Lead generation is among the most important tools for e-commerce businesses. Generating the best leads drives sales in an undeniable manner. How then should one go about getting the best leads? Do you just go out and buy a premade list of leads?
Here, we will discuss the best methods for getting quality leads. We will go further to discuss how to properly utilize leads to create more sales. The path towards increased sales is fundamentally easy to navigate. The skills you will learn here will put you on the right path.
What will you find in this article?
Generating the Quality Leads Your Team Needs
- Content drives sales
- Partner with Influencers
- Manage your email marketing campaign
- Programmatic advertising
Getting More from Your Leads
- Training and onboarding improvements
- Let your sales team sell
- Unite the marketing and sales team
- Maintain the focus of the sales team
Final Thoughts
Generating the Quality Leads Your Team Needs
Identifying your customers is a multiple-step process. This gives you a better understanding of who you are targeting and why. This is called scoring your leads. Among the scoring information to evaluate includes:
- Qualities
- Characteristics
- Traits
- Demographics
- Geographical location
Each of these different factors should be reviewed with information gathered from existing customers. Offer your customers a prize for filling out a survey in regards to their spending habits. This important information will return far more in future sales than what the price of the prize is.
In addition to looking at the different elements that make up your best customers, you should be aware of the other side of the coin. What are the defining elements of those who will not buy from you? How do these differ from people who rarely buy from you? Are there elements that align with those who purchase most often?
Knowing what you are looking for is only half the battle. Getting the leads is another matter altogether. Keep in mind you should never purchase ready-made lists. They do not group your leads, nor do they target in the manner you would like for them too. You’re better off generating your own leads.
Content drives sales
The old saying “content is king” has not fallen out of favor, because it still holds true. As such, concentrating on SEO content with a clearly stated Call to Action (CTA) is extremely important. This doesn’t mean concentrating all your efforts in one place. Vary your methods. This can include:
- Videos
- Memes
- Product reviews
- Customer feedback
- Blog posts
- Posting to third party sites
Make sure the content creation includes links and backlinks. When possible make sure you have links to and from authority websites with high traffic. Backlinks from well-positioned sites offer you more clout with the search engines. This is weighted even heavier than when you link to the site from your own.
Partner with Influencers
Social media influencers are being tapped more often to partner with e-commerce sites. They have loyal followings with the ability to drive massive traffic with just a single post. Make sure when you do this, you are concentrating on someone who can easily be linked with your product or services.
Celebrity influencers are not necessarily the end all be all for this kind of lead generation. Better results can be garnered by tapping individuals with a lot of followers. This type of “grassroots” marketing campaign puts you on a level where you can connect easier with your audience.
Regardless of whether you pick a celebrity or not, make sure the influencer is working on platforms identified to have the best results for your company. If you are not using Instagram at all for your business, you may not want an influencer popular on that platform to promote your business.
Manage your email marketing campaign
Email marketing is a method that works not only to reach out to existing customers but potential customers as well. Remember the prize offered above. When you gather an email address this way, it is imperative to get permission to send promotional material. After that, you can use automated email follow up to reach out immediately.
The follow-up tool not only makes it possible for you to automatically send out such things as:
- Welcome email
- Transaction email
- Delivery email
- Update emails
By spacing out your automatic emails, you have the best chance of staying on the mind of a customer without making them feel spammed. It is also important to make sure your customers are segmented when sending out emails in this manner.
Segmentation of your email marketing campaign makes it possible for you to target certain groups differently. Such targeted campaigns are more effective because the recipient is more likely to read the email. Once they read it, it feels the email was created specifically with them in mind.
Programmatic advertising
If you have ever noticed an ad showing up about a site you have visited previously, you have encountered programmatic advertising. This targeted approach makes it possible for your ads to show up on a variety of sites people travel to after they have visited your site.
This works best when the site being traveled to be one congruent with your business model. You will pay for your ad to show up on the sites in accordance with the site weight and the frequency you have opted in for.
Make your ads as unobtrusive as possible. Do not utilize any garish techniques as it may cause the potential customer to be annoyed and want less to do with your business rather than more. Provide useful information that leads to click-through.
Getting More from Your Leads
Now that you have your leads, it is time to do something with them. Converting those hard-earned leads into sales takes some focus on the part of your sales team. It also takes the management to be aware of limitations so they can be removed. Let’s discuss the different ways we can identify methods of improvement for sales.
Training and onboarding improvements
Starting down the path towards better sales always starts with the staff itself. The hiring process should be focused on finding quality candidates who are engaging and outgoing. Problem solvers can think their way around a problem. Make sure you are taking your time when interviewing new members of the sales team to garner a higher quality hire.
Training is very important to create and maintain a successful sales team. This includes when they are being on-boarded as well as throughout the duration of their tenure. Make sure all training is occurring during the downtime for your team as to not take away from the time they could be selling.
In addition to training, mentoring can be utilized. Link up an up and coming sales rep with one who is successful. By working closely with the mentor and identifying the effective techniques in practice, it is more likely they will have a clearer understanding of how to do it when they are working on their own.