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BtoB Lead Generation Tactics
By Jamie Klemcke | June 25, 2009
I stumbled across an interesting blog post today titled, “The Role of Online Marketing in BtoB Lead Generation.” Carla Joye, President of Strategic Intelligence Group answers difficult questions regarding best practice tactics for business to business lead generation. Here are a few examples:
Question: What do you think about the heightened interest in digital lead generation?
Answer: My experience has been that both agencies and clients see digital lead generation as a low to no cost medium for customer acquisition and therefore want to make it work. However, where they are short sighted is in making digital lead generation their only means of generating leads. Like any other successful lead generation efforts, digital marketing has a role to play but should be used in concert with other media such as direct mail, telemarketing, email, and so forth.
Marketers are always looking for the one magic bullet medium that will meet all their needs and are playing a fools game because that medium never will exist.
Question: How should businesses approach their lead generation efforts?
Answer: Ted, that’s the $64,000 question! Businesses should approach their lead generation efforts the old-fashion way. Start with a strategy and a list of who you want your customers to be in the next three to five years and then use every available means of communication to market to those chosen few until they appear on your customer list.What people need to remember is lead generation is the first step to gaining trust and building a relationship with a potential customer.
However, in today’s business world it’s all about the quick sale without regard to the lifetime value of that customer.
Speaking of customer lifetime value, that should be part of the strategy and target audience identification stage which comes first. The more lifetime value a customer has the more marketing $ should be spent on them. In business, the cliché that no two customers are created equal should be the mantra.
I couldn’t agree more! Check out the rest of the post here.