If you’re in sales, you’ve probably heard “fill up your pipeline” or “get more prospects into your pipeline,” far more times than you could count.
Naturally so, since sales strategies include activities that drive new leads into your sales pipeline. The more leads you attract, the higher the likelihood of closing deals and growing your revenue, right?
But we know that having leads is one thing, and having hot leads that convert is another.
Today we will look at digital marketing strategies you can use to attract hot leads to your pipeline.
1. Dump Poor Leads
That’s no way to attract hot leads.
Maybe not, but if your team is stuck chasing dead-end leads, where are they going to find the time to focus on good-fit leads?
The hot leads you’re aiming for will slip through the cracks and off to the competition.
None of which is good for your KPI or business.
You might say, “these leads are in my pipeline for a reason. They are interested in my solutions and will buy at some point, so I better be patient, and keep selling to them”
At some point, you’re going to have to face the fact that some leads are as dead as chopped wood. No amount for selling will get them to buy, so take the time to spring clean your pipeline.
Here’s how to identify poor leads:
- They are unresponsive—they don’t open your emails, avoid your calls, and ignore your messages.
- They are not the decision-maker. They might love your solutions but can’t influence the purchase. You can ask them for the right contact, but there shouldn’t be any need to keep talking to this lead.
- They don’t have the funds to make the purchase. Budget can be an insurmountable obstacle for many B2B leads. If the lead can’t afford you at the moment, it’s best to stop spending resources on them.
- Your solutions aren’t right for their business. Some leads might have liked your solutions at the beginning, but now don’t consider them viable for their needs.
With poor leads out of the way, you can focus on improving your buyer personas and employing strategies that attract hot leads.
2. Create Lead Magnets
What content would you willingly offer your contact information for? It has to be really valuable, right?
This is what you need to think about when creating a lead magnet.
A lead magnet is valuable content a business puts together and shares with audiences in exchange for personal information such as name and email contact.
Since lead magnets zero in on particular topics or solve certain problems, you’ll need to research the pressing needs of your target audience. You then create useful content that compels target audiences to share their contact for
A good lead magnet showcases your expertise and also improves the quality of leads you generate. This increases your possibility of making sales.
A good lead magnet should:
- Solve problems to increase audience interest in your offerings
- Help prospects achieve their goals
- Be highly specific and easy to digest to attract better leads
- Be instantly accessible
Examples of lead magnets include templates, cheat sheets, tutorials, reports and infographics, case studies, and free trials/demos.
3. Make Cold Calls
Do you want to know why cold calling works for Fortune 500 companies, medium-sized businesses, and start-ups?
Teams use publicly available data to learn about the businesses they are targeting.
This ensures they don’t waste resources shooting in the dark, rather capitalize on opportunities that translate to customers.
Best practices include:
- Creating the right mindset. You’re not a nagging salesperson out to trick prospects. Nay, you’re here to provide solutions that can help customers achieve their goals.
- Knowing what you’re selling. Nothing is more frustrating than receiving questions from an interested prospect and having no concrete answers. You come across as one who isn’t interested in what they are selling, not to mention untrustworthy.
- Mapping out your conversation to help you achieve your end goal—whether that’s booking an appointment, schedule another call or demo, etc. Note down common objections, including those specific to your industry and how to navigate them.
- Having a structured script for voicemail. Use the time to share your value proposition and your contact information.
4. Focus on Link Building
How is link building going to help me generate leads?
The idea behind this strategy is to get influential websites to link to your site, improving visibility and credibility.
In the eyes of a search engine, backlinks from authoritative and relevant sites appear as “yay! votes” that your content is worth considering.
And we know worthy content helps build relationships between vendors and potential buyers.
An efficient link-building strategy allows you to reach larger audiences, makes your content more potent, and you can flaunt your expertise.
Here are tactics you can employ in link building:
- Creating linkable assets such as interactive video and text, surveys, guides, insightful research, calculators, or quizzes. This content attracts links from other sites that consider it useful for their audiences.
- Guest blogging. Identify websites that have followers in your niche, have substantial engagement rates (think comments, shares, and likes), and accept guest posts. Look at the laid-down rules for guest posts and if they can work for you, pitch your topic.
- Leverage broken links on websites you would like to feature in. A tool like Ahrefs can help identify broken links, which you can then point out to the site’s owner. You can offer to replace the broken link with valuable and relevant content of your own.
- Put together an expert round-up article containing the opinions of industry experts on a topic or question and links to their respective websites. Once the article is published, the experts are likely to share the content with their audience, increasing traffic to your site.
5. Host Webinars
Considering webinars focus on specific topics or industry trends, they attract specific audiences and are great for generating hot leads.
Designated Q & A segments, in particular, encourage engagement and participation, allowing you to build relationships with audiences.
Here are considerations as you plan and host a webinar:
- Plan, plan, and prepare. There are multiple logistics associated with hosting a webinar. You’ll need to think about the topic, presenter(s), guests, tools and equipment, time, and date of the webinar.
- Develop great content. Useful and relevant content attracts people to attend your webinar. Select topics that resonate with your audience’s interests and needs and deliver content that addresses these issues. Webinars are mostly educational, avoid turning them into a sales pitch.
- Start and end on time. People are busy, so it’s wise to honor the time constraints you advertised for your webinar. Even when attendees don’t show up on time, you’re better off starting on time and ending the webinar on time too.
- Promote the webinar. Set up a promotional landing page and create images and videos for promoting the webinar on your social channels and email campaigns.
