Lead generation is the act of getting suspects (people that you ‘think’ may want your product or service) to ‘raise’ their hands so you can actively market to them.
Remember the definition of marketing is: “getting someone with a need to know, like and trust you”. Lead generation is effectively identifying those people who have a need.
When it comes to lead generation, there is no one hit wonder. The idea is to develop 10-20 lead generation strategies all based around a core marketing message and offer.
Think of it as one of those “dot matrix” drawings, where the artist only uses dots of his pen to create a very detailed painting. Just one dot doesn’t do much, but as he/she strategically places dots all over the canvas all of a sudden a very clear picture emerges.
The three main mediums for generating leads are: Public Relations, Advertising and Referral Marketing.
Public Relations: The duct tape marketing definition of Public Relations is getting positive mention of you or your company in newspapers, magazines, news shows, newsletters, websites and journals read by some portion of your target market.
Advertising: Unfortunately, most small business owners shy away from direct advertising because they feel it is too expensive and doesn’t work. That is usually because they are using a ‘copy cat’ marketing or ‘ostrich’ (don’t do anything and hope for the best) marketing strategy. When done properly advertising is seldom matched for quickly generating a flood of new business.
Referral Marketing: According to the duct tape marketing definition is simply put, a specific set of strategies and tools designed to bring the small business owner new clients, qualified leads and repeat business without the aid of, or in addition to, other advertising methods.
In my next post we we dig deeper into each strategy and explore several practical ways you can implement them into your marketing plan.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I believe lead generation to be exchanging referrals with other professionals you know and trust.
For instance, I use http://www.referralkey.com and invite my associates to exchange referrals with me. I can then track those relationships to ensure reciprocity.
Hi Jeff – I love the analogy of the “dot matrix” art. As people start to see your information in multiple media and online, they begin to understand much better what you and your company are all about. They get a picture in their mind of who you are and how you may act and most of all whether or not you can solve the problem they may be having at the time.
I’ve used traditional lead capture linked to auto-responders for about 4 months now.ISM out preforms this though. http://theinternetsuccessmachine.com/dream