16 Jun 2017 / by Andy Dickens / in Business Development, Database Development, Lead Generation, Marketing
6 Unconventional Lead Generation Tips for Software
In this article, we will show you 6 ways in which you can improve your lead generation for software, and remain calm and in control of your lead generation marketing campaign.
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There are a lot of articles out there offering advice on how to get the best leads for your lead generation for software campaign, and we would agree with a lot of what they have to say; get people who know your business, reach the proper people for your product, work with pitching experts, etc. All these words of wisdom are wholly correct and should be added to your list of lead generation ideas. Yet, we feel they overlook a few things that would really give your campaign the boost in leads it may need! You may have already thought of these but dismissed them as a waste of your team’s time, but rethink! Putting in the effort now could yield impressive results in the long run, so here are our 6 unconventional tips for lead generation;
Store Your Data Properly
It may seem like a ‘really?’ moment, but trust us when we say you will spend far less time worrying about who you’re contacting and trying to convert if you have a coherent and well-maintained database from the outset. You need to make sure that the contacts you are collecting are organised by industry, company, role, professional level, public or private company, budgets, revenue, etc. This ensures that you not only have highly-qualified leads in your database, but that you can sort and filter through them according to how likely they are to convert, thereby saving your team time and effort.
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Quality not Quantity
It’s important to make sure you cherry pick your prospects; instead of simply barrelling all businesses and contact details into your B2B database, you should make sure your team is being super picky about whose details they hold onto. Yes, this may make the process slightly longer, but in the long run having such a precisely selected list of prospects will make your team’s time calling down the list much more profitable, especially if the prospects they’re calling have already been selected in line of a few requirements you set out to your team; when did they last purchase software services? How do they use their software? Can we offer a product that improves their current service? etc.
Monitor Your Competition
Wanna be the best? Make sure you’re on top of your closest competitors’ new releases and developments! The last thing you want is to be halfway through the conversation on the phone with a prospect and for them to floor you with ‘oh, but I heard that *so and so competitor* is releasing this *new software/service* What do you have like this?’. Avoid sounding unprofessional and ‘in the dark’ about your own industry!
It is crucial that you and your team are able to counter these curve-balls with well-informed and accurate information; ‘Yes, I hear it’s a useful tool that *so and so competitor* has just released. An issue we’ve found with it though is that it doesn’t cover a few crucial aspects such as *crucial aspects* that our software does, which can throw up issues for your business further down the line’. Without sounding like you’re ‘bashing’ your competitors, you have told the prospect that you are up to date on industry developments, remained professional and shown that your product/service is not only on par with your competitors, but offers things they don’t. Stay in the know to stay ahead of the crowd!
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Get Social
Engaging your potential prospects on social media is a key way in which to garner a willing audience for your business, and to start a conversation with potential prospects. Social media is one of the best ways you can gauge what the audience you’re targeting needs, what their pain points are and is brilliantly suited to developing and maintaining an open, collaborative and attentive ‘brand image’ with your demographic.
Pose questions like ‘how does your current software system serve your needs?’ and open it up to your social audience; this not only starts the conversation, but gives your development team key areas which they can use to improve your software for future releases. By carefully crafting this brand image, prospects are more likely to trust you, and follow your social channel back to your website and enquire for more information, thus bringing the leads directly to you. If you manage your social channels well, your lead generation will occur organically – utilise this as soon as you can for the best results!
Produce Awesome Content
Content is king, whether you’re a B2B or a B2C company. And the best way to get people to trust your brand and seek out your expertise is through engaging, well-informed content. This doesn’t mean spending huge amounts of your marketing budget on high-end video production and organising inspiring photoshoots – sometimes the best content is the simplest content, answering questions that you know B2B companies want the answers to.
Curated monthly industry roundups, fun and engaging software release pieces and such are brilliant ways to engage a regular readership, drive authority and trust and effectively create future brand advocates and prospects for your company.
Maintaining a well-researched and structured blog on your company site is the perfect way to do this.
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SEO Optimise
A great way to ensure B2B companies looking for your services can find you is to ensure that your site is properly SEO optimised for search engines. This means ensuring all meta information for key site pages is engaging and informative, with a proper call to action included to drive click through’s to your site, URL’s are properly formatted, all important content is above the fold on the page, the site is mobile friendly with AMP pages, there are targeted and optimised sub-headings, etc. There are dozens of ranking factors that can be optimised here too, all combining to create a well-optimised site that search engines love and users will click through and engage with. By simply getting an SEO expert to look over your site and offer you a list of ‘quick wins’, you could be pleasantly surprised with how much more traffic will get sent your way!
And there they are; 6 lead generation for software tips that may not have occurred to you! Though some may take longer to implement and see results from, they are all most definitely worth investing your time and money on, allowing your team to focus on the prospects they have in their well maintained database while watching your organically generated leads flood in from your amazing social channels and content marketing. Give your potential prospects the boost they need and increase your lead generation prospects today!
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Tags: Database Development, Lead generation, lead generation for software, SEO, social media
Andy Dickens
Andy Dickens is a veteran of IT Sales, used to leading by example. He is the CEO of Virtual Sales Limited (VSL) who offer telesales, telemarketing, lead generation and appointment setting services to B2b businesses. He previously was Sales Director EMEA for Red Hat and before that ran sales at Visio before it was acquired by Microsoft.