The 10 Do or Die Factors of Lead Generation

1. Who is your target market?
Your target market consists of people and companies who will buy your products and services.  To generate leads you need to know who the optimum people are to approach.  Things such as geography, age, gender, or business type are the characteristics used to separate markets.  Is your market a fifteen minute drive in a radius around your business?  Or is your market national?  Businesses find that some segments of a target market are easy to identify.  Over time, like the layers of an onion, the other target markets become know as marketing reaches out and pull customers in. 

2. Is there a demand for your product or service?
Does your market want to buy your product?  This may seem like a silly question.  However, every product or service has a lifespan.  A brand new innovation in the market may have few people who want to purchase it.  A product that has been on the market for a long time and is nearing the end of its lifespan may also have few people who want to buy it.  Test marketing for a product or service can help determine demand.  Run small test campaigns to determine the need or desire for the product or service.  Don’t blindly assume everyone’s going to want it.  Too often people think, “If we built it they will come.”  That’s seldom the case.

3. How much does your target market want to pay?
Marketing campaigns for lead generation get the best results with a direct response offer.  There’s a call to action that says, “Click Here!”  The offer is tied to an anticipated purchase by a new customer.  The price of this anticipated purchase is a critical issue in the success of the lead generation campaign.  How much does your target market want to pay?  The answer to the question is finding the optimum price where quality meets quantity.  If a price is set high you’ll get a high quality prospect but fewer of them.  If the price is set low you’ll tend to get a lower quality prospect but a lot of them.  Test a variety of pricing schemes to find the right blend of quality and quantity.  Say, for example, the listed price of a product is $100.  Test a discount of 10%, 15% and 20%.  How much of a discount is needed to get a good response from the market?  Does it take $10, $15 or $20 to get results?  

4. What’s the offer?
Lead generation uses direct response offers.  There is a call-to-action tied to an offer.  There’s also an expiration date for the offer and typically some sort of guarantee.  There are lots of offers that can be used.  Discounts, freebies, two-for-ones and rebates are a few of the types of offers.  What kind of offer are you going to use in your lead generation campaign?  Test the offers to find what works.  For example, test a free sample as well as a price discount.  If giving the free sample leads to a purchase then you don’t have to give a discount to get a purchase.  Finding good offers is a never-ending battle for the marketer.  What works today may not work tomorrow.

5. What’s Your Competitive Advantage?
A competitive advantage is something valuable in the market place that only you offer.  It gives you an advantage over your competitors.  When presented with the competitive advantage prospects tend to purchase your product more often.  Competitive advantages are an important marketing tool.  They are best when they come with proof.  Stating a competitive advantage is one thing but backing it up with proof is another.  Everyone says, “We’re number one!”  The company with proof of being number one in a market has a strong advantage.  Find your competitive advantage.  Establish proof that it’s true.  Tell everyone in your market that you’re better because of it.

6.  How Are You Going To Reach the Market?
Methods of lead generation vary.  There are newspaper, radio or television ads.  There are email or banner ads on the Web.  There’s direct mail, coupons and flyers.  There are many different methods to reach a market.  Typically there’s no silver bullet that’s going to work all the time.  A newspaper ad may pull prospects for a while and then stop working.  There’s many factors at work as to why something works and when.  It’s a good idea to blend your lead generation methods.  For example, you could do a targeted direct mailer followed by a telephone call and an invitation to view a website.  It’s a one-two-three punch that can work very well.  Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.  Get multiple methods running and test when you run new campaigns.  The target market a moving target.

7.  How are you going to position the product?
Positioning is how a product or service is described and presented to a market so as to create or leave an impression in the mind of the market.  Is it toothpaste or a teeth whitener?  Is it a detergent or a stain remover?  Is it a photograph or a memory?  Positioning is a critical element in lead generation.  There’s usually more than one way to view something.  The target market has an opinion as to what’s attractive or desirable.  Lead generation attempts to discover that opinion and communicate with the target market in a similar voice.  Finding the right positioning or way to describe the product or service can have a great impact on results.

8. How are you going to capture the leads?
Lead capture is an often-overlooked component of lead generation.  A lead generation campaign uses a marketing method such as a newspaper ad, an email or a telemarketing call.  There’s almost always a call-to-action (or there should be!).  When the prospect responds how is this response captured?  If it’s an email reply, where does this reply go and who’s responsible for dealing with it?  If it’s a telephone reply, who answers the call?  If it’s a form on a website who’s going to manage the forms?  It’s important to answer these questions and to build a process for managing the leads once they are generated.  A report on the lead capture is vital so tracking the results is complete.

9.  How are you going to segment the leads?
Response to a lead generation campaign varies.  There’s the “great response” which produces a new customer.  The prospect jumps from responding to the ad to purchasing.  There’s the “hot response.”  This prospect responds to the ad in a very positive way which indicates a purchase is forthcoming.  There’s the “good response.”  The response is positive but there’s not a strong indication of buying.  There’s the “cold response.”  This prospect isn’t interested in buying in the near future.  It’s not a “no” but it’s nothing positive today.  There’s the “no” response.  This response from the lead means there’s not going to be a purchase.  It’s the coldest of the cold.  The last response is “no response.”  The lead didn’t bother responding.  There was no action.  How are you going to segment your leads?

10. How are you going to follow up?
Once a lead from a campaign is captured and segmented how are you going to follow up?  Who’s responsible for doing the follow up and getting a desired response?  Too often these questions go unanswered or are loosely answered.  There needs to be a definitive process to following up on generated leads.  It needs to be step-by-step process that’s very clearly defined and implemented.  Leads that don’t get followed up on are wasted.  The locked potential of the purchase goes away.  Build your plan for follow-up with the same intensity that you create the plan in the first place.  Produce a solid report to show the results of the follow-up strategies.

Mark Jensen is a marketer and promoter of Pulse Marketing, home of the Website pScore.  Visit Pulse Marketing at www.pulsemarketing.com.