Ways to Make Your B2B Lead Generation Evergreen

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B2B Lead Generation Sales Funnel—Self-Renewal Strategies for the Long Haul  

It never ceases to amaze me how our landscape changes almost overnight this time of year. Literally, you go to bed one night with bare trees outside your window. Then you wake up the next morning, after the first warm night in months, and you are greeted by bright tulip buds, cherry blossoms and fresh green on the trees. What also fascinates me is how the evergreen trees keep their colour and foliage through snow, sleet and ice. Nature has a magic formula, a silver bullet for self-renewal and self-regeneration that is unmatched and inimitable.

What if your B2B lead generation, product marketing and launches could replicate some of that magic of self-renewal? What if your campaigns and launches could become evergreen and continuously bring high quality leads into your funnel? What if you could deliver a sustainable, consistent customer experience to every customer, both old and new? All of this is difficult but far from impossible. What you need is to think of every step in every lead generation campaign as a new launch and keep it evergreen. This way, you keep up the shine and sparkle; the magic doesn’t fade away and your buyers continue to be drawn into the attraction of your funnel.

New York Times best-selling author and radio host, Dave Ramsey says, People are in such a hurry to launch their product or business that they seldom look at marketing from a bird’s eye view and they don’t create a systematic plan.” The importance of having a sound lead generation process and continuously refining it to adapt to the changing marketing landscape and buyers’ behavioural trends cannot be emphasized enough. Even if your campaign is to launch a new product and drive leads for that, you can’t stop at the traditional method of launch ads, news conference and news release. Here is a good checklist: 10 Steps for a Successful Product Launch.  

Psychologically, we tend to “relax” when an activity is ongoing, and conversely, when it is a time-bound one, we pull all our resources and energies together, focusing on achieving maximum results. If you look at your B2B lead generation campaigns the same way as a product launch campaign, you will find it easier to focus on the outcome. You will run your marketing plays strategically and smartly. If you are trying to set up appointments or a free trial for your software, then instead of “buy”, the goal of the funnel is to set up the appointment or sign up for the free trial. Your Sales and Marketing should be working together to regenerate and renew your lead generation campaigns with a fresh infusion of ideas and innovation. Here is a useful 7-Step Guide on How to Launch New Propositions through Your Sales Force.

There is a plethora of launches for information products and services; some are making millions of dollars within the span of a couple of weeks or even days. We aren’t necessarily talking about a $99 course. There are some products selling upwards of $10,000 per transaction online. What can we learn from them? Many launches are designed to build email lists and in turn, sell to that list. This is isn’t so different from B2B lead generation and lead nurturing. As B2B lead generation experts, we are looking for quality traffic to drive leads and how to convert them in the funnel.

The people who are launching every month with evergreen launches are already doing this. What are they doing right that we can learn from? The formula goes something like this: give value, give value again, and then sell (similar to what Gary Vaynerchuk says in his book, Jab Jab Jab Right Hook)

Before you think these are “small potatoes”, check out Jeff Walker, the 400 million dollar man. Jeff Walker, Tony Robbins, Marie Forleo, Michael Hyatt, Chris Brogan, and others like them are doing something right. What can we learn from them? Let’s look at some key things they do that make them so successful:

  • They really know who they are going after, who is their target market.
  • They go after their target market aggressively and provide a ton of value.
  • They measure and watch their funnel to increase conversions at every stage.
  • They use social media to drive people to their email lists.
  • They automate everything wherever possible because they tend to be lean and agile—but they don’t lose the personal touch; they don’t automate beyond reason.
  • Many remain “small” in size, even though they are making millions in revenue. So they can be flexible and pivot where necessary. They don’t have the baggage of legacy issues and the typical syndrome of a large corporation where everyone is working in silos that suck them in.

How Can We Fill Our Funnels with Leads?

Here is a good example of a funnel:

  • You create a free PDF report: 5 Ways to Engage Your B2B Buyer at Every Stage of the Sales Funnel
  • You put it up on a landing page/squeeze page
  • You drive as much traffic as possible to it (your own list, paid advertising, partners, etc.)
  • Once someone opts in for the PDF report it creates a trigger that this person is probably interested in your services
  • So, you automatically send them a few more pieces of free content and then take them through their own private “launch” or sales funnel of your services or product where they can buy it (either online or through a sales team).

You have to focus on the outcome, every single time.There is a classic thing in business, which is the second-product syndrome.  Often companies that have a really successful first product don’t quite understand why that product was so successful. And so with the second product, their ambitions grow…[and] they fail.” – Steve Jobs

What is your organization doing to keep B2B lead generation fresh and evergreen? What product launch ideas can you bring to your lead generation campaigns? Feel free to share on my blog. You can also email or call me, Louis Foong, at (905) 709-3827.  

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Louis Foong
Louis Foong is the founder and CEO of The ALEA Group Inc., one of North America's most innovative B2B demand generation specialists. With more than three decades of experience in the field, Louis is a thought leader on trends, best practices and issues concerning marketing and lead generation. Louis' astute sense of marketing and sales along with a clear vision of the evolving lead generation landscape has proved beneficial to numerous organizations, both small and large.

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