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4 Often Overlooked Channels for Fantastic Lead Generation

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In order for your business to thrive, it needs customers. Nurturing relationships with potential sales contacts is the bread and butter of every successful marketing campaign. But, where do you find leads? On the Web you probably leverage social media and SEO to populate your contact lists. Well, you can already find everything you need to know about those platforms with a few Google searches.

What you really want to know about are the lead generation channels that not everyone is talking about. These avenues are not trade secrets – you see them every day. Still, you are likely passing right over them instead of using them as fuel delivery channels for your sales rocket.

4. Mobile Advertising

Paid search advertising is an extremely popular online lead generation solution. But, mobile advertising is becoming more and more important for business campaigns, and is all too often ignored. The 23% growth in mobile advertising is a tell-tale sign that you should be phasing mobile into your marketing strategy.

Facebook advertising and local mobile paid search are two popular options for integrating mobile into your campaigns. The creative control and pinpointed audience targeting are what make Facebook ads so appealing. Local business might benefit more from local mobile paid search. Try out each of these methods, and use them in combination with one another to fully enhance your mobile campaigns.

How to Optimize Facebook Advertising for Mobile Users

Mobile users on Facebook won’t be able to see ads in the right column of their browsers, so make sure that your campaigns will show up in a user’s newsfeed. Running a “page post ad” is the easiest way to ensure that mobile users see your message. This can be done by choosing “boost post” from your business Facebook page posts. Simply choose your target audience, your budget, and run the campaign.

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How to Optimize Google Local Advertising for Mobile Viewers

When you set up a local advertising campaign with Google, you will want to make sure that your information is optimized for mobile viewers. Follow these best practices for the ultimate mobile experience with Google Advertising:

  • Use mobile friendly ad extensions.
  • Include mobile-preferred sitelinks.
  • Put mobile-specific calls to action in your headline and description.
  • Use display-friendly URL to indicate that your page is set up for mobile.
  • Use mobile-specific ad sizes for the Google Display Network.
  • Track your campaigns to make sure the ads are working.
3. Text Messaging

Though it is a very effective method of promotion for all types of business, text message marketing is ignored by many. The time-sensitive nature of SMS campaigns makes them an excellent option for contests, promotions, and events. And sharing opt-in instructions for text campaigns across different platforms is easy.

 

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If you want to run a successful text message marketing campaign, pay attention to crafting your messages. It’s not a rocket science, just follow basic rules for writing effective SMS messages for marketing campaigns. Here is a brief checklist:

  • Use call-to-action buttons to increase conversions.
  • Leverage shortened URLs.
  • Keep your message brief.
  • Be specific with your data (dates, times, discounts, etc.).
  • Speak professionally, avoid slang.
  • Personalize your message with the recipient’s name.
  • Target your message with list segmentation.
2. Pinterest Advertising

Advertising on Pinterest is a newer option for lead generation, hence somewhat untapped. The visual nature of Pinterest, and the fact that Pinterest leads are more likely to buy than those from any other social media platforms, indicates that you should at least look into it. This could be the big break you’ve been looking for.

Promoted pins are the same as regular pins on Pinterest, besides the fact that you can have them seen by more people. Like Facebook page post ads, you can take your favorite existing content, and pay to get it in front of more eyes. So, you don’t really need to know any “advertising secrets,” just how to create great pins.

Ask yourself, “What is my goal?” This should be the foundation of your Pinterest strategy. Are you looking to create awareness, intent, or action?

 

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Pins for Awareness

Pins created with the intent to drive awareness should contain certain elements. Among these elements are a compelling image, text overlay, a detailed description, a vertical aspect ratio, novelty, and tasteful branding. Cinematic pins are the exception to the vertical aspect ratio – video pins have higher engagement when presented horizontally.

Pins for Engagement

Many of the same elements used in awareness-building pins are effective when driving engagement (compelling image, text overlay, a detailed description, a vertical aspect ratio). Additionally, lists and how-to pins work well when your goal is engagement. Showcasing an image of your product in a real-life environment is a great method to use here.

Pins for Clicks

When your goal is to get people to click through your pins, the above elements will all be helpful. In addition, you need to include a call-to-action. By instructing a viewer on what to do next, you provide what is needed for clicks through to your landing page/ web content. In the description of pins designed for clicks, include text like, “see this helpful resource,” or, “find out more.”

1. Gated Content

If you’re not using gated content yet, now is the time to try it. Limiting access to a video or mini-course until the viewer has provided you with their contact information is a great way to generate leads that are super-targeted for your niche. The idea is that if a contact finds your information intriguing, they may also find your products and services helpful.

How to Make Sure You’re Using Gated Content Correctly

For gating to work, your content has to be super-relevant to your products and services. Otherwise, you can simply increase your page’s bounce rate, and be unsuccessful in your lead funneling efforts.

Here are the steps to execute gated content successfully:

  1. Map content to the stages of your sales funnel.
  2. Identify where leads are in your sales funnel.
  3. Decide whether or not gating is appropriate at this time.

Gated content may be appropriate for your content if it has at least one of the following elements:

  • It addresses product implementation.
  • It answers a question that you generally hear when addressing sales prospects.
  • It answers a question that you receive from current customers.
  • The lead will benefit from having a direct conversation about it.
  • It earns you the right to have a direct conversation with your contact about your products.
  • A/B testing shows a stronger contact acquisition rate with gating vs without.

Though you’ve already seen these lead generation channels, you are likely to have overlooked them. Now that you know more about mobile advertising, text messaging, Pinterest advertising, and gated content, you can try these strategies in your lead funnel. What do you think about these sometimes ignored channels for gaining leads? Take some time to explore the above options, and tell us your findings in the comments.

 

 

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

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alexa

Alexa Lemzy is the customer service specialist and content manager at TextMagic. She writes about small business, mobile marketing tactics and customer service best practices. Reach out to her on Twitter.

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Tame the Turf Wars

Turn It Up Tuesday: Tips from Insightly to Take Your Business to 11

Welcome to Turn It Up Tuesday, where we bring you 4 weekly tips—a tip on running your business, a tip on using Insightly CRM, a tip on improving your sales, and a tip on improving your life. Enjoy this week’s tips!

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Streamline Lead Management with Insightly
Leads come from many places. Some call your office phone number. Others request more information from your website. Still others reach out through social media.

Regardless of the source, leads must be quickly and effectively followed up with. With each passing minute, you reduce the chances of successfully converting them to opportunities. Luckily, Insightly makes it easy to view, assign, and automate the lead management process.

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Let’s say you wanted to view all of today’s new leads and then assign them (in bulk) to your sales guy or gal. You’re in luck, as Insightly has a prebuilt filter for that. Simply use the “today’s leads” filter, select all of the results, and change the responsible user. Presto! Your sales team now has an actionable plan for the day.

As you get more leads (and sales reps), you’ll likely want to automate this process. Insightly has you covered here, too, thanks to its lead assignment rule feature. In a nutshell, lead assignment rules prevent you (or someone else at your organization) from becoming the bottleneck. Rather than waiting on a person to dish out new leads, Insightly does it for you – based on your predefined criteria, of course. To begin using lead assignment rules, you’ll need to upgrade to at least a Professional level Insightly account. Find out more about upgrading here.
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Getting More Leads in Your CRM
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A guaranteed way to make your sales reps even happier is by flooding your CRM with high-quality leads. The more leads you provide them, the greater chance they have to maximize their commission checks. (Remember, when you’re paying big commissions, it also means that sales revenue is humming along.)

Sure, this all sounds great. But, how can you do so without breaking the bank?

As pointed out in this multi-part series, increasing lead flow may not be as difficult as first thought. It just comes down to your company’s dedication to solid marketing principles. Here are some basic steps for getting started with a lead-focused marketing strategy:

  1. Clearly define how your company should use leads and opportunities (they’re different!)
  2. View your website through the eyes of a prospective customer
  3. Consider what leads are looking for from your website
  4. Research where your existing web visitors are coming from (social, organic, paid ads, etc.)
  5. Brainstorm low-hanging fruit for increasing traffic from top sources
  6. Budget for a more engaging website and content marketing
  7. Implement your plan and track progress
  8. Do more of what works – and less of what doesn’t

Obviously, this is a simplified version of the process. Each step above could require days or weeks of work, but at least you have a general game plan now!

 

 

 

 
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Ease Out of the Day
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It’s 5:29 pm. You just wrapped up that big project, and now you have one minute to check your email again before calling it a day. As you put on your jacket and walk out the door, you can’t help but feeling totally frazzled. Another intense ten-hour day is in the books, and now it’s time to go back to being a good parent and spouse.

Sound familiar? With so many things to get done, it’s easy to work up until the very last minute. Although a highly efficient use of time, a wall-to-wall day can make transitioning back to your personal life difficult at best.

Try this simple experiment next week. Open your calendar and block off the last five minutes of each workday. Don’t just ignore your calendar when it prompts you to stop working. Actually quit working and do something mindless, such as:

  • Close your eyes and think about the successes of the day
  • Enjoy a relaxing song
  • Plan out tomorrow’s priorities and work schedule
  • Count your blessings
  • Review your impressive sales pipeline in Insightly
  • Daydream about big goals for next quarter
  • Send a nice note to a colleague or friend
  • Look out the window and enjoy the evening landscape

Ahhh…just thinking about these activities probably makes you feel more relaxed. Invest the twenty-five minutes in next week’s work plan, and you’ll find it much easier to transition out of work. Your family will thank you!

 

 

 

Avoid Turf Wars with Better Communication
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In a perfect world, your sales department would happily accept the leads they’re assigned. Unfortunately, as with any other group of people, jealousy and hard feelings can develop if you’re not careful.

How can you prevent such negativity from plaguing your company? For starters, maintain an open dialogue about how you assign leads. If you’re using Insightly’s lead assignment rules, you might consider publishing the criteria into a shared document somewhere on your network drive. This way, when your robotic lead assignments go out, everyone already understands the ground rules.

Determining which criteria to use is equally important. There’s no magic combination and largely depends on your business model. Here are a few quick examples:

Heating & Air Company Serving St. Louis – Given the localized footprint, it might make sense to break leads into two (industry) groups: commercial & residential. If you have more than two reps, consider using additional refining criteria such as ZIP Code or tagged info.

Manufacturing Firm Supplying Auto Part Shops – Since this firm serves the entire US automotive aftermarket, it may be wise to assign leads based on region. Each rep would manage particular states or state groups, which creates clear distinction and expectations.

IT Firm Serving Public K-12 Schools In Iowa – Some schools are much smaller than others, which means “IT services” could vary significantly depending on the number of students and employees. Since employee data is publicly available, it might be wise to pre-populate leads with this information to streamline lead delegation.

 

 

 

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Send Us Your Tips. Would you like to share your tips with Insightly customers? Send them to us! If we use one in our weekly feature we’ll send you a $10 Amazon Gift Card! Contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or send us an email.

About the author: Matt Keener is a marketing consultant and President of Keener Marketing Solutions, LLC. Matt specializes in content marketing and strategic planning, having helped numerous Saas (software as a service) companies and other small businesses worldwide. Read more of Matt’s work, check out his book, or connect with him on Linkedin.

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Your Voice, Your Vote: Share the Love of a Tacky Sweater

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It’s that time of year. The weather is chilly, holiday lights are donning trees and roof lines, and people around the world are pulling their favorite holiday sweaters out of drawers and off of shelves.

In honor of those beloved bits of holiday garb, we’ve launched our Tacky Sweater Giveaway. We’ll be spreading a little holiday cheer with a customer giveaway and donations to charitable organizations that are important to us.  And we’re doing it with tacky sweaters!

Here are the important tidbits to know before you get your vote on:
  • A true holiday program: Monday, December 5th through Friday, December 16th
  • Your voice, your vote: Customers will vote for the tacky sweater they would like each of our 3 Insightly Vice Presidents (VP) to wear
  • Support a great cause: For each vote, Insightly will donate $1 to the VP’s charity of choice
  • Sky’s the limit: Customers can vote as often as they would like.

You get a chance to win a great prize, too! Each vote submitted becomes an automatic entry to win an HP Sprocket Photo Printer. Read all of the details and the Official Rules on our main Giveaway page. Check back on Monday, December 19th when we’ll post photos of our VP’s wearing their winning sweaters and announce the giveaway winner.

Let’s Get Started: Vote today!

 

 

At Insightly, we offer a CRM used by small and mid-sized businesses from a variety of verticals. Learn about Insightly’s features and plans on our pricing page or sign up for a free trial.

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