Lead generation accomplishes two indispensable results for your business it attracts the attention of potential customers and it creates factual and emotional impressions. If you do these things right for your target market, you'll get the response you want.
What is that response? It's a person making contact with your business through your door, by telephone, by mail, or on-line with the motivation and the ability to buy from you, already having made the conscious or unconscious emotional decision to make the purchase. It's this type of response a qualified lead that you most want to attract. So, lead generation is all about creating qualified leads for your business. Then you have to do allow them to move through the lead conversion process as effortlessly as possible.
To get their attention, your lead generation must first reach your potential customers by way of the "channels" that are a part of their lives. Upon arrival its "messages" must then appeal to the interests of your potential customers. The way to do that is to connect with their unique needs.
Once you have their attention, you want to generate factual and emotional impressions with messages that appeal to both their conscious and unconscious minds. If your messages make the right impressions, and, of course, if there is a true motivation (need, desire, sense of obligation, etc.), you'll be able to get the response you want.
And there you have the primary elements of the lead generation process channels and message. These two tools are the keys to "broadcasting the promise" effectively. The message you develop will convey the promise of emotional gratification that your target customers are seeking, and the channels you select will be the vehicles for broadcasting your message to them.
Message: The Essential Tool of Lead Generation
Your message should include the words, images, and sensory elements that will attract, inform, and persuade your potential customers to respond to your lead generation.
What do you say to generate the response you want? How do you say it? What does your message look like? What is its tone? What images and unconscious associations does it evoke? How does it set your business and your products apart from the millions yes, literally millions of competing messages that assault the perceptions of your potential customers and clutter their lives? How do you break through all the confusion?
It's not easy, and very few do it well. Even large, million-dollar budget companies struggle to make any kind of impact at all, much less the kind of positive impact needed to draw customers to them (try watching TV for an evening for proof). You compete by knowing your customers more intimately, and by reaching them through the mix of channels that is more relelvant to thier lives, and presenting a message that uniquly relates to thier need and positions your firm as the prefered solution provider. You compete by being in the best place with the best message at the best time, not by being everywhere all the time. You can be more effective than the big players by being more focused on that market's unique needs. This also leads us to the phobia of lead generation that blocks so many business owners before they even get started. It is the fear of not being "creative", or not being a great writer or designer. When you focus more on the needs of your market than the flash of the message and channel you are working to your strenghts and cutting through the clutter with simple clarity.
Channels: The Other Essential Tool
Before your potential customers can receive your message, your lead generation has to reach them. You have to figure out what channels will get your message to your target market in a way that fits well to their life patterns. It might be through word of mouth or print advertising in newspapers and magazines, it could be through direct mail or handouts and billboards, or it might be through broadcast advertising on radio or Internet.
You select channels based on efficiency and relevance. Likely it will be a mix of relevant channels, carrying a consistant message that has the best oppertunity to craete an positive impression in the minds of your target market
Channels are important for another reason. If you reach your potential customers in an intrusive way, you'll set up a negative impression of your business and your products. This happens when your telemarketing calls reach your target market at dinner time? Or when your direct mail piece looks and feels like all the other "junk" mail your customers receive. As the pace of advertising messages steadily increases consumers have responded with a wide range of tools that aim to filter everything that is irrelevant or annoying. You can think of this as an advantage to the marketer that took the time to select the channels and build the messages that are most relevant to thier markets needs. All the 1/2 way attempts were blocked at the gate and sent back in defeat. But when your messages and channels are relevant to your market's lifestyle (business or consumer) you have earned the right to be heard.
I started on this size-based approach , because if I ring up a list of companies from the yellow pages offering my services, a lot will say they are too small for it. I had previously tried different sectors based on previous customer profiles but this hasn’t worked very well.
The initial test was on 500-1000. This came about by trying a new way of cold telephone calling. This wasn’t working too well but I found one of the marketing gurus disciples who was selling similar services in the US and asked what size of company and he said he got the best results from 500-1000.
I found that in 500-1000 companies here in the UK, it’s the MD that has the authority and I can’t reach him by cold calls in an acceptable rate (5 contact or more per hour). Using a marketing consultant I tested contacting MD’s in smaller companies using a phone/mail/phone across 3 ranges, including the 500-1000. Using 33 letters showed most interest in the 10-99 range but after about a 100 contacts I only got one interview and then the MD who said he would have to talk it over with fellow directors. But after following up for months he stopped responding.
So I was thinking of contacting IT Directors in these larger companies, with IT Project Management and possible other services in the hope they have the authority. However, I find it difficult to decide what to do, as for example I could offer a very specific service. E.g. improving bespoke software development performance by better document management, or a broader service like project management, or a range of services. Also, a service like, improving bespoke software development performance by better document management, might be the responsibility of a software development manager. The IT Director might only be interested in IT strategy.
The problem I have is, although I am systematically experimenting with offering different services to different lists, I am not getting anywhere. When I’ve tried a test for a couple of hours on the phone on one list, and then tried a different offer, I was told by the marketing guru this was not statistically significant and to do 100 contacts. Well at 5 and hour you are talking about 20+ hours a test on one offer for one list and this is just one channel and there are thousands of channels (as you say). So one could take forever finding a combination that works, and consistently.
What I’d like to know is, are there more effective ways of market testing to narrow things down quicker.
Note that I have problems choosing the target because my services could be sold to the IT Director or underlings, Finance Director, Marketing Director, Operations Director and the CEO. Indeed the marketing guru suggested I would be better off calling CEO’s and Functional Vice-Precidents. Choosing the message is a problem as mentioned above. And this is for just one channel I try to focus on my strengths and where I think market demand is, to reduce the possibilities but there are still many. There is the problem of when to stop with a particular message or a particular list and move on to another test.
Could you suggest something that would increase the probability of my homing in on the right combination of target market, message and even channel, quicker, with minimum cost. Are there any e-myth publications specifically on market testing?