Sales are the company’s blood, and even if everything is in order with them now, you can never relax. What if, one day, word of mouth stops working and brings new customers to your outsourcing company? You need to look for other sources of an outbound lead generation constantly.
It’s good if the company has prepared in advance and has been actively testing new niches and multi-channel outbound platforms. What if not? How to be? The GetSales automation tool will tell you about this.
A qualified lead is a person who somehow showed interest in your company (left a request on the site, asked a question in the chat, answered your message) but has not yet become a client. GetSales.io is a lead generation tool that creates a process aimed at collecting and leading a potential client through the sales funnel: from a person with a need who does not know about you at all to a buyer all-in-one sales platform.
Channel types for lead generation
Outbound (Outbound lead generation campaigns) is a process during which lead generators collect lists of companies, after which they compile contact lists from these companies and contact them directly via LinkedIn, email, and during cold calls.
Inbound (Inbound lead generation campaigns) – events aimed at ensuring that the client (predictable lead) comes to the IT company website and fills out the required form. Then the sales manager or lead generator contacts him.
Traffic sources, thanks to which a potential lead can be at the stage of filling out an application:
- Company website (for example, through an SEO-optimized expert article that responds to a user request);
- Blog (articles both on the company’s website and on third-party sites);
- Quora, Reddit, Stack Overflow (where a company representative answers questions, confirming his expertise);
- Freelance sites, Clutch, Good Firms, Capterra (where the user can see the rating of your company based on reviews from previous clients);
- Groups (thematic groups in a niche);
Referrals are one of the most effective types of channels for lead generation when satisfied customers recommend an IT company to their friends.
Customer Surveys – cases when an account manager nurtures an existing client: offers additional functionality that will improve the product (upsell) or receives an additional order from the same client qualified leads. This approach also helps the previous one. It allows you to bring the client to the point where he recommends the company to someone else (referrals).
Top 3 Lead Generation Channels
Website. With the help of specialists, optimize the company’s website so that your pages are on the first pages of search results for key queries. This process may be handled by a business development manager responsible for making these decisions.
Referrals, Partnerships, Surveys. These lead generation sources should be worked out by people who already work with current clients: accounts and sales managers.
Outbound lead generation. Through LinkedIn and social media, lead generation companies plan and run lead generators and sales managers.
Outbound Lead Generation
Outbound lead generation methods, including cold mailings, are still the primary lead generation channel for IT companies with up to 150 employees: they are used by almost 100% of small IT enterprises. The fact is that if outbound lead generation can be pulled by 2-3 people in a company (marketer + sales + analyst), then for inbound, at the initial stage, much more staff is needed (at least 5-15 employees, or even you need to create entire departments). These are considerable expenses, and not only for the salary of these people. It is also necessary to consider the company’s investments in the creation or purchase of methods for evaluating the effectiveness of promotion of multi-channel outbound platform, automating the search processes and subsequent qualification of leads, etc. Moreover, it is not at all a fact that these expenses will pay off in a few months or even a year.
It is only when the company’s headcount approaches 300 that it begins to think about the prospects for inbound. Not earlier. When the staff reaches 1000 employees, the company starts testing inbound.
Inbound really has a lot of prospects: it makes it possible to provide users with the interesting and valuable information they want to see, read, and watch. This is content on their favorite channels: social networks, websites, blogs, youtube multi-channel outbound platform, and podcasts. It is also a significant opportunity for each user to participate in the discussion of any topic. However, not every IT company can afford inbound because it requires a lot of time and money. Therefore, you have to choose where and to what extent to use inbound and where-outbound channels.
In addition, obtaining comprehensive information about your competitors will allow you to get acquainted with their IT cases in detail and consider whether you have quality alternatives to their solutions that you can offer your potential customers.
As a result, outbound and inbound
Leads are primarily people who are interested in your product or service in one way or another. Lead generation channels can be divided into outbound and inbound – outbound and inbound. At the start, companies often receive orders from incoming applications – from former clients or acquaintances; as they grow, they go to equal shares of channels.
Depending on the size of your company, lead scoring, customized processes, and other factors, you can build an individual lead generation strategy.
Conclusion
There are sales automation tools that can be used for both outbound and inbound lead generation. One of them is parsing, i.e., the process of collecting and processing email addresses, phone numbers, and other information about users for further use. As a result, you get a database of phones and emails of key employees of companies that match your target audience. You can then use it for email marketing, cold calling, ad targeting your target audience, and more.
