A targeted list. A good marketing channel. A strategy that works. All these and with the help of skilled lead generation experts, you’ll achieve marketing cloud nine.
Sounds easy? But it takes time, money and resources. Nevertheless, let this interview be your guide in starting off your ABC’s. These 12 sales and marketing experts will teach you lessons in lead generation, far more than pushing and promoting your products and services, lead generation is also about strategic branding and influencing prospects buying decision.
Get a handful of tips as they answer this question from Inboundrocket.com:
If you are starting out with your company, just launching your product into the world or even wanting to generate sales for your (freelance) work, how do you generate good qualified leads. Potential customers have not yet heard of your company, how do you attract those leads? Can you describe to us what is your ultimate growth technique and how can we implement that for our own companies?
#1 Joanna Wiebe
Joanna Wiebe is widely known as the Copy Hacker, the copywriting expert for CRO. In her previous roles, she’s worked at Intuit and Conversion Rate Experts. Today she runs the amazing Copy Hackers blog.
Answer: Guest post! Or write an original post on Medium or Inbound. Or do both. The point is that you need to get your expertise + personality out there stat if you wanna start attracting people to your site (or, better, your lead-gen page).
A common rookie mistake is to fill one’s new blog up with great blog posts – but newbies should actually publish incredible stuff in places their prospects already are. Build your authority on blogs that already have authority, and drive leads to your site. This works on so many levels – as long as the content you share is truly amazing.
#2 Sujan Patel
Sujan has 12 years of experience in digital marketing and co-created Content Marketer, a tool to help automate and scale content marketing. He is also an avid blogger and writes for Forbes, Inc, WSJ and Entrepreneur.
Answer: Start blogging early, comment on other relevant blogs in your industry, build relationships and answer questions on Quora. The underlying recommendation here is to establish yourself as an industry leader. If you can afford it invest in PR. If you can double down on blogging.
Related: Blogging Tips to Generate More IT Leads
#3 Nathan Resnick
Nathan Resnick is a junior at the University of San Diego and the founder of Yes Man Watches. Having launched and advised several successful Kickstarter campaigns, he knows the ins and outs of how to turn ideas into realities.
Answer: I’d say one of the keys to generating qualified leads early on is creating a group of early adopters or beta testers. This group will create a community around your product and launch. They’ll be the ones talking about your platform or product on social media and the ones who recommend you to their friends. By creating a community around your company, you’ll have people on the outside eager to provide their feedback, which will make them feel like they are a part of your team.
#4 Aseem Badshah:
Aseem Badshah is the Founder and CEO of Socedo, a web platform that helps to automate lead generation on Twitter. He has been a leader in the social media marketing space for more than 8 years. Before Socedo, Aseem founded Uptown Treehouse, a marketing agency for Fortune 500 brands focused on social media.
Answer: Twitter is a great place to generate your initial leads because it’s easy to find prospects interested in specific topics and then engage with them directly. Many early adopters are hanging out on Twitter looking for solutions to their problems.
#5 Jason Amunwa
Jason Amunwa is the Director of Products at digital-telepathy, a user-experience design studio that created SlideDeck, the WordPress slider plugin that lets you create awesome content sliders in minutes with no code, as well as Hello Bar and Impress. His most recent endeavour is Filament.
Answer: If you’re just launching your product, chances are you have at least a few beta users – these folks will be your key to attracting your first warm leads. Find the folks who’ve participated the most in your beta, and treat them like royalty – “charter member” pricing, bonus features or discounts, swag, or even free lifetime memberships are all good ways to give back.
#6 Chris Hexton
Chris Hexton is a co-founder of Vero, behavioural email marketing software that helps online retail stores increase their customer satisfaction and sales. Living between Sydney and San Francisco, his favourite part of working on Vero is helping other businesses grow.
Answer: We focused on some really concentrated content marketing and tried to find audiences we could share with: Hacker News, Reddit – places that genuinely read and respect good ideas (if you put in the effort). These places had a built in audience that would listen, and that was powerful for us.
#7 Paul Kemp
Paul Kemp is a host of the popular entrepreneur startup show called ‘The App Guy Podcast’ with over 300 episodes and world leading app founder interviews. Paul’s built and launched over 80 apps, has reached top 1,2 and 3 in the Apple App Store with various apps and inspired listeners to quit corporate jobs to become app entrepreneurs.
Answer: Building credibility, an impactful online presence, networking and really engaging with people on social media is my ultimate growth technique.
Let me explain. I spent years trying failed techniques which all required interrupting somebody’s day to pitch a sales message.
Now, I have more prospects and opportunities than I can handle.
Related: 5 Ways B2B Startups can Become Thought Leaders
How?
– I built credibility through a daily app entrepreneur show called The App Guy Podcast
– I built up my online presence and brand
– I expanded my network exponentially by interviewing experts for my talk show
– I really engaged with people via social media by replying with personal audio messages and engaging in a human way
Now, all the business opportunities come to me.
The beautiful aspect of this approach is that their is no need for a sales pitch. Through my online presence, hours of podcasts and content marketing something wonderful happens. People approach me already pre-sold. They already know, like and trust me.
Just ask yourself this question. If you are at a BBQ and a good friend says
“hey – come over here! I’ve got something to show you”
You’d go over to have a look – right?
Now switch this around. You are walking past a dark alleyway and a stranger says the same thing. You’d have no trust and would say NO.
Now apply this to what we do as marketers. We want to become the trusted friend in this relationship, not the stranger. That’s why it’s important to build trust, credibility, an online presence and engage with real people in a real way.
#8 Nichole Elizabeth DeMeré
SaaS Consultant & Customer Success Evangelist. Moderator at @ProductHunt and @GrowthHackers. Previously: Growth at @Inboundorg. INFJ.
Answer: Use Lincoln Murphy’s Ideal Customer Profile Framework to determine who your Ideal Customers are and then get in front of them. Leverage trusted sources that already have your Ideal Customers as their audience. And once you’re in front of them, ensure that you’re doing lead generation and not lead capture.
Also, don’t allow FOMO to cause you to focus on more than one Ideal Customer at a time. As Jim Gray points out,you don’t have a customer if you don’t have non-customers.
#9 Daniel Scalco
Daniel is the founder/owner of Digitalux, a digital marketing company located in Hoboken, NJ. When he’s not pitching prospective clients or working on new growth strategies for current clients, you can find him fixing up my old motorcycle or playing with his dog, Max.
Answer: If I was justing starting out, I would focus on determining the distinguishing factor between my product and my competitors. This will allow me to understand my value proposition – why someone should buy from me instead of my competitor.
#10 Kane Thomas
Kane is a serial entrepreneur with a background in engineering. He loves being involved in startups, mentoring, and angel investing. My current projects focus on social media marketing, email delivery, and entrepreneurship networking.
Answer: Here’s a couple strategies we’re using at DoSocial that seem to be effective so far:
(1) We’re using the Content Marketer tool to identify and contact industry leaders with an outreach email. This has helped us get kickass feedback from social media pros, plus we’ve gained extra traction when some of them have shared our tool to their followers.
(2) We’re directly interacting with people on Twitter that are either customers of our competitors or just fans of social media marketing.
Related: Cream of the Social Crop: A List Social Media Influencers to follow on Twitter
#11 Benji Hyam
Director of Growth at Everwise, Previously first Marketing hire at ThinkApps, Co-Founder Social Proof Interactive + Founder Insights. Marketing at Vistage.
Answer: Content marketing is where I always turn to generate high quality leads and gain awareness from my target market. The trick is you have to understand your audience really well and deliver compelling stories that cater to the top, middle and bottom of the funnel.
While building a blog audience is a longer term strategy, results can pay off in anywhere from one month to a year. For example, when I was at ThinkApps I grew their blog from 0-35,000 unique visitors in six months. It started generating SQLs by month three. Content was the biggest driver of awareness and leads to the company overall.
#12 Ryan Gum
Ryan is the CEO of a SaaS startup called Attach.io, he runs an online community for salespeople called Closing Call, and writes about Growth and Startup Marketing.
Answer: If you’re starting at day 1 with 0 customers, Inbound Marketing tactics like blogging and answering questions on Quora are great, but it can take a lot of time and effort to start generating results.
Until your Inbound Machine is working, you can’t afford to wait around for leads to come to you. Don’t leave the fate of your startup up to chance – you need to go to them.
At this early stage, you need your first few customers. The single most valuable thing you can do is by doing things that don’t scale (at first), with email outreach:
Come up with your Ideal Customer Profile hypothesis
Find out where these people are – online or offline. This might be groups they belong to, blogs they read, or even just their LinkedIn profile.
Find their contact details (there are plenty of examples how to do this)
Start with 20 of them, and reach out one-by-one. At first, the majority of them won’t respond, but don’t let this discourage you, it’s normal. You’re looking for Innovators and Early Adopters, the small segment of the market that are visionaries and risk takers.
If your emails are relevant enough you might get 4 out of 20 that will take you up on your offer, and 1 of those that will become that all important first customer.
Keep these emails short, simple and personalized. Make it about them. For example:
Subject: Intro
Hi {name},
I noticed {something relevant about them that can link to you or your product} / {common connection}.
I just built {your product} for {their job title} to {what it does & what it helps them do} and I wanted to intro it to you.
If you think it’s interesting, can I show you a demo of how it works later this week? Would only take about 15 minutes.
Love to hear your thoughts,
Ryan
If you truly believe that what your building will help them, then you’re doing them a favour by reaching out to get it in their hands.
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On ITSalesleads Blog: 30 Tech Influencers You Should Know by Now
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