Recent research suggests that marketing agencies are engaging in some risky behavior regarding lead generation and are not even realizing it.
The biggest mistake you can make is to rely heavily on referrals without running other lead generation marketing campaigns.
Why?
Here are a few reasons.
- New business generated via referrals doesn’t always produce what you would expect. They could be too small, the wrong fit, low budget, or not the right kind of work that you do.
- They’re not a scalable or consistent source of new business.
- Small to medium-sized businesses are now being approached increasingly by larger agencies, meaning there’s more competition for it than ever before.
But the good news is that agencies are getting more aggressive when it comes to including inbound and outbound tactics in their lead generation.
They’re using channels like blogging, paid marketing, and social media to generate leads, increasing 9% since 2011.
How to create a lead generation marketing campaign for your agency
1. Determine your target audience
If you are not going to get clients that fit your agency, then there’s no use in generating leads. It would be best if you started doing some research to figure out who your targets are. The best place to look is at your current customers and dig deep to find out your best clients and learn more about them.
How do you achieve this? You interview them and learn things like their goals, their biggest challenges, where they spend their time online, and finally, what process they go through before hiring an agency.
But the buck doesn’t stop there.
Most businesses take a few factors into account when deciding whether to contract work out to agencies like yours. Check out AMI’s Hiring and Firing Insights Report; it’s excellent industry research to clue you.
You can mold your lead generation marketing campaign and its traffic channels, messaging to best suit their preferences when you’ve learned everything you can about your target prospects.
2. Set campaign goals
Every successful marketing campaign starts with specific goals.
You need to understand that generating the most leads possible isn’t a goal. Your best option is to use data from past performances as a benchmark to develop a specific number of leads, conversion rates, visits, etc., that you’ll want to go after in a particular timetable.
If you haven’t kept track, it’s time to start now; try figuring out what a lead is worth to your agency and then work backward.
Determining your average customer’s value helps you determine how many you need from the campaign to achieve your sales goals.
Your next step is to calculate how many leads your sales team converts into clients on average, then use industry benchmarks to estimate your conversion rate and how many visitors you need to generate to hit those goals.
3. Define what offer will attract an optimal client.
I remember a time when it was straightforward to give away free stuff online. There were requests for white papers; tip sheets and eBooks were plentiful, making generating leads easy.
It was so easy that so many marketers became lazy and started doing less work to generate the same amount of leads. That only worked for a short period because prospects caught on; they realized that not every lead magnet was created equal.
As a result, the prospects became more selective with what they claimed online. In this day and age, it’s not enough to create a cookie-cutter offer.
You need truly helpful to your prospects and original if you expect to get results from your lead generation marketing.
Examples:
For example, Moz creates valuable content and tools that people can use, like Open Site Explorer and Mozbar.
HubSpot, a great content generator in the marketplace, does a phenomenal job with templates for creating buyer personas.
Now, I don’t want you to get the impression that tip sheets or eBooks aren’t valuable. They are often better used at the top of the funnel, positioning you as a knowledgeable authority on your subject, the issue that not everyone enters your funnel at the top.
A small business owner searching for agencies to outsource is looking for something completely different from a business owner looking for social media marketing tips. For the first small business owner, an eBook titled “25 Tips on how to find the best digital company to outsource to” would be more relevant as for the second business owner, a case study showcasing your agency’s effectiveness at social media marketing would be ideal.
In creating a fantastic offer, you need to know who will be using it and where they are in the modern buyer’s customer journey.
If you are looking for some great tips, a survey from Regalix asked 285 B2B marketers around the nation about the best content to offer at each stage of the modern buyer’s journey. Here’s what they answered:
Awareness:
- Social media: 83%
- Blog posts: 81%
- Infographics: 81%
Consideration:
- White papers: 78%
- Websites: 75%
- Web-based events: 72%
Purchase:
- Website: 56%
- Case studies: 47%
- Research Reports: 39%
- Videos: 39%
Important note: Understand that your offer doesn’t always have to be content. Marketers widely use free consultations and tools and to generate leads for their agencies.
4. Get a landing page developed for post-clicks.
The post-click lander is where you have to convince your prospects that your offer is worth downloading. These stand-alone landing pages must be disconnected from your website via navigation links in a menu or footer and be persuasive to boost the chances that your offer gets claimed.
Here’s what those elements are:
A benefit-oriented headline
It’s no secret that headlines attract a lot more attention than any copy written on the page’s body.
Many decades ago, the father of modern advertising, David Ogilvy, revealed that 8 out of 10 people would read a headline, while only two would read the body copy. The strategy is always to make sure that you use big, bold words at the top of your page to give prospects a reason to read the rest of your offer by conveying the benefit of claiming your exclusive offer. If you can’t explain what’s in it for your audience immediately, they won’t continue reading.
You Need Engaging Media
From the moment all of us were born, we began processing the world visually. That’s why it’s imperative to use images and videos in advertising. It’s undoubtedly the most effective way to capture attention and convey your information. Hero shots, infographics, explainer videos, video case studies, and video testimonials will help your prospects understand the undeniable benefits of your offer and why they should claim it immediately.
Today using video on a post-click landing page has boosted the conversion rate by 80%. It’s no wonder 93% of marketers incorporate them into their digital strategy.
Skimmable copy
French Philosopher Blaise Pascal in a letter sent more than 350 years ago, wrote, “I have made this letter longer than usual because I have not had time to make it shorter.” All post-click landing pages should close with the same sentence. It takes a lot of time to make one word do the work of two, and it’s the time that many marketers don’t take.
Generally, because of laziness or just plain ignorance, marketers stuff their post-click landing pages with long-form block text about their product, services, and benefits. They forget to give any thought to the reader’s situation, where they might be busy, looking for quick information and not reading for pleasure. Nowadays, people have less time and are always on the go, so prospects need information fast looking to why they should claim your offer in as little time as possible.
You should break block text into small paragraphs, use bullet points, and keep text to a minimum. On the whole, people don’t like to read, so the easier you make it for them to do.
You need Social proof!
Why would you tell people your offer is worth claiming when you can show them? Case studies, testimonials, authority badges, and positive reviews all do that by showcasing customers and partners that trust your business.
If brands like the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and Entrepreneur trust your brand, the prospects visiting your post-click landing page will likely, too.
You need a well-designed form
To capture leads, your post-click landing pages, you will need to feature well-designed forms.
So, what does that mean?
For starters, try coming up with the best-case scenario — all the things you’d have from a lead in an ideal world and determine what kind of information you need from your prospects.
Let’s say you decided that the information you want to collect includes name, email, work phone, company size, and annual revenue.
Next, you will need to figure out what you could do without. Do you need to know the company size, or will just annual revenue do? Is the work phone necessary, or will the email address suffice?
Less is always more on your forms
Never forget that if you want your prospects to convert, the less information you ask your prospects to submit, the better your chances are. You need to do your best to get your form down to the minimum number of fields as possible with the info you need to follow up with your leads effectively.
Another fact that you need to consider is your offer. If you provide valuable information to your intended audience, the more you can ask to hand it over in exchange for it. If you’ve compiled an industry-related report filled with beneficial insights from prominent experts, your prospects will probably be fine with completing a 10-field form. Now, on the other hand, if you decide to create a short tip sheet, then ten fields might be too big to ask.
Once you have decided on how many fields to use, you need to make sure your forms are simple to fill out. Always include labels above your fields that don’t disappear when the prospect starts typing because it just might confuse or frustrate them, research shows. It’s always best to consider enabling a social autofill that visitors make it simple and faster for importing personal information from sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook with just the click of a simple button.
If your conversion process is longer, your best bet is to try breaking it up into multiple steps because your form will shorten the perceived length. Never use a long-form because they are too intimidating; use a few short ones because they seem less work.
A strong call-to-action button is a must!
To compel your visitors to click and convert, you need a call-to-action button that has to be attention-grabbing and persuasive.
The rule of thumb here is if they can’t find the button, they definitely won’t click it. So always make sure your button has an accent color that stands out on your landing page and has visual cues like the gaze of models in a photo or arrows that should guide visitors toward it.
Secondly, even if they can find your button, they certainly won’t click it unless you get them excited. Those traditional button copy like “Subscribe,” “Submit,” and “Sign Up” won’t get them to click. It’s essential always to make sure that a call-to-action needs be 100% benefit-focused on your post-click landing page. If your offering to prospects is a membership to a newsletter filled with expert insight, instead of using a simple “Submit Button,” use an attention grabber like “Send Me Expert Tips!” instead. Emphasize what your prospects will get by converting, not what they have to do to get it.
Design a strong “thank you” page
The thank-you page is a vital part of your lead generation marketing campaign. It’s the page that appears after a visitor claims your offer, and its purpose is to do more than you think.
Instead of the thank-you page simply saying “thanks for downloading,” the ultimate goal should be to continue the conversation with your new lead.
So exactly how is this done?
It’s simple to explain. Your prospects will need to be guided where they’ll find their resource after the form has been filled out. Are they going to download it right then and there, or will it be sent to their email?
Please note that the ‘thank you’ page should attempt to drive the prospect to another resource that they might find helpful, preferably related to the offer they just claimed. If you offer a template to go with that “How To Create Buyer Personas” eBook, it should direct the prospect to your “thank you” page.
The Flywheel “thank you” page works for three reasons:
- “Keep watch on your inbox” will show your prospects where they will find their resource.
- “Head over to The Layout for daily articles” this call to action will drive them to the blog where they can read more of Flywheel’s content.
- The ebook image creates a great message matching the previous post-click landing page, making the prospects say, “Ah, that’s the ebook I ordered!”
Honestly, the only way the page could be better is to show authentic gratitude towards the new prospect. “Yipee” might relate to the prospect’s emotion, but it just doesn’t convey the thanks on behalf of the brand.
While all “thank you” pages have several goals to accomplish, the first thing it should do is right in the name is say “thank you” and make the prospect feel like an invaluable part of the brand.
Always integrate with the best technology!
In marketing, “technology stacks” are groupings of state-of-the-art software that will allow you to effectively accomplish your key marketing goals in your lead generation marketing.
Your lead generation software can include the following:
Remarketing tools like Google Dynamic and Adroll. Remarketing is used on your visitors who typically don’t convert immediately. It will serve them ads on any website of your choice and aims to draw them back to your post-click lander to reconsider your offering.
You can use Rocket Driver’s CRM software included in the partnership to score and sort your leads into categories when they convert so that you and your team can follow up more effectively.
After that, you can use Rocket Driver’s pre-built marketing automation campaigns for email marketing to help you nurture those leads to conversion again.
Always test your campaigns
Before driving traffic, this step is crucial. You will need to test the front and back end of your lead generation campaign.
You will need to put yourself in the shoes of your prospect as they navigate their way to your business’s post-click landing page. Always check to see if the links to your post-click landing page are working — email, PPC networks, sponsored social media posts, etc. Do your links drive you to the post-click landing page that they’re supposed to go to? And don’t forget to check if everything looks the way you intended on every browser and device. This takes a bit of work, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.
If your page’s look and links are set, it’s time to begin interacting with the page. Your next process should be to abandon the page, try adjusting the window sizes, and test conversions. Are there error messages appearing when they’re supposed to? For example, if all of the required information isn’t entered, does the form kick back and ask for the required data? Is your call to action button working? Another step in the process is to check when your page is abandoned. Does it retarget with ads? When you resize the window, will your post-click landing page respond correctly?
Now it’s time to evaluate your “thank you” page. Do all of the links work? If you’re sending out an email with your content offering, will it end up in your inbox, or will it end up in spam?
These questions all need to be answered and review at the back end of your campaign. The next step in your process is to ensure that your tags are working; your leads are sorted and scored correctly. Check to see if all of your conversion pixels are firing so that your team can effectively follow up with the prospect to make sure you are running a successful marketing campaign. At this point, all the processes on both ends should run smoothly.
Now it’s time to drive traffic!
There’s no right or wrong way to drive traffic. How you do it is dependent on your agency and its target market (audience).
Use your targeted buyer’s personas to figure out where your prospective clients hang out online. Then you should cross-reference those locations with your agency’s most profitable channels. It’s essential for you not to focus on top-of-funnel metrics and give more attention to the bottom funnel.
Take this as an example; you find out that you generate more leads through Facebook at a cheaper cost, but those leads you receive don’t convert into big money clients that your agency needs to stay profitable.
Now here is another scenario, you could’ve generated fewer leads in the past from a LinkedIn advertisement at a higher cost, but those leads were the ones with larger budgets that you’ve been looking for. When you convert just a few of these more expensive leads, they will undoubtedly keep your agency operating comfortably in the black.
Remember that you always need to consider all channels for your lead generation marketing, and, as always, don’t forget to test, test, test. Rocket Driver’s experience and detailed research data from Google Ads show that most agencies waste 76% of their PPC budget on bad traffic. Don’t be that agency. When you partner with Rocket Driver, our team of highly trained advertising specialists combined with our state-of-the-art software will help you avoid these pitfalls and massive loss of advertising dollars. Not to mention that you can purchase advertising at wholesale rates. We invest your advertising dollars on a proven platform, personnel, and technology.
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