Cold calling has its place in lead generation campaigns, but it may not be the most successful way of connecting with prospective clients. According to a recent survey, cold calls were ignored by 97% of people. If this sounds familiar, then you’re probably looking to up the ante with your lead generation campaign. Even if cold calling isn’t part of your business model, it’s still important to understand the most effective way to reach your target audience.
Understanding how your competition conducts business might be the solution you’re looking for.
Does this mean you need to stand in the shadows, observing local businesses as they interact with customers? Absolutely not. Instead, you can understand your competition in plain sight, analyzing their strategies and tactics. Here’s how.
Understand Your Competition
It may seem like an obvious statement, but when implementing successful B2C lead generation services, you first need to identify your competition. You expect to have at least one competitor come to mind, but you may have more competition than you realize.
There are several ways you can go about locating the competition. First, you can conduct market research. Begin by analyzing your product’s market to see what competition companies sell a similar product or service. Once you identify these companies, you can examine their marketing efforts. It’s important to also learn about the way your competition conducts business.
Do they take the time to have personal conversations with prospective clients and, if so, do these conversations turn into sales? What type of angle or approach do these companies utilize when connecting with prospective customers? But more than understanding what your competition does, it’s equally important to understand what they don’t do. This provides you with an opportunity to offer products and services they don’t.
Analyze Your Competition’s SEO
Take note of your competition’s SEO vs PPC ratios and what keywords they use. SEO lead generation services should pay attention to the keywords they’re ranking for that you don’t rank for. It’s important to also pay attention to their number one keyword clusters or groups.
You can learn more about a competitor’s performance by analyzing their SEO. Don’t be afraid to use the same keywords they do. You’ll want to look for the organic keywords that are the most valuable to them, their current and past rankings, and how many backlinks they have. Also, pay attention to any areas where they fail to provide products or services.
Incorporate Video Content
It’s reported that 91% of businesses use some type of video marketing. When you implement a video marketing plan, you can help to grow your audience. Video content is available to consumers across a wide array of websites, from streaming platforms to product pages and social media. And the list doesn’t stop there.
A strong video marketing campaign allows you to grab your viewers’ attention unlike any other. Consider the following information: when messages are delivered via video, 95% of viewers remember what they watched. However, when messages are conveyed via text, only 10% of viewers remember what they read. If you’re looking to stay top-of-mind with customers, then video marketing is the best choice.
Video marketing is so much more than just advertisements. It’s an opportunity to share a story with customers, offering them compelling content that enriches their lives. You can offer tutorial videos, teaching individuals a new skill, for example. Understand your audience and offer them videos that they want to watch, increasing organic traffic to your website.
You also want your video marketing campaign to demonstrate the importance of your products or services. If your brand has a story to tell, use video marketing to get the message across. You can show consumers just how special your product is so they can see how it applies to them in the real world. An excellent way of doing this is by having a customer demonstrate the way your product works, showing other customers all the ways they benefit.
Check Out Webinars
But don’t just attend any webinars — attend those hosted by your competition. Webinars offer more than surface-level information, often tackling the issues that interest your competition’s audience. By attending one of their webinars, you can glean crucial information including the angles your competition takes when connecting with prospective customers.
Don’t rush from the webinar, either. Always listen to it in its entirety, especially since it may contain a useful Q&A section at the end. You’ll want to know what the audience asks and how your competition addresses these questions, comments, and concerns.
Don’t Forget About Social Media
Lead generation companies for small businesses should track the competition’s social media accounts, analyzing the information to understand how they’re generating leads. Since a majority of companies use a variety of social media platforms, pay attention to all of them. This is an ideal time to follow your competition or activate their notifications so you’re alerted of updates to products, services, or special sales and/or promotions.
You’ll also gain valuable insight into the way they address their audience. Is their tone casual, formal, or a mixture of both? Do they use images? It’s important also to note the way their audience interacts with each social media post. Are their posts successful? Do you notice that certain types of posts garner more interest than others? Be mindful of how customers engage with them.
Pay Close Attention to Peak-Performing Content
Last but not least, always pay close attention to your competition’s highest-performing content. What makes the popular content stand out? Why is it so compelling to audiences? Consider the questions your competition’s content answers and the target keywords they use. By reviewing this type of content, you can work to understand what draws in audiences, assisting your marketing department with creating fresh contempt, ideas, and topics.
How Companies Benefit From Lead Generation Campaigns
Once you understand how your competition works, you can take the necessary steps to increase sales by gaining new leads. Take general contractors, for example. After a contractor understands the way its competition works, it can focus on prospective clients.
For construction company lead generation, begin by understanding who the ideal client is. Next, determine what their annual revenue is. It’s also important to consider where they’re located, what they need, what their overall goal is, and how said contractor can help them reach these goals.
Handyman lead generation companies, for example, may find that email marketing is an effective way of communicating with clients. This may include social media marketing, content marketing, SEO for handyman services, and more. When implemented in tandem, this type of lead-generation campaign strategy can lead to exponential growth.
If your business is customer-driven, then you need lead generation. This extends to retail stores, restaurants, small businesses, large businesses, and so much more. Leads work to keep the doors to these businesses open, and analyzing the competition can play a pivotal role in understanding these strategies and tactics.
So why should you implement a lead generation campaign?
A lead generation campaign works to increase brand awareness. In turn, this leads to high-quality leads that convert into sales. Lead generation is a cost-effective means of marketing that works to engage customers on a deeper level. You’ll understand customer insights better thanks to readily available data. You can then turnkey this information to target ideal customers while personalizing your marketing plan. This then leads to an increase in overall sales and revenue.
Invest In Lead Generation Today
If you’re ready to grow your business, there’s no time like the present. Lead generation campaigns build credibility between your business and your target audience while creating interest in a product, brand, or service. It also works to ensure that clicks convert to sales, rewarding your marketing efforts.
A creative marketing agency can take your business to the next level by developing and implementing a custom approach to marketing. Let’s B Media curates bespoke marketing plans as unique as your business. From logo and ad design to social media management, there’s no stone we leave unturned. Contact us today to learn more about our creative marketing services.