YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
How Can I Generate More Business Leads?
The other day I was in a meeting with a client when he scratched his head and looked at me in a puzzled kind of way. "I wish I knew how to generate more business leads," he said. As luck would have it, I had just published an infographic on that very topic, so I was able to chat to him in a more informed way.
The research behind the infographic found what we have all known for years - that you generate most sales from the people you already sell to. Rather than developing new leads, we'd all be better off if we spent more time generating new sales from existing leads.
However, there is only so much business you can generate this way. Whatever you manage to sell to existing clients, you will always need new customers. But how do you get them?
These days it is all too easy to think that we should use the likes of LinkedIn or social media to find new leads. Yet, the research shows these methods appear to be less successful than many others. Indeed, going on the radio appears to get more business than using LinkedIn.
The study that formed the basis for the infographic found that tradeshows and exhibitions were still very good ways of generating new leads. But look too at the digital methods of lead generation. Top of the shop there was email marketing and newsletters. Only recently I wrote a blog post confirming - yet again - that email marketing is still the best method of generating sales online.
Sure, LinkedIn, Twitter, online video and search marketing can all bring you leads as part of your marketing mix. But all the research data points towards one thing as being the most important - email marketing and electronic newsletters.
If we want to generate more business leads we need to put more effort into our email marketing.
