As marketers, we know the ins and outs of lead generation campaigns. We should. It’s our job to know. So we know what it takes to build them:
A targeted audience + A strong and clearly expressed message + High quality creative + Conversion points + Efficient follow-up = An Effective Campaign.
There are other elements like making sure your campaign is cohesive and your messaging and design is consistent. But beyond that, what are those secondary elements that are the unsung heroes of a campaign, the key players when it comes to getting a prospect to convert? These are elements you may not be using to their fullest or you may not be using at all. The problem is they could be costing you leads.
So let’s take a look at a few of these unsung heroes and see the part they should play in your campaigns.
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Hero Name: Content Marketing
Superpowers: Tells a cohesive story; Builds trust with prospects; Personalization.
If you think of the elements of a campaign as the inner workings of a well-oiled machine, you can say content marketing is what ties all the moving parts together for a prospect. Creating a cohesive story throughout the campaign helps a prospect connect the dots while seeing the story all the way through to conversion.
You have to realize content is what separates your advertising from the repetitive salesy self-centered ads we’re all used to seeing countless times a day. Content marketing provides the opportunity for you to appeal to your audience as human beings, not just numbers. Considering the fact that humans make decisions based on emotions (e.g. the need to get away from a problem, entertainment, the search for a way to make life easier, etc.), content allows you to emotionally connect your audience to your campaign.
So what story is your campaign telling? Is the content you give in exchange for prospects’ information worth their information? Does it touch on topics relevant to your audience (e.g. interests, concerns, pain points, etc.)? Knowing your audience and supplying them with content you know is valuable to them can be what it takes to get them to convert.
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Hero Name: IP Identification Services
Superpowers: Provides access to targeted companies.
With an IP Identification Service, you can identify the IP addresses of your website visitors and match them to the physical addresses of companies you may be interested in targeting. An example of an IP Identification Service is Web ID. Placing code on your web pages allows Web ID to capture the IP addresses of website visitors. These IP addresses are linked back to their respective companies using Randall-Reilly’s RigDig BI, our researched and verified database that provides access to trucking entities throughout the U.S.
IP identification services reveal companies in a crucial stage of the buyer’s journey. They are researching with the intent to act. This qualifies them as a high value time-sensitive prospect. Using information gathered from their web page activity and actions they took while on your site, you can target these companies with account-based marketing. This will allow you to build a campaign tailored for each specific prospective company with a heightened chance of success.
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Hero Name: Smart CTAs
Superpowers: Personalization
Here’s a chance to add a much-needed personal touch to your campaign. A call-to-action that caters directly to the individual is a small detail that makes all the difference. We all understand how big a part calls-to-action play in your campaign. They are conversion points. You don’t want a prospect to reach a conversion point and not take action, right? So creating different CTAs that display to specific groups of prospects depending on the actions they’ve taken or the nature of interest they’ve shown can be what gets you a new lead.
Also, remember you could be reaching a prospect at any stage in the buyer’s journey. So keep the stages in mind when building your smart CTAs.
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Hero Name: Smart Forms
Superpowers: Convenience; Personalization.
Considering where a prospect is in the conversion life-cycle and applying that to the forms in your campaign provides a personalized touch that encourages a prospect to become a lead. You risk driving a new prospect away by bombarding them with a number of form fields. But reducing the hassle of filling out a form by simply asking for Name, Company, and Email Address can make all the difference.
After the first form has been filled out, auto-filling a form with already provided or available information for a returning visitor or someone who has already engaged with you in the campaign, simplifies and speeds up the conversion process. This increases the likelihood of a conversion. You can also use smart fields to hide fields a prospect has previously filled out.
Another important element to consider is the necessity to have forms built specifically for mobile. It’s more than likely a large percentage of prospects will be viewing your campaign on a mobile device. Not making forms mobile-friendly could cause the loss of countless prospects. So it’s imperative that you keep this in mind when creating your campaign.
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A/B Testing
Superpowers: Improves campaign performance; Creates opportunities for campaign improvement.
It’s easy to operate under general marketing strategies or other companies’ best practices, but what appeals to your audience and the best way to present what you offer is unique. A/B testing allows you to learn which strategies works best for you. That may mean making a change to your page layout, email subject lines, call to action text or button, links, images etc. You can test almost anything.
So how do you know what to A/B test? An obvious choice may be conversion points. For example testing a page with a form. By creating two versions of the form and testing them out on two copies of the same page, you can learn which version gets more submissions. Another way to decide what’s best to A/B test is to go by analyzed data gathered from your campaigns. What elements of the campaigns aren’t performing as well as you feel they should? Why? This data can guide you to ideas on what possible changes to make.
The list of unsung heroes in lead generation goes on. Giving attention to these few is a great start to tighten up your campaigns and increasing your success.
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