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Finance is an important industry that helps people to make better decisions with their money.
Lead generation for finance companies can help you get more out of your Web presence.
Lead generation has become the new cornerstone of marketing in the digital age, and the companies that are leading the way in producing strong web content are poised to leave their competitors behind. To drive in leads, business owners must focus on creating a strong social media presence, launching a blog or news feed and developing a rich and aesthetically pleasing website. Here are a few tips mention for promoting successful lead generation.
Here are 7 tips that will help you to improve your business to business lead generation strategies.
1. Network at the Next Level
Build partnerships at the sales level:Sales people should understand there is a whole bunch of other sales people just like them looking for leads. Plot out your industry ecosystem to identify vital players in your market. You can invite sales people working at non-competitive companies in your industry and territory to have lunch with you, if you are in sales. Remember quid ace quo, approach the lunch with an open mind and focus on them and not you, during the discussion. Understand their objectives, goals, and motivations and see how you can help them with leads, introductions, partnerships, and more. Remember if you give, then only you will get.
Join industry forums: Research the industry forums in your marketplace and get involved where you can.
Ask for feedback when calling people: Have you ever heard that sales people talk more than they listen? Some say that God gave us two ears and one mouth to make sure we listen more than we talk. When prospecting or taking sales calls, approach the discussions with a “consultative attitude”. Think of yourself like a doctor. Try to understand the other company’s problem first. After all, you don’t want to write any bad prescriptions.
Send gifts and cards during the holiday seasons: Have a system to keep track of holiday gifts. Spreadsheets work well for this. If you have some good prospects in the funnel, make sure to get them a box of cookies or chocolates (a step above you can offer a holiday card also). They will then have something to remember you by. Your prospects are human beings, creatures of habit, and doing something nice for them will soften them up. They will feel obligated to return the favour; hopefully, in the form of an inquiry, evaluation or purchase.
Hire industry consultants with executive level relationships: Sometimes, it is not about what you know but it is about who you know. If you don’t know anyone then you are not driving your networking in the pole position.
Leverage industry experts: Find a consultant in your business, an ex-executive at a competing company or someone who has great relationships in your market. Work out a compensation plan to incant them to help with introductions, referrals or reselling to prospective clients.
Join a Chamber of Commerce:Every company should do this because it is an old school tactic.
2. Business Development
Build partnerships for complementary partner referrals: Take time to map out the companies complementary to your business. The customers your company seeks are targets for the competitor companies as well, due to similar products. They may have the relationships you need and could help with introductions. When you approach the partner, make sure to have a plan. Think through what is in it for them and include that in your pitch.
Cross-promote with other businesses: Buyers like integrated solutions. If your company can partner with a company providing a product or solution to fill a void, you add value for your customer and create a win-win with your partner.
3. Use a Marketing Automation Solution
Encourage interested prospects:Generally, many sales people stop calling on a lead if they feel like the lead’s interest is not immediate. The lead might slip through the cracks or be forgotten about over time. Companies can implement customized cherishing tracks in systematic ways, by adding lead nurturing techniques to their sales and marketing processes. Automated nurturing is a huge time saver and improves operational efficiency.
Implement lead scoring: Sales people are one of the highest paid resources in a company. Use their time wisely by having them focus on leads that matter. Lead scoring is an easy way to automatically qualify interested prospects. Look for marketing automation systems
integrated into CRMs to make reporting of qualified prospects a snap.
Track leads: Everyone could use more leads. Some marketing automation packages deliver more leads by offering real-time lead tracking. By tracking hidden website visitors and packaging up their online activity into meaningful information for sales and marketers, it then represents a new source of leads. Experts estimate that approximately 96% of all web traffic to your corporate website goes unnoticed, the other 4% fills out a web form. Find out who those 96% are and come up with a strategy for inside sales to call on them. A few marketing automation tools have integrated sales prospecting tools to make it easy to find professional contacts all within a single solution.
Create optimized landing pages: Landing pages are like entry points into your website and a gateway to valuable content. You can personalize the landing page to the visitor, and include custom forms with current marketing automation solutions. Nowadays, some marketing automation tools enable marketers to visually build the landing page like they would a PowerPoint slide. This means you have no necessary need to involve webmasters or IT.
Keep your forms simple: Using too many fields in forms is suicide. Nobody likes to fill out ten fields to receive a data sheet. Use five or less fields on average. You can also use landing page optimization solutions built into most marketing automation software. Marketing automation software provides progressive profiling of forms. Progressive profiling interchanges completed fields with new fields, every time the visitor looks for new information. It also pre-fills fields, saving the prospect time which helps you to improve your business to business lead generation.
Establish sales follow up processes: Follow up with interested prospects is crucial. If follow up is not done systematically the lead could get lost. Todays’ advanced marketing computerisation software helps your businesses schedule follow ups with interested prospects by logging future activities and reminders in a CRM system.
4. Web 2.0 Marketing
Issue press releases monthly: Press releases are good for more than just getting news out to the public. They are an amazing source of search engine optimization to help you get your web site on Google’s first page of results. Come up with a strategy before you start your press release campaign. Make a list of all the keywords you want to be ranked for, and come up with varying anchor text (the words you hyperlink to your website) to use. In the internet age, companies like PRWeb will help you get the most out of your search engine optimization goals. Run a press release once every month to let the media know you’re here to stay and you’ve got something to write about. If you’re struggling for content, just ask the agency providing the press release service, they’ll be happy to give you a list of ideas.
Start a Facebook corporate page: It’s not just about consumers anymore; businesses are creating Facebook pages too. Be careful though, Facebook communication is full-duplex. Messages can be pushed out to the public and the public can push back. Some institutions don’t have Facebook pages in fear of the public criticizing them or their solutions, which creates negativity and could tarnish a brand. There’s less control with this type of social media strategy, weigh the pros and cons carefully.
Start a blog: Similar to press releases,
blogging is not just about getting the news out to the public; it’s about search engine optimization too. Create a blog on your company domain, not on a 3rd party blogging site. You’ll get much better ranking results if you keep the content on your domain. There are a number of Content Management packages out there, such as WordPress, to help structure and organize blogs without help from a webmaster or IT.
Start guest blogging: Guest blogging is a process of posting comments on other people’s or company’s blogs. Look for blogs with industry related information and post some comments. Your “neighbours” will get to know you, and once you become part of the community, more people will start to link to your blog and your following will grow. All of this helps raise awareness of your presence and your offering.
Create an area on your website just for customers: This may imply that you to have a community of customers, as well as prospects. If you create a repository of information, and broker relationships with your customers, it will keep your customers happy because your solutions are at the forefront of their minds. Then ultimately, it become easier for you to up sell or refer to another prospect.
5. Create Value Added Content
Create a kit around your subject matter:Try to make bundle of various types of content such as a white paper, slide deck, and recorded webinar into a kit instead of trying to limit your content to just a white paper. This will help you to make your content more valuable than your competitors and saves your prospects time in stalking for each of these types of content individually.
Write an eBook: The eBook will help you to
get more SEO (search engine optimization)and can easily be distributed electronically, both of which boost exposure.
Create a comparison guide: You should create a guide that compares your solution to others in the industry. When a lead try to discover your solution early on in the buying phase, it might appear to them that your solution is the same as your competitors. A comparison guide will differentiate your solution and clarify any misconceptions.
Publish a book: Writing a book takes time but pays big dividends.
Create a five slide PowerPoint presentation: PowerPoint presentations are handy if used right. They make for a good piece of visual collateral during meetings. Use your favourite five PowerPoint slides to tell a story to your prospects. As this is a rule of thumb, so plan to present for 2-3 minutes per slide with five slides that’s 10 to 15 minutes of presentation time. Think about how to save time in your meetings for debrief, questions and next steps.
6. Get on the First Page of Google
Focus on organic SEO: Search Engine Optimization is a very time consuming task, but it can pay big dividends. Organic SEO is when you try to rank for select keywords without paying for top position. Many tools and guidelines are available to help with Organic SEO.
Focus on link building: Link building is part of SEO, and it is also a time consuming task. When other sites link to your website it’s like getting a vote. The more votes you have the more popularity, or authority, the search engines believe you have. Link building is a core strategy to get listed on the front page of Google. Focus on both quality and quantity of your links.
List your solution in Web Directories (DMOZ): DMOZ is an open directory of World Wide Web links. Being listed in DMOZ is also an important part of SEO.
Start a pay per click program: Although expensive, pay per click programs can pay dividends. Make sure you budget appropriately, and use keywords with low competition that are relevant to your business. While your competitors are paying 10X what you might per click, you could be grabbing some low cost leads.
7. Leverage Relationships with Existing Clients
Talk to your clients: If you are closing deals, then its time to rethink your strategy. Closing a deal is the start, not the end of a relationship between sales and your customer. Take every opportunity to call them, see how they are doing, get their feedback and, most importantly, talk to them. Don’t take the easy route and shoot them a “how is it going” email. Invest time into the relationship, which will then lead to up sell opportunities and more lead generating.
Talk to companies you’ve sold to in the past: Many sales people tend to “think in the moment”. Stretch out your thinking by making a list of companies you’ve sold to in the past. Give them a call, tell them what you’re doing and are exploring. Your call could lead to more opportunities.
Gather and use written testimonials: Make it part of your sales process to ask for a written testimonial after every sale, as a testimonial can cause future sales and leads.
Incorporate these tips in your business activities and let the magic of lead generation work wonders.
wanda
This is really very informative and helpful.