Coffee Marketing Consultancy » Objective: Lead Generation

Objective: Lead Generation

Lead generation is the most important marketing objective for any business. New leads or potential customers are the life blood of any company, as inevitably not all customers will make repeat purchases. Without new customers an established business will slowly fail. To a new business however, failing to generate customers will quickly result in ruin.

There are many ways to generate leads, but none as effective as Internet marketing. This is due to the fact that using online tracking and analytics makes marketing activity accountable and ensures that any investment yields a positive return on investment. No longer does a business need to rely on asking new customers how they found the business, or wonder whether an advert in the Yellow Pages is really making any impact!

This has the advantage of enabling companies to easily adjust marketing budgets to areas that work well and reduce the effort in areas that do not perform as effectively. Different solutions perform differently for each company, depending on their industry, product offering, market competition, locality and many other variables. This is why it is crucial that any strategy MUST be tailored for every business.

There are a few Internet marketing tools that can be used to generate leads, of which the most effective can be seen in the image below. These are:

Social Marketing
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Marketing (Pay per Click)
Display Advertising (Contextual)

: Customer flow between different parts of a marketing campaign that ultimately secure new leads.

Coffee Marketing specialise in Social Marketing as in our view, it is the most powerful form of Internet marketing. Everyone recognises that they are influenced the most by referrals made to them by people they trust (especially friends). Social Marketing works on building up a network of people that are relevant to your business and builds trust in your company before they have made a purchase. Broadly speaking Social Marketing aims to develop relationships with your potential customers and their friends, educating them on your products, offering advice etc. In the grand scheme of Internet marketing it builds trust and loyalty, while being able to generate the scale that a sales team would struggle with, while being measurable.

Social Media Marketing dramatically increases the rate at which people who are interested in the product/ service you offer, turns into a paying customers. Through effective Social Marketing people who are being directed to your website can be pre-qualified, as it is easier to pre-qualify a lead before they are directed to your website. This ultimately ensures you are receiving traffic who are likely to make a purchase and increases the response.

: Simplified demonstration of how these elements help to drive pre-qualified leads

The above is a brief and crude example of how a company can use their website assets to create a relevant offer to potentials customers. The brand and core message is taken from the business or product website to ensure a consistent message is delivered.

We then take this communication and apply it to areas where we can identify groups who are likely to be most interested in our offer.

Social marketing focuses on identifying people and networks that are relevant to what you are offering. A branded profile is created in the most relevant communities and a dialogue is built up within these groups to raises awareness of your product. A call to action and offer based on your product offering will attract these group members to check out the product and incentivise a purchase.

Search Engine Marketing (Pay per click and Search Engine Optimisation) is used to ensure that your product/ service appears when people are actively looking for what you are offering. This is important today as most people research a product online before they buy. A combination of paid advertising and increasing your ranking in the natural search results provides a combination of credibility and visibility.

Display advertising is contentious, as most people would argue this is “not social media”. Agreed. However Ad Networks and specific display advertising can direct people to where you are socialising with similar groups, via relevant categories and websites. This might even be on your website, which is then by definition social media. Essentially display advertising is a cost effective way of driving traffic. It can drive a large number of people to your website through the offer that was created and reinforces the message when people see an advert that relates to the conversation they have had about it previously.

Some of all of the above tactics can be used. They should all overlap and increase the exposure of the message, while we are building trust and a rapport with the most relevant online groups. However they can be used in different combinations or in isolation as they all work towards the same objective. This means Social Marketing can be executed based on most budgets that are large or small alike.