The dark art of lead generation

Lead generation is not what it used to be. Five or Ten years ago you had a handful of simple options. Out-bound lead gen was done with the scattergun approach of buying data or using a ‘pitch fixer’, a super well connected individual whose job it was to get you in-front of big brand clients. In-bound lead gen was about your website, case studies and PR strategy.

A lot has changed in the last decade and agencies are struggling to find the leads they need. GDPR has complicated data leads. While in-bound marketing has become a behemoth task now including social, emails, podcasts, youtube and influencer content strategies.

There are many options for those who haven’t got time, or contacts, to run email campaigns nor the budget to hire a full time marketing lead. To help you out, here are some (but not all!) of the ways we carry out lead gen for our clients.

Traditional formats still work – well!

At The Client Key we undertake lead gen holistically. Creating pipelines for your business which are managed in our CRM, tailoring activity to leads. Before that, you have to feed the pipeline. You need to find and harvest the data of your dream clients and do this in the thousands, not the hundreds.

You then have to call and email every single one. This is often outsourced (we can do it for you) because it’s so labour intensive and the hit rate is low, but trust us, it works. A recent client had 1,500 emails sent to new leads which resulted in 80 responses, 10 enquiries and 6 jobs. Calculate that by an average project value of £10k and it starts to make sense. We are fee earners for you!

Utilise software and tools

We utilise the best marketing and lead gen tools. There are plenty out there, it’s just the case of choosing the right one for you. Our tools find the data, create campaigns, personalise contact and feed our CRM. If you’re starting from scratch think about mail merge, CRM software or monitoring software like lead forensics.

Get your shop window looking its best

If you’re driving outbound traffic to your platform without a great website, clear messaging and fantastic case studies then you’re wasting your time. Your leads will always look to validate your credentials. At the very least update your website, but look at the big players in the market, they have curated IG feeds, live streams, email campaigns and passion projects. It’s all about content – content validates credentials!

Pay for ads

Simple. Get yourself to the top of google by paying for it. Rightly or wrongly, these days… you are, what google says you are.

Lead with lapsed clients

This is something we are always repeating. It’s easier to go back to old leads than to create new ones. Have you had someone you’ve been courting for 12/24/36 months? Are there clients who worked with you but have gone off the radar? These are your low hanging fruit. Get back in touch, send them some of your new content and keep pushing.

There are many other ways we develop and nurture leads. If you’d like to hear more about how we can manage your new business pipeline, then please do get in touch, we’d love to hear from you.

Rob & Amy – The Client Key