All your marketing clients are looking to build a steady and healthy sales pipeline by generating consistent leads. However, only you know what it takes to generate leads and more importantly – generate qualified leads. But, you may feel a little stagnant when it comes to generating new leads for your own marketing agency.
While lead generation itself is a challenge across industries, one would assume marketing agencies wouldn’t have any trouble with marketing. But, marketing agencies have unique challenges they need to overcome when generating qualified leads.
Lead Generation Challenges for Marketing Agencies
Here are some of the common lead generation challenges for marketing agencies.
Inaccurate Targeting
The lead quality you generate depends on your targeting. Inaccurate targeting has been the most common challenge for the majority of industries, and the marketing industry is no exception.
Even successful marketing agencies attest to the fact that targeting the right audience is often a challenge. In fact, 72% of marketing agencies agree that they do not have a set plan for targeting. As a result, time spent on chasing the unqualified prospects and leads end up being unproductive.
Marketing agencies often go too broad instead of specializing. By trying to appeal to everyone, the agency ends up appealing to no one.
Trouble with Omni-Channel
New marketing channels are opening up each year. Identifying the right approach and the channel to reach potential buyers is a challenge.
Additionally, agencies that are new to modern marketing techniques (digital marketing techniques to be precise) have to start with the basics instead of chasing the latest trend. Agencies need to study the buyer’s journey and use the right channel at the right stage of the journey. The more marketing platforms you use, the more difficult it becomes to establish a clear sales funnel.
Copying Others
When you are new at something or your current approach fails to show results, you often see how others are doing it. If one marketing agency sees success by promoting a specific campaign on social media or implementing a specific strategy, you might think of mirroring them.
However, what worked for them might not work for you as every business is different. Marketers have difficulties when they want to mirror what others do without analyzing their own strengths and weaknesses. There are also diminishing returns as a marketing approach becomes more prevalent and overused.
Generalizing the USP
A Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is another key marketing element that the agencies have (and apparently would still) battled with. Your unique selling point doesn’t really have to be something that other rivals don’t do. But it should be something they don’t put front and center. Many marketing companies fail to close the deal efficiently because they believe that their company provides the same services as any other firm without highlighting their strengths.
Your company might be an expert in the niche. For instance, your agency may be more adept at SEO than your competitors, but you are promoting yourself as a complete digital marketing expert. So, you lack a unique selling point to prospects even though you are an SEO expert. Many marketing agencies fail to realize their actual USP.
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When it comes to the particular challenges that marketing companies face today, it’s easy to get distracted and hit barriers trying to respond to ever-changing best practices. Digital marketing patterns appear to be shifting at a slight pace, which often encourages marketers to take a passive, wait-and-see attitude. But, this stagnating approach can also lead to bad results and development. You don’t want to go too fast or too slow.
Let’s explore some of the best ways for marketing agencies to enable accurate prospecting, generate qualified leads, and boost your sales process.
5 Best Lead Generation Methods for Your Marketing Agencies
Method 1: Use Your Website as Your Lead Generation System
Your website serves the role of your sales agent. As a result, B2B firms need to work on making the website right.
Making a website without a conversion-focused strategy is no better than making a digital brochure. As a result, have all the information you need to sell in the right place in a clean and presentable manner on your website.
You can incorporate tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, Tag Manager, Heat Maps, and more to get valuable insights and observations to monitor the success of your website.
You can go a step ahead of your competitors by using tools such as VisitorIntel powered by SalesIntel that unmasks anonymous website visitor data even when they haven’t filled out the contact form on your website. It allows sales and marketing teams to identify and reach out to decision-makers and key influencers of companies who have previously visited your website. Additionally, you can access the industry-leading database of decision-maker direct dials and core influencers working for businesses who have visited the website.
Method 2: Track the Buying Signals for Accurate Targeting
Investing in a smart sales intelligence platform that tracks purchasing signals for you is the easiest and most efficient way to prioritize accounts that are most likely to close. Sales intelligence systems gather customer knowledge in real-time better than a human team ever could.
For a marketing agency, machine learning identifies potential companies who are actively searching or evaluating the vendors who can strengthen their marketing. This helps your sales reps scan for companies with unique purchasing signals. Then they can concentrate on the accounts that are most likely to close quickly.
Method 3: Execute an ‘Effective’ Cold Email Outreach
When we say cold emails, we don’t mean spam. It’s about getting to the prospects that you didn’t know about. It’s similar to throwing darts in the dark, but throwing towards the board is the right way to increase the chance of finding the bulls-eye.
A successful cold email service will typically use personalized emails to communicate to new clients you have never had contact with.
Cold emails triumph over social media because, unlike social media, they can offer personalized messages that help increase customer loyalty and thereby provide you better sales opportunities.
A survey from Optinmonster has revealed that 58% of professionals check their emails before doing anything else online including social which comes in at 14%.
This survey clearly shows that love it or leave it, email is still a strong channel to use. If correctly used, cold emails can be an effective and constructive lead generation strategy with limited effort.
Method 4: Ensure Data Accuracy
Bad data hygiene impacts companies in a variety of areas. Poor data contributes to lost time and money sending emails that bounce, calls that are ignored, to individuals that no longer have a job to play, or even to a business.
Poor data may also be traced to the origins of the data. Inaccurate form fills from prospects, mistakes in the team members’ manual data entry, and even the procurement of data from poor suppliers all contribute. And even if the data is pristine when it comes to your database, typical data decays at a rate of 30% each year.
Sales intelligence tools can fix bad data and even fill data gaps by enriching your records. Without comprehensive and up-to-date details, all your personalized messaging and segmentation will go in vain.
Method 5: Utilize and Share Existing Clients’ Experience
Almost nine out of ten users have the same faith in online feedback as they do for their own recommendations. Word-of-mouth referral has always been the strongest and most genuine method of marketing and a perfect way to create marketing leads.
Take a look at your past and current clients, and choose customers with whom you share a strong association or to whom you have offered the best customer experience. Convert these customers into brand ambassadors by asking them to share their insights and accomplishments with their colleagues in the form of a recommendation and marketing materials for you.
Get Ready to Put These Methods Into Action
As a marketing agency, whether you focus on just a couple of the tactics listed above or implement them all, data holds the key. The more you understand your target audience closely, the easier lead generation will be. Collect enough data about your prospects in the ready-to-buy stage, personalize your messaging, and identify the best channel to reach them.
