We recently posted an article called “What Is a Lead?” that looked at the early stages of building a lead generation programme and the various lead classifications such as raw data, marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads.
This was the first in a series of articles that we published on how to build an effective lead generation programme. We intend to share our knowledge on nurturing both short and long term leads by putting your company and brand in a good position with prospects.
Building an effective and successful marketing and lead generation campaign, in some respects is remarkably like building a house. You wouldn’t pick out the curtains before laying the foundations! Just like you wouldn’t decide on the message that you were going to deliver before working on the data that you were going to target.
But how do you come to find the right data? In this blog, we will be looking at how you can build the right data pool for your target market.
Build a Data Set for Your Existing Customers
Your existing customers can be a great source for identifying the markets that you should be targeting in any outbound activity. After all, they’ve bought from you for a reason!
Depending on the size of your business and how you operate and store information, this may be easier for some than it is for others.
This information may already be at your fingertips, or you may need to do some initial groundwork to identify the markets that you are already strong in.
Utilise Your Strengths
Another factor will be the products or services that you sell. If you were to look at our client base for example, you would see that we have a great deal of experience across a wide range of different sectors.
If, however, you are a cleaning company that specialises in cleaning schools, then the chances are your customer base is going to be comprised solely of clients within the education sector.
Often, by going through your lapsed and existing clients, you will begin to see a trend of certain sectors that buy from you more often than others.
If you can collaborate this with any financial information and customer spending, you can then begin to build a strategy that considers which sectors resonate with your offering. Furthermore, you can identify which of those sectors tend to be more fruitful, therefore increasing your ROI from any outbound activity.
By understanding who your customers are, you can then begin to identify sectors and data that you may want to target.
At this stage, you should also start to think about what kind of messaging you would like prospects to receive.
Understanding Your Key Selling Points
Whilst understanding who has bought from you previously, another thing that you need to consider is what your key selling points are. Over the years we’ve spoken with a wide range of businesses, and one of the first questions we will ask is “what are your USPs” often we’d receive a very similar response, in that they offer “great service”. We will cover this in a lot more detail in a future blog, but the problem with “great service” being a key selling point, is that no one is going to say that they offer bad service! By understanding what your key selling points are, or equally the pain points that they alleviate, you can then begin to identify prospects within your list of target sectors that are likely to relate to your key selling points, and how you can help them to overcome their pain points.
Identifying an Opportunity Within a Target Market
This point is similar to the last, and again relates to understanding your business and your offering.
As an example, it would be correct to assume that all business would need IT support if you run a company that provides this service. However, if you specialise in data security, it would be important to note that you will target prospects who require the handling of very sensitive data. By realising this, you can put confidentiality, care and attention to detail at the centre of your pitch.
An eCommerce company, for instance, that depends on online sales and storage of customer and financial information, will connect with this messaging.
When approaching any form of outbound marketing or lead generation, you can begin to identify who you’re going to get the most success from by thinking about what you offer and key selling points.
At The Lead Gen Specialists, we work with you to understand all of these points:
- Who your existing customers are.
- What your true Key Selling Points are.
- Working with you to identify an opportunity within a target market.
By understanding these metrics, we can then work with you to source data commercially available data or build a bespoke “wish list” database of your ideal prospects, generating immediate sales opportunities along with those prospects that can be nurtured until they come to fruition. Get in touch today on 03332 400 054 or by emailing enquiries@leadgenspecialists.co.uk to identify who you should be targeting as part of your marketing and lead generation activity.
