Where to get 17 new potential clients for an IT outsourcer in a crisis?
I will give here another example of a lead generation project with a combination of two methods – marketing and targeted advertising. Here we are talking about the promotion of IT support services for large businesses.
It would seem that everyone needs IT support. However, therein lies the rub. These processes, one way or another, are implemented in all companies, especially in large companies as our main target audience. However, in the current crisis, many enterprises moving to remote have seen requests for IT support from internal users skyrocket. And CIOs needed to serve more requests. And this is not to mention the need for offline support, when a technical consultant must come to an employee’s remote workplace, while observing all epidemiological requirements – a mask, gloves, no temperature. Under these conditions, as a result of marketing, it was possible to collect 10 qualified leads, with whom conference calls were held regarding cooperation.
Let’s note the most important stages of the lead generation project through marketing. First, it is the preparation of the target base. We have fairly wide resources (more than 87,000 contacts of decision makers of various levels and powers in the process of making a decision on the purchase of corporate IT).But sometimes we also work according to the lists of the customer, we need to have a contact management cloud when we are provided with the names of companies, and our task is to find the contacts of decision makers using them, get in touch and clarify interest in a particular B2B service or product. This process can improve your teamwork when searching for potential clients and by using https://getprospect.com/crm you will see how you can easily find the right clients for you and thus you can target specific audiences and send emails to them. During a pandemic, this is convenient and practical because the demand for your products will not decrease and you will not lose customers.
The second stage is the preparation of a high-quality writing script and the text of the letter. And this is also very important in order not only to reach the target audience, but also to convey information about the benefits of the solution to decision makers in the most concise and informative way, verbally and in writing. And most importantly, at the same time, sound positive, professional and “confident”, and not like a call center employee who works according to a call script. This is our separate skillJ. And – the most exciting and time-consuming – directly sending letters, searching for additional contacts – the whole “kitchen” of direct communications, which works best for lead generation for narrow target audiences.
Thus, by marketing and sending personal letters to a database of 350 companies, we collected 10 leads.
Next, we connected advertising on social networks Facebook / Instagram. The quality of leads on average in targeted advertising was significantly lower than other direct marketing methods, and this is normal.However, the cost of leads and the level of some of them led to the conclusion that these methods would be justified to be combined. Indeed, in narrow target groups there are decision makers who cannot be reached by phone under any circumstances, just as there are companies whose leaders are not present in social networks, at least not to a sufficient extent. So – the methods are not only not mutually exclusive, but also qualitatively complement each other.
Since we have been working with this customer for more than a month, we, again, see that the conversion from a cold base to leads is not lower than it was before. In total, during the cooperation with this company, 45 business meetings and conference calls were scheduled with decision makers at the level of heads of departments of large companies in the following industries: retail, consumer goods manufacturers, distribution, transport and logistics, banks and insurance.
Let’s go back to our marketing research. Do B2B companies expect to get a return on their investment today? According to our 140 respondents, yes. Yes, but more than half (55%) still believe that this will happen in the long term.
So, I hope our cases and analytics have shown that lead generation in the context of this pandemic is possible, and brings no less results than in pre-crisis times.