What is Your Lead Capture System

LEAD TURNOVER

Leads are people who know of your business and have indicated they are interested in what you have to offer by responding to your marketing message. It should be the goal of your marketing campaign to generate leads that can become potential customers. The best way to retain them is to have a database that allows you to follow-up at a later date. Not everyone will be ready to buy from you immediately and you don’t want to lose a potential sale to time. Many people forget this fact so this strategy can help you see infinitely better results from your campaign. You shouldn’t just be looking to “get your name out there”. This technique is called direct response marketing and its purpose is to generate an immediate response and encourage leads to take action on the spot. Only employing this type of marketing will cause your business to lose out on potential leads that need more time. If you forgo a database or follow-up capabilities a lead that would have been ready to buy in a week, a month, or even a year will have been lost.

THE PLAN

Focusing on lead generation and retention ads means instead of selling directly through your ad you are opening lines of communication. As an example, let’s say you spend $1,000 on an ad campaign, this ad is product based and is encouraging sales on the spot. If it reaches 1,000 people, you’ll have essentially spent $1 per person in lead generation without turn-over confirmation. Now let’s assume that 100 people out of those 1,000 are high-interest prospects for your product. Imagine if you could have spent the whole $1,000 on the 100 high-probability prospects in the beginning, investing $10 in each instead of $1 in many. Now you have invested more money in people that have a higher likelihood to purchase your product. So, what can you do? You can offer an “ethical bribe” through your ad instead of a product so your high value leads identify themselves. Through their request for your “ethical bribe” they will at least give you their name and email address all of which should go into your marketing database. In the early stages you want to sift out the uninterested and unmotivated prospects. This will limit unnecessary expenses. Another big factor to take into account when selling through an ad is that on average at any given time about 3% of your target market is highly motivated and ready to buy immediately. 7% who are very open to buying and a further 30% who are also interested just not in this moment. What these numbers tell you is that you should avoid selling through your ad as much as possible. Targeting the 3% instead of the 40% will just hurt your business. With a lead generating ad your addressable market increases by 37%, since it takes in all who are interested regardless of when they would be ready to purchase.

OTHER BENEFITS

Not only does this approach generate a larger pool of leads it also gives your leads more information about you. It shows them that you are not desperate to sell or discount a product. They see that you are interested in building a relationship first instead of shoving a sale down their throats. Similar to farming, you are placing seeds on a farm that you then grow and cultivate into crops that will produce for you. If you educate and teach your leads about the product/service or other information that surrounds it you will foster credibility. Instead of questioning you they are more likely to listen and take your advice. A sample campaign could offer a free report or video series that promises to educate your prospect on things they need to be aware of, how to avoid being ripped off and what to look for. Once your prospect receives this information, you have now delivered on your promise and your trustworthiness for them skyrockets. You set yourself apart from the competition and take on the role of an expert that is genuine and helpful. Instead of pressuring them into a quick sale you put the option in their hands to choose you when they are ready for a sale. If you’re convincing and informative then when the time comes and they are ready to buy they will contact you and identify themselves as a high-probability prospect.

YOUR COMPETITION

Sometimes when you look at your rivals and other business you see them constantly generating leads while you struggle to get any. This causes an internal dilemma based on your fight or flight reflex. You may choose to get out of the business because you think the competition is too stiff or you may beef up your ad campaigns and try to overhaul all your projects. Neither of these are the right answer. Most of the time when you look at these high performance companies it is their infrastructure that helps them generate leads so effectively. A strong base keeps a house standing. They are not tossing up ads here and there and seeing what works but have a customer relationship management(CRM) system in place. This is what you need to strive to build effectively in your company. Your ads first need to be lead generation based. Then those leads need to funnel into a CRM system that will work for you by turning them into customers. Your CRM is your marketing nerve center that manages your goldmine of prospects, having a functional and effective CRM system is one of the keys to continuous growth through your marketing campaigns.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Leads need to be generated AND they have to go into a database, otherwise once they are generated if they aren’t immediately ready to buy you will lose them.
• Your ad campaigns should not target the 3% of customers that will buy your product immediately but the 40% that are interested in your product at varying times.
• Sometimes it’s not always about the immediate sale, building a relationship of trust over time with your leads can generate strong returning prospects that will continually turn to you when they have need of your product.
• Don’t get discouraged if your competition or other companies seem to be hoarding the market, building strong lead generating campaigns and then subsequently funneling them to an effective CRM system will help build a strong backbone for your high-probability lead potential.

REFERENCES:

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand Out From The Crowd by Allan Dib