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If you’ve ever been to the beach, you’ve probably seen a person with a metal detector looking for a treasure in the sand. Maybe you’ve even tried it yourself, imagining you’ll discover a lost diamond, a rare coin, or a gold bracelet. Just a walk on the sand could make a profit in the hundreds or thousands of dollars. On the other hand, you could end up finding pennies.
So how would you find a quality treasure? In business, potential customers are the treasure, and companies are constantly looking for this rough shiny diamond that will bring you a lot of cash. Contact generation software, social media, print ads, websites and more are the tools that help them find it.
What is your strategy? Just as you wouldn’t rely solely on your sight to look for treasure in the sand, you shouldn’t rely solely on a tool to build contacts. You need to boost your search team.
Related: 6 Super Simple Content Marketing Tricks to Duplicate Your Lead Generation
Identify your tools
The best place to start is by selecting a customer relationship management (CRM) software that will organize all your contacts and leads and keep track of where they come from. Some of the best CRM software systems include Zoho, HubSpot and Salesforce. According to Statista, the CRM market is expected to grow exponentially, increasing to 49.6 billion worldwide by 2025. Many companies use CRM, because it streamlines and simplifies the process of managing and nurturing potential customers.
However, a CRM can be expensive. If you’re just getting started, you’ll still want to keep track of your leads, so consider other tools such as Google Spreadsheets or an Excel Spreadsheet.
Test your tools
Once you have a CRM software system in place, you can start tracking your leads. Where do they come from? Suppose you spent $ 500 on advertising on Facebook and Instagram for a month and received 25 leads.
Of these 25 potential customers, three became sales. By comparison, that same month, you spent $ 500 on an email marketing campaign and received zero sales. However, your website traffic increased.
You can conclude that while emails are likely to increase clicks on your website, they may not equate to real benefits as Facebook and Instagram ads will. Not all potential customers are created equal. The key to your success is to spend money on marketing tools that will return the highest value over time.
Related: Does your strongest contact generation tool do its job?
Analyze your leads
What makes one person go ahead with a purchase while another simply rejects the idea? Every business is different and what works for one company may not work for another. You have to do the digging yourself and find out which tool is the most effective.
One of the key performance indicators to pay attention to is time spent. According to a study by online media company Eyeblaster, marketing campaigns that actively involve consumers over longer periods of time, by attracting them to live, are more likely to generate high conversion rates and are three times more effective for driving brand-related web searches. .
An analysis of over 13 billion rich media impressions found that increasing stay time from 5% to 15% increases conversion rates by an average of 45%, from 0.4% to 0.6 %.
A client of mine from PostcardMania (a manufacturer of branded promotional products) shared with us the stay times of their website based on the main source and the results were amazing. He showed that of the seven tools chosen to drive traffic, the highest average session duration was the result of postcards, while the lowest was the result of email ads:
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Postcards: 2:42
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Organic Google: 1:37
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Direct traffic: 1:02
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Google paid ad: 0:54
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Facebook announcement: 0:35
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Pinterest: 0:31
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Email announcement: 0:24
We can conclude that this particular customer should invest more of their budget in direct mail marketing and SEO, and should invest less in email marketing and Pinterest.
When it comes to print ads, people almost always spend more time looking at them than online ads. According to a study by Lumen Research that tracked eye data, people spent 0.3 seconds looking at a digital ad instead of 1.5 seconds in a print ad. They also reported that consumers have a 22% chance of noticing a digital ad on a computer screen and a 76% chance of noticing the ad if it is printed. Also note this:
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People can more easily remember your printed business. In 2019, the U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General and Temple University teamed up to study the power of print and digital advertising. The study found that participants not only spent more time with physical ads, but also remembered them more quickly. Physical ads also elicited a stronger emotional response than digital ads and generally had a more lasting impact.
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About half of Americans expect to check their mail. A Gallup poll revealed that 4 out of 10 Americans are excited to check their mail every day.
When it comes to generating contacts, you need to try everything, keep track of everything, and then stay consistent with what works for your business, whether your ad is in print or in cyberspace.
Related: 6-step plan to turn potential customers into sales
Execute a plan
Once you’ve identified which contact generation tools generate the most revenue, you can start implementing a plan. For example, you can identify the top three sources of revenue generation and break down how much you invest in each.
Examples:
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Start sending postcards / direct mail to potential customers in your local area each month.
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Pay for advertising on social media through online ads and influential people.
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Make sure your business reaches the top three companies suggested on Google (the coveted first page) through organic SEO.
True, not all potential customers are the same. You don’t necessarily need more contacts; you need the right leads to bring in sales. Working with the best marketing professionals will help you find them, analyze them, and track them with the most advanced tools available.
Will you find your rough diamond? It’s time to start organizing the search committee. Stop looking at the sand and start looking for the treasure.
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