Vantage Point: Ideas and advice to improve your marketing

Top-Ranked Lead Generation Tactics for IT

First, a caveat: the best lead generation tactics vary by company, market, audience and product. What works in one situation may not in another. So, choosing the right tactics for your market and product is critical, the execution of the campaign must be appropriate, and it needs the right message and the right components.

What are the top lead generation tactics in IT? Survey data from two sources* specializing in IT marketing combined with KCA’s nearly 20 years’ experience indicates that the five most effective tactics are (in ranked order)**:

Seminars/road shows
Webinars
Email to internal lists
Campaigned-based telemarketing
Paid searches (SEO/Pay per click)

An entire article could be written for each tactic, but I’ve summarized some thoughts and tips for each:

Seminars/Road shows: High-touch tactic for educating target prospects on new or complex concepts—NOT for educating about products. Typically, for companies with products/services with higher price-points and sold direct and/or using VARs. Make sure content is not a sales pitch and is focused on a compelling need-to-know topic. Include a customer as part of the presentation for added credibility. The cost is fairly high—prep time, travel, logistics, list acquisition and promotion (use telemarketing to boost turnout).

Webinars: Low-touch tactic for providing information on a product/service with low-to-medium complexity, a low-to-medium price-point (though they can work for some higher-priced products) and sold direct and/or using telesales, VARs and/or ecommerce. Keep events to 30 minutes or less and use live—chat to facilitate questions—it helps keep the presentation focused. Sales channel are support for direct, telesales, VAR and ecommerce. The cost is low/medium—prep time and promotion.

Email to Internal Lists: For providing product information, cross-selling (special offers) and conducting drip campaign outreach—for any type of product/service, at any price-point, sold through any sales channel. Most effective for direct-response campaigns that drive traffic to website. Use an email/website tracking program to monitor activity. The cost is low. Purchased lists are NOT recommended—even opt-in is often flagged as SPAM.

Campaign-based Telemarketing: For outbound telesales/setting up appointments for direct sales on products with medium-to-high price points. Promotional element(s) of the campaign—direct mail is best—are to ‘grease the skids’ for a phone call and can greatly increase the response rate vs. call-only programs. Promotions must be memorable and on message for immediate recognition when outbound caller follows up. 3D items and humor are good bets or, if more serious, a letter delivered via Fed-X is a good choice. Callers need both live-contact and voicemail scripts. Expect the cost to be high—promotional elements, list acquisition/cleansing, telemarketing.

Paid Search (SEO/PPC): For reaching a broad audience to drive website traffic and inquiries for more information on or to translate the sale for product/service. This direct-response tactic is for any type of product/service at any price-point sold through any sales channel. Augment with banner ads for special offers. Costs vary, depending on level of SEO commitment, number of key phrases/words and click-through rates.

Once you’ve determined the best tactic(s) for your objectives and budget, focus on finding the right target prospects—those with the highest probability of accepting your offer or message. Determine THE ONE key message to get attention and drive action. A competitive positioning exercise can help identify the right targets and uncover this compelling message.

Finally, how do you measure campaign success? Not necessarily by how much revenue is generated. Whether a lead makes it to the finish line is sales-dependent and beyond the scope and control of marketing. Measuring campaign success is part science, part art. The science is sheer numbers—total list size, how many suspects responded favorably, etc. The art is the quality of the lead—whether or not it’s sales-pipeline worthy.

* SoftwareMinds’ B2B Software Marketing: Best Practices & Budgets, Marketing Sherpa’s IT Marketing Benchmark Guide, 2005

** PR is not included as a lead generation tactic because its objective is to build credibility, not to generate leads (though it’s not unusual for editorial coverage to generate prospects).