There are an almost endless number of ways to segment your leads. However, for the purposes of the One-Minute Lead Generator, I’ll walk you through my three most important and key parts of my lead generation funnel: (1) Attract (2) Activate, and (3) Acquire.
1. Attract
In order to generate leads, you need to drive traffic to your website. Attracting attention is the process of creating traffic to your website through connecting a marketing message to your target audience. My previous posts have outlined multiple ways to attract traffic, and I encourage you to spend a few minutes reviewing these tactics.
2. Activate
Simply put, any prospect you targeted through multiple digital and traditional marketing strategies and impactful messaging who virtually raised their hand and said, “I might be interested in speaking with you” I call “Activated” leads. In most cases, this is the process of a lead spending time on your website and visiting multiple pages, maybe taking a tour of your franchise offer. Or maybe they may have just opened an e-mail or provided you with their name and e-mail address. Hopefully, the lead asked you for more information. Maybe, if you’re lucky, they asked you to contact them. But, in most cases, this is the first step in what I like to call “progressive profiling.”
The good news is that if you have captured their name and e-mail address (maybe their phone number, too), you have a way to contact them to determine if this lead is worth moving to the next step of the marketing funnel.
3. Acquire
A lead is “Acquired” when they have taken the next step in the funnel. For example, maybe the prospect has provided more information about himself (i.e. business, title, money they have to invest, etc.). Or perhaps they downloaded a white paper, eBook, or signed up for your blog. In any case, they have provided you with their contact information as well as taken some “action” that suggests that they have some level of interest but are not quite ready to buy.
Before the age of marketing automation and CRM, you might have just “sprayed and prayed,” sending these leads an e-mail or (if budget permitted) sending a mailer using traditional postal mail and then praying for good results. Luckily, today’s marketing technology allows you to segment, target, and run multiple campaigns to this group based on real-time information.
It’s very important to focus your marketing efforts to this group. You never know when they are going to be ready to buy. Stay after them! Test various offers. Split the group into two and test one offer against another (A/B Testing). I like to recommend to my clients that this group have a 21-day shelf life. What I mean is test at least one campaign weekly for a 21-day period. If you do not get the traction you seek, move them into a sub group I call the “keep in touch” group. Then periodically send a note, testimonial, or offer that will eventually help get them engaged.
If you have the resources, Acquired leads should be followed up by a trained Lead Qualification Specialist. The purpose of a Lead Qualification Specialist is to contact the prospect and determine if they meet your brand’s qualification criteria. Remember, not all leads are necessarily worth your time and money. Have a list of questions to ask the inquiry to ensure that they meet your qualifications. Then, after the Lead Qualification Specialist has completed the initial inquiry, prospects can be handed off to the Account Sales Executive for further qualification, relationship building, and turning the inquiry into a customer.
I also recommend that all Acquired leads be entered into your CRM. Using CRM to track and further contact these “leads in the pipeline” with direct contact and e-mail will help accelerate deal flow and cut the time it takes to close a sale.
What To Do With The Non- Responders
If you have ever done any direct marketing, you know that 99% of your target does not respond. And that’s on a good day! Don’t give up! Segment your No Response Group out for future marketing campaign testing. Test text style e-mail, graphics, multiple messages, and offers. Your goal is to move this group up the marketing funnel – Inquiry to Evolution, Evolution to Empower, Empower to Client!
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