If you’re like most people working in a sales driven industry, the most frustrating aspect of your business is getting high quality leads that convert. After all, you know what to do with a good lead when you get one, right?
The problem with most lead generation strategies today that are based on white papers, special reports, and Google Adwords is that you don’t know anything about the person except their basic contact details and maybe some fairly generic demographics.
This means you can’t talk to their specific needs and problems, and as a result, your engagement and close rates are average at best. You find the same thing using cold call lists or Co-registration leads where you’d be lucky to get better than a 1 – 3% conversion rate.
The most surprising thing about generating a wealth of high-converting leads is that it doesn’t need to be a stressful or disappointing experience!
Read on to discover a simple formula to capture the consumer intelligence you need to say goodbye to the stress and frustration of meeting your sales targets! Just like Epilepsy Action Australia, who applied this formula to generate donor leads that closed at 34.15%.
In explaining their phenomenal close rate, Epilepsy Action Australia CEO Carol Ireland says:
We averaged 2.5 donation opportunities per lead, which gave our staff more to talk about and increased our close rate to over 34%.
Proven 4-Step Formula You Can Replicate to Acquire a Flood of High-Converting Leads.
STEP 1 – Develop Your Strategy
The easy part of generating high-converting leads is knowing what you want:
Hot leads that tell you, which of your products and services
They want to buy and when they want to buy them!
However, unlike other lead generation activities where you’re usually happy just collecting basic contact details (e.g. during a newsletter sign up), the key to generating high-closing leads that will crush your sales targets is gathering consumer intelligence.
This added knowledge consistently translates into higher conversion rates!
The best way to go about getting the consumer intelligence you need is to invite people who most closely mirror your Ideal Customers to enter a free contest giveaway, and the best prize to offer in a contest is your premium product or service.
And, if that’s too costly a prize or too challenging to offer, use a fantastic holiday to a popular destination that’s attracted to your ideal Customer. Most everyone enjoys taking holidays, so providing them with a free entry to win a desirable vacation will be very attractive to them.
You also need to think through the process and consider a number of key areas:
1. Which customer segments are you going to target?
2. Which ‘Prize’ can you give away that has enough perceived value to really get their attention and motivate them to enter?
Regardless of whether you’re using one of your products or services, or a fantastic holiday as your prize be sure your prize resonates with your target audience.
You don’t have to spend the earth on your prize, but don’t skimp on it either — make the prize attractive enough to the majority of your audience.
3. How long should I run my contest?
Two weeks is the absolute bare minimum, however, the length really depends on the prize giveaway, and the reach of your marketing channels.
For example, Epilepsy Action Australia ran their contest for 11 weeks, which allowed them to spread the cost of their prize over a longer period to keep lead costs down and generate more donor leads.
4. Which marketing channels or touch points can I use to inexpensively drive traffic to the contest?
Epilepsy Action Australia announced their contest on their Facebook page to their fans and also had tremendous success using Facebook Ads to drive potential donors to their contest.
5. How are you going to engage with contestants (leads) once you know what they’re interested in buying? You’ll see more on this later in Step 3.
STEP 2 — Create Your Contest Site
A lot of organizations use very basic landing pages when running contests on their social media pages to capture contact details.
That’s okay if you just want to capture contact details, however, to extract the Gold you need to crush your targets, you need to go just a little further.
And, you don’t need to spend a lot of money on developers or graphic designers to create a terrific contest site that delivers all the elements you need — there are a number of inexpensive platforms you can access to build your contest sites.
When building your contest site to generate High-Converting Leads, here’s the checklist of elements you want to include in your Contest Site…
Be sure to include the following elements on your Entry Form page:
□ Contestant Contact Details
□ Survey Questions – This is where the ‘Gold’ comes from!
□ Sponsor/Promoter’s name and address
□ Privacy Statement
□ Acknowledgement Statement
Other pages (tabs) you should include in your Contest Site are:
□ About Us Page
□ Contest Rules Page
□ Privacy Policy Page
□ Thank You Page
To really extend your reach and generate more leads you should also incorporate:
□ Refer-a-friend functionality
□ Offers Page
□ Viral Offers
□ Contact Method Page
STEP 3 — Drive Traffic to Your Contest Site
Driving traffic to your contest site can be done very inexpensively!
Just think about all the marketing channels and touch points you use now to drive sales or engage with existing or potential customers and include a contest invitation in the copy.
A few very inexpensive channels to use are:
1. Send contest invitations by email to both existing and past customers.
Here’s a tip – You should also have a look at previous prospects in your database that have been designated as ‘not interested’. They may have been ‘not interested’ when you last contacted them, however, their circumstances may have changed and many would likely be interested in entering a free contest to win an appealing prize.
And, by answering the survey questions many will turn themselves into new leads!
2. Sending SMS Text messages inviting people to enter your contest is a good way to engage if you don’t have email addresses.
3. Showcase your Contest on your website. Generally less than 95% of people visiting websites leave their contact details. Consider how much traffic that you’re missing out on now would be enticed by an attractive contest!
4. Have a Pop Up with a contest invitation appear on your website and landing pages when visitors are about to leave – you may as well have these assets working harder for you too, right?
5. Promote your contest in your regular Newsletters – engagement rates are typically high!
6. Promote your contest on your Blog or Social Media profiles to reach your target market and increase the chances of your contest going viral!
Here’s a tip – Aside from promoting your contest on your Facebook page to reach out to your fan base – test using Facebook Ads to expand your reach to drive new leads to your contest.
STEP 4 — Follow Up Your Leads
Now, the best part!
Based on the answers to the survey questions contestants provided on the entry form, develop contact protocols to ensure optimal messaging and timing to engage with your leads for the best conversion rates.
When thinking through this process, ensure that you:
- Call your contestants (leads) as soon as possible!
- Contact leads at the time and date that they asked you to call!
- Call all contestants that gave you a positive answer to one of your survey questions, as soon as possible – get to them before they choose someone else!
- Nurture leads that aren’t buyer-ready just yet. Based on the answers to your survey questions, set up auto email campaigns with relevant and timely content about the solutions your products or services provide to solve your contestants problems.
Conclusion
Like any new lead generation strategy it takes some thinking and a little time to pull everything together to generate high-converting, cost-effective leads.
By following this formula you’ll easily and quickly build a conversion machine that will constantly deliver the high quality leads you need to surpass your current sales targets!
And, to help you finally say goodbye to the stress and frustration of generating hot leads that tell you which of your products or services they want to buy, and when they want to buy them…
I’ve created a FREE Educational Video Series consisting of 5 videos covering all the steps and elements you need to know to build your Golden Leads Machine!
Click here for FREE Access to the Educational Series and discover how easily you can create your own Golden Leads Machine!
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marc Carriere is the Creator of Your Lead Engine and Managing Director of Marketing Tactics and has over 34 years of direct marketing experience as a call centre proprietor, senior marketing executive and marketing consultant.
Marc has provided direct marketing and consulting services to a wide variety of businesses involved in B2B and B2C activities throughout Australia, Canada, Fiji, México, The Bahamas, United Kingdom and the United States.
A highly experienced Marketing Executive and Direct Marketer, Marc specializes in the development and supervision of marketing teams to develop efficient and cost effective lead generation programs.
Published in marketing magazines and direct marketing handbooks, Marc has been a guest speaker at industry conferences and seminars throughout the world.
Copyright © Marc Carriere 2017
