials? Do they produce consistent results or were they created from the perspective that something is better than nothing?
It just pains me to have to say it, but most small business marketing materials are simply terrible. They don't do anything to build lead generation. They follow traditional marketing techniques that don't give enough information and in many cases are actually driving business away. Many blindly do what they see others doing even though they have no idea if it works.
So what can you do to create more compelling marketing materials? A few simple ideas can dramatically change the results you're getting.
First of all, shift your focus. Most of the small businesses I work with don't really care for marketing and selling. That's not why they got into the business they did. But when you ask those same professionals what it is they do like, you're likely to get something such as they love solving problems or helping customers do something they can't do for themselves.
Shift the focus of your marketing materials from trying to "market and sell." Shift to a focus of "providing information and solving client problems" and watch your response soar. Your lead generation system will produce higher quality and more consistent results when you focus on providing useful information to help prospects solve problems.
Next, follow what Robert Middelton, the creator of
InfoGuru Marketing
, calls marketing syntax. Marketing syntax is the order in which you present marketing information and should flow through all of your marketing materials. It absolutely follows this principle of shifting the focus. Here's the basic order for presenting your material:
1) Start with the problem, issue, or challenge your prospects are experiencing and would like to have solved.
2) Tell them what's possible if they solved the problem.
3) Tell them briefly what you can do to help them.
4) Help them to take action.
For more detailed explanation and guidance on creating your own marketing syntax, check out any of Robert's
InfoGuru Marketing materials
.
Finally, if you want great marketing materials, you may need to hire professionals. Find people who actually know what they're doing. A professional marketing consultant, a professional designer, a professional copywriter, or a professional web designer can all be wise investments in producing more compelling marketing materials.
Building Lead Generation - Get Out There And Get Known
Do your prospects know you exist? It always amazes me how many small businesses set up shop, create a few marketing pieces, and then start hoping that someone will find them some day.
Sorry, it rarely happens that way. If someone doesn't know about you and you don't know about them, how can you do business? If you're invisible, then you're not even in business as far as your prospective clients are concerned.
Part of building lead generation means you need to get out there and get known. It's not necessarily just who you know, but who knows you. My experience tells me that there are a number of things you can do simultaneously to start gaining visibility. How many are you currently doing?
Get involved in active networking. Get yourself out there in front of clients, prospects, alliance partners and potential referral sources. Not sure how to get results from networking? Here's a tip. Reread the paragraphs above on shifting your focus and marketing syntax.
Start setting up one-on-one meetings with your networking contacts. Tell them you'd like to go deeper and share more detail about each other's business than what you can achieve at weekly or monthly networking events. Most other small business owners would love the opportunity to get together and brainstorm about how you can help each other. If you're the one setting up the meetings, you'll start to become known as a thought leader.
Set up exploratory sessions with potential prospects that you connect with. Tell them about some of the results you've produced for others and that you'd like to learn more about them and explore what possibilities might exist. Let them know that if nothing else, at the end of your time together, you'll know a lot more about how you could refer them to your contacts.
Explore your opportunities to speak in front of others. The same knowledge that makes you great at what you do is your best marketing asset for attracting new clients. Unfortunately, many small businesses are very reluctant to share this information. After all, that's what your clients pay you for. But remember the principle of shifting your focus. When you're willing to share some of what you know, you'll actually magnetize clients like never before.
Explore opportunities to get your writing in front of others. Alright, all of the same points made in the previous paragraph apply. Articles, newsletters, tip sheets, and special reports are all great ways to share what you know.
Building Lead Generation Through Giving To Get
As you can see, each of these opportunities for getting known follows a give to get marketing approach. We're not talking about giving away every single professional secret you know for free. But the
Give to Get Marketing
Give to Get Marketing approach allows you to share your expertise in a very cost-effective way to build your visibility, credibility and trust.
Don't kid yourself that any of these activities don't apply to your small business. You need to get out there and be seen to build your business. If you begin to do these things, you have visibility and probably more business than you can handle.
