Warm lead generation can be one of your most powerful sales tools. By getting warm leads into the hands of your sales team, you’re moving the ratio of warm clients and ultimately you are moving the sales needle as well. Let’s take a look at what a warm lead is and how you can begin to get warm leads into your business.
What is Warm Lead Generation
Lead generation is using various methods of getting leads. Getting a regular lead could be as simple as getting out a phone book or going to Google and making a list of prospects… However, these would not be “warm” leads, these would be “cold” leads. An example of a warm lead is a friend giving you the name of his friend that is in need of your services at the current time. While these are great and we welcome these, this type of recommendation is not repeatable on a consistent and reliable basis. So, we as marketers need to take an approach that provides more consistency, something like content marketing.
Why Use Content Based Lead Generation
Content marketing is an essential piece of getting warm leads in online and it is highly effective. Blogging for instance gives people great information that is specific to an industry. Content creation also allows a company to demonstrate their knowledge of a particular subject in a non-pushy way. It opens the door for the company to be seen as a thought leader, which brings trust to the relationship at its inception. As time goes on, prospects will become more familiar with your company and what you provide. In addition, trust toward you will grow.
How to Generate Leads
Getting content into a blog or other publicly available media format will only do so much in terms of getting a lead. In fact, by itself, it will not create warm lead generation at all. It will only draw a lead in. To secure the lead, you will need something else of value to give the customer free of charge. This can be a free seminar, eBook, online group session, the list is only limited by your creativity. Once you have this ready, you simply need to require that the client give you some information about themselves. They give you their name, email, other pedigree information and they receive your content. Once you have their email, do not spam them with endless offers and other digital garbage. Instead continue to be a source of information. They will come to you when they are ready.
Lead generation using content is a excellent for both parties. The prospect gets access to the information that they are looking for while your company becomes top of mind for future services. All the while, your content prepares them for what to expect from you and builds trust for you. This is why lead generation is one of your more powerful sales tools.
Another aspect to consider with content marketing is that prospects are searching for content, that is not changing. The only real question is whether they will read your content or your competitor’s content.
