Lead generation is key to the success of any company. In order to grow and earn money, the company depends on the whims of a target audience that may or may not know about it. If you don’t have any “leads” to pursue, you won’t be able to close any sales.
Leads are important, but why? They are necessary to maximize growth and revenue.
Creating leads involves building visibility, credibility, trust, and interest from a targeted group of people. Therefore, it can drive traffic to your site through high-quality leads. In turn, this leads to more qualified customers.
Basically, your business will generate more revenue. Your business and customers’ lifetime value can grow with the right lead generation strategies. With that in mind, let’s compare two of the widely adopted strategies for lead generation to see how they perform in the current context.
Cold Calling
An important part of the sales process is cold calling, in which a salesperson contacts prospective clients or customers who were not expecting them. This interaction is referred to as “cold” because it is unexpected.
Its purpose is to reach out to someone who does not know you, has not been introduced to you, and was not expecting your call.
You can generate more leads by cold calling. The advantage of this approach is that you get to speak directly with your customers. Calling the right prospects at the right moment with the right information is an important part of cold calling.
How Cold Calling Helps In Lead Generation
1. Instant communication
The communication may take a while to begin, but once it does, it is instant. In order to win, you need to get to the key decision-maker as fast as possible.
There is, however, the downside of being cut off so easily. The people who make decisions are busy, and they are likely to be eager to end the call quickly if they are unfamiliar with your brand. That’s why cultivating leads through brand awareness, and content first is beneficial.
2. Simple to implement
Developing content, establishing social media strategies, and implementing software require a budget, time, and resources.
The purpose of a cold call is usually to acquire quality data and deliver an existing sales script. The ultimate sales call is not easy to conduct – it is an art form. You may be able to make a cold call if you have limitations.
3. Fast feedback
The two-way conversation can reveal the pain points and needs of the company – sometimes, it can be as simple as a quick chat. By providing knowledge, advice, and expert opinions, you will enhance customer relationships and position yourself as an expert.
With the introduction of virtual cloud phone systems, understanding views and taking feedbacks from the leads, prospects, and customers have been much easier.
Modern cloud telephony systems come aboard with features like call recording, call tags, and call notes. So, you can always check the customer history and deliver products/services exactly the way they like them.
5 Tips To Improve Cold Calling
1. Write a script
You as well as your employees should handle each consumer with respect, but there should be a prevalent order to follow during the call.
Since you will be making a significant number of calls, you will need to ensure that accurate communications are being made to bring around prospects to subscribe to your services or avail of your products.
Creating a script isn’t a way to prepare for the meeting; it’s only a way to prepare yourself for the conversation. Choosing your presentation, your reaction, and how you want to ask for what you want in advance is important in the planning process.
2. Don’t make small talk
A personal call generally begins with a friendly greeting, but cold calls should only be related to business. Most people are unfriendly toward strangers. Introduce yourself directly at the beginning.
If you start by saying where you work and introduce yourself to the receiver, you might get their attention, which can help you proceed further.
Consumers should never be asked if they are free to talk. Getting away from the call is as simple as saying no and hanging up.
Ask questions as soon as the conversation is flowing and you are confident the prospect is interested. Avoid asking questions until the flow of the conversation is natural and the prospect seems interested.
3. Research leads
You shouldn’t call someone you aren’t familiar with while making a phone call. Each prospective customer and company must be familiar with the issues they face and how your product can assist them in solving them.
You can customize your sales pitch based on research since it is a crucial component of all marketing strategies. You have a better chance of relating to the key decision-makers and understanding their personalities if you have researched the industry or key decision-makers.
4. Follow-up to nurture
It is imperative that you follow up on your prospects’ needs in a prompt, relevant manner. Be sure to follow up in the manner that was requested.
Using teleprospecting is a much more effective means of contacting prospective clients and initiating communication. When you foster meaningful and engaging conversations, you are also creating a bridge to a much longer relationship.
5. Practice makes perfect
Cold calling is only successful when you have experience. Practicing your sales pitch and honing your script is critical to generating leads.It is more likely that you will lose than gain if you go in blind. Listen to a few calls before you put your own call through.
One of the best lead generation techniques that you can use to boost sales and find new customers is to cold call.
Social Media
When it comes to lead generation, you might not immediately think of social media, but you should.
In addition to fostering sales leads and building brands, social media helps businesses to reach a broader audience at a low cost, resulting in greater ROI.
Lead generation via social media is a good next step for marketers transitioning beyond brand awareness and engagement. You can find people who are interested in your business by collecting leads on social media.
Moreover, these leads will enable you to stay connected with your customers, whether to share news or make special offers.
How Social Media Helps In Lead Generation
Leads are simply addresses, phone numbers, and IDs that marketers use to target their audience. Marketers typically ask users for their names or email addresses to market to them.
Leads can be gathered with the help of social media. A social media platform allows you to do both organic and paid marketing. Marketers can advertise natively through sponsored groups and communities.
1. Brand Awareness
Social media is used by more than 3 billion people around the world. Getting your target audience’s attention is much easier on social media since more and more people use it to research and voice their opinion on brands.
2. Reach out to new customers
Creating an active social media audience is best done by targeting the people you already know. Your audience will grow, and your relationships will become stronger if you share relevant content, promptly interact with them, and acknowledge their feedback.
3. Increase website traffic
Over 3.5 billion people use social media every day. Your website can get a lot of visitors through social media. This is a great way to get business visitors, who can become leads.
5 Tips To Improve Lead Generation Through Social Media
1. Use chatbots to automate your social media lead generation
Marketers are becoming increasingly powerful with instant messaging and chatbots. While at the same time dramatically reducing overhead costs, chatbots help businesses reach out to their prospects more personally than they could otherwise.
This is how chatbots can be used to generate social media leads.
- With AI bots, businesses can rapidly respond to their customers’ questions on various social media platforms.
- Bots have the ability to figure out what your visitors are trying to accomplish. The purpose of lead nurturing is to determine your next step based on the intent.
- With chatbots, you can create a profile of a customer based on previous interactions, which will enable you to send them personalized messages, content, and product recommendations.
2. Design user-friendly landing pages
You mustn’t disappoint your prospects by creating a sloppy landing page after they click on your link. You must, for starters, incorporate pertinent information on your landing page. It is better if your link contains the information that someone will be expecting when they click it.
Landing pages should have a smooth visual effect and be easy to scan. In order to be as personalized as possible, it should provide a clear path for users. The corresponding content makes it easier for people to close a window or forget why they clicked, thus making it easier for them to close the window.
3. Social media advertisements
LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are now offering ‘Lead Generation’ advertising. Marketers can collect direct leads from social media users directly on the social media platform using targeted marketing campaigns.
Filling out a form does not involve clicking on ads and moving to a landing page. There are no complicated steps. It is just a matter of clicking on the form and completing it. A gated content or e-book will be provided in response.
4. Use social media listening
By utilizing social media listening platforms, you can improve your digital marketing campaigns by understanding your audience, the posts they follow, and the conversation they have online. Online sales, brand reputation monitoring, and customer service are additional benefits of active social listening.
Listening to social media platforms for social media lead generation tips
- Utilizing social listening involves identifying prospects and enticing them with offers so they can use your product or service.
- You can use this tactic as a good B2B lead generation hack by finding unhappy customers with your competitors.Your brand can better serve its customers by listening to social media across platforms and letting those who are unhappy know what they can do to have a better experience with it.
5. Use Analytics
As part of your social media lead collection, you should also collect insights and analytics. Track leads on your website by setting up goals in Google Analytics.
Your business will be able to gauge which social media platforms are the most effective. For example, whenever LinkedIn outperforms Facebook, you should consider redoubling your efforts there.
Cold Calling Or Social Media – Which Works Best?
As we know, the ‘cold calling’ has been around since the 1800s – so you can say it has been around for a while. For a long time, it was an amazingly effective lead generation strategy.
According to some reports, approximately 3.68 cold calls were made to reach a potential customer in 2007. It takes at least eight calls to reach a potential customer now.
In the traditional sense, the act of cold calling is being more difficult due to the federal do-not-call list and other obstacles that make it increasingly difficult to reach someone by phone or email.
On the plus side, this same use of technology and social media is also transforming the way in which cold calls are made. As a result of modern technology and social media, cold calling is becoming more inviting. By using techniques such as attraction marketing, cold calling volume is reduced, and cold calls are reduced.
Cold calling versus social media is something that must be emphasized when it comes to building long-term relationships, as cold calling is not always the best option unless used strategically in conjunction with social media. There are more prospects to be had using social media than traditional methods. It’s warmer, more personal, and allows the person on the other end to make a more informed decision.
Cold calling can deliver successful results in certain circumstances, however, in the social media-dominated era we live in today, most people are going to be better served by social selling, simply because that’s how people consume information, goods, and services nowadays. While social media and cold calling can still be used together, doing so should be done with caution.
Conclusion
You set yourself up for failure in sales when you buy into the misguided myth that cold calls are quicker and more effective than other ways of connecting with people.
Don’t follow the path of least resistance and stick with what you’ve always done, invoking excuses to justify your unwillingness to broaden your knowledge and listen to customers.
Customers are ultimately the ones who hold the key to opening doors. Identify how they prefer to communicate and reach out to them accordingly.
You should emphasize social media skills when creating your lead generation strategies because they are going to be more important. On the other hand, you shouldn’t disregard cold calling entirely.
The best strategy would be to connect via social media and then invite them for an appointment after they have warmed up a bit.
If this doesn’t work, then a cold call can be made – which would at this point be somewhat warm since familiarity was built on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, or whatever platform was being used.
As far as social media is concerned, it’s about building long-term relationships, while cold calling is simply about getting a sale -and with today’s discerning audiences, a one-time sale isn’t enough.
About the Author
Sujan Thapaliya is the CEO and Co-founder of KrispCall. He has a wealth of computer, communications, and security experience. As well as years of experience in the industry, Sujan has also conducted investigative research into issues such as privacy and fraud. Through KrispCall, he aspires to make business communication safer, reliable, and more affordable.
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