Lead generation technologies have changed the game for businesses and marketers.
Back in the day, businesses would rely on word-of-mouth, door-to-door and face-to-face promotions. But these positions would be time-consuming and costly.
Luckily, with the continuing advancement of technology, marketing has never been more convenient. We evolved from the traditional mediums of marketing like:
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Classified print ads on the newspapers
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TV and radio commercials
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Cold calling and email marketing
Finally, we have modern marketing methods which need minimal interaction.
The hundreds of methods, tools, and software used for lead generation, is what we call a sales stack.
Lead generation technologies are transforming the way sales team work to generate more sales.
Sales Stack / Sales Technology Stack
A sales stack or sales technology stack is a group of technology or software used by a sales team. This can benefit and increase your sales productivity.
A Sales Technology Stack will enhance:
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Generating leads
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Collecting and storing data
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Creating effective campaigns
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Distributing campaigns and ads
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Communicating with members of your team
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Communicating with customers
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Addressing customer concerns
And many other things that will help with how business gets leads and keeps customers.
This also makes for a seamless stream of communication among team members and customers.
A sales stack usually determines if your business rises or stays stagnant, which means it can get a bit more complex than choosing a bunch of tools.
The goal of each sales team is to generate leads, raise sales and close deals using different tools and software.
Let’s start first with a quick look at the sales process.
Sales Process
Your sales process is a group of steps you take to convert prospects into leads and leads into customers.
It covers everything in a customer’s journey. Starting from acknowledging the need for a certain product or service, to inquiring about it.
Then finally taking the plunge and making an actual
purchase.In order for a sales process to work, you need to define and structure it, make sure it follows a cycle, sets a common goal and is achievable and practical.
Over 70% of businesses make use of a structured sales process, which makes for a higher revenue as opposed to those who don’t.
There is no one sales process that works for all businesses, but it helps to keep a list of objectives that all businesses can follow.
Define Your Target Market
This way you get a clearer picture of what leads you’ll want to generate.
It can be tricky if you have a new business and lack data.
Defining your targeted audience will make it easier for you to optimize your sales process. Or else you will waste time and budget on marketing to everyone with no results.
You will have to first answer those specific questions:
Who needs your products or services?
How old are they?
What do they do in life in terms of job or education?
What is their social status? Are they single, married, divorced…?
What’s their ethnicity? What’s their cultural background?
Where are they located?
How often will they use your product or service? When will they buy?
Once you’ve set out specific standards such as demographics, job roles, etc., LeadFuze can find you the perfect leads.
Our market based search is the perfect tool in search for specific leads.
Need Help Automating Your Sales Prospecting Process?
LeadFuze gives you all the data you need to find ideal leads, including full contact information.
Go through a variety of filters to zero in on the leads you want to reach. This is crazy specific, but you could find all the people that match the following:
- A company in the Financial Services or Banking industry
- Who have more than 10 employees
- That spend money on Adwords
- Who use Hubspot
- Who currently have job openings for marketing help
- With the role of HR Manager
- That has only been in this role for less than 1 year
Identify Your Methods and Channels for Marketing
When you’ve identified who you’d want to sell to, you can determine how to get their attention.
Different age demographics use different channels and platforms.
With the growing number of internet users, whatever their ages are, you’ll want to start with using social media platforms. Apart from billions of users, it’s cheap too.
Another way to determine the channel you will use is by creating a user-persona.
How can you do that? Well, the type of business you have and the type of activities you are doing can answer that.
For example: You have a B2B business that specializes in manufacturing. This means you focus on the production aspect.
For this case, you will need to focus your marketing efforts on channels like LinkedIn or Twitter.
Connect and Engage with your Prospects
Once you’ve gained your target audience and defined your marketing platforms, you can strategize how you’ll connect with your target audience.
Your initial content will probably get attention, sure. But how many people are the target for the call to take action from your campaigns?
Engaging with your prospects is an important aspect of conversion. Engagement means posting content that drives engagement. Locate tags, mentions, and comments where customers are addressing your business and engage with them.
We all want to feel some sense of warmth from companies we show interest in. This will help with Lead generation for your business and can build a community around your brand.
Some ways you can connect with your prospects are through interactive chat and emailing. These help you engage with your prospects while they’re on and off your website.
Qualifying Your Leads
Which of your prospects are potential leads?
Which of your leads are potential customers?
Because you’ve identified your ideal customer profile, you can more or less tell which of your prospects and leads are promising.
If they fit into the criteria you’ve created for your customer profile, then you know that they’re qualified to be converts.
An excellent method for identifying quality leads is BANT:
Determine Which Methods Drive More Deals to a Close
Your number one goal, no matter the channel, tool or tech, is to close a deal.
Some methods will work more effectively than others, so you’ve got to determine which one you’ll invest your time in.
(Image Source: TOPO)
Modern Tools, Software and Services that Help Generate Leads
Consumer trends have significantly increased throughout the years.
Its pace is only speeding up and with dynamically changing trends comes new technology. Lead generation technologies are being developed to grow your business.
Lead generation models have evolved because of these new technologies. What used to take up so much time can now be over with in minutes.
These alternative systems and tools can be a bit daunting to use, but once you’ve gotten familiar with them, they can encourage you to step out of the box.
Different lead generation platforms have risen over the past couple of years. 89.9% of companies use more than one tool or channel to fulfill their lead generation needs.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
This new technology mimics human intelligence. AI integration is the latest feature added to different machines and software.
Their programming enables them to think and behave like humans. It makes them able to predict human behavior and future actions.
Take Apple’s Siri, for example. Manual search is automatic thanks to Siri. It can also perform a series of tasks, transforming them from semi-automatic to automatic.
People find it amazing how their programming enables them to reply like an actual person. Many find comfort in interacting with AI like Siri and Alexa.
(Image Source: Photon)
In lead generation technologies, artificial intelligence integration in tools became more common. It allows proper engagement with prospects and leads online.
This makes prospects feel comfort from how conversations flow naturally. There is something natural to the way humans act around AI. No moral obligation and no expectations, at least in the present times.
Integrating message automation using AI makes personal information accessible and easier to use. More and more businesses are using this to make customer engagement way faster than usual.
Another good example are Chatbots.
They are Automated reply systems that immediately respond to a customer.
You can find Chatbots in landing pages of websites. They serve as the site’s sales and customer service manager.
Facebook pages have chatbots popping up in form of message tab.
When you send a message, there are options for what message you’re going to send and there will be an automatic reply of an answer.
For sure you will need to integrate manually the questions and answers. However, this way you will not lose a potential customer in case you replied later than usual.
According to a study it is clear that the customer expect the business to respond to their
Chatbots are growing in numbers, used in different websites to provide customer service to a certain degree.
(Image Source: Photon)
Although chatbots are faster and easier, their programming allows them to reply to FAQs or asked questions.
If the customer’s question is too complex, he might not get a direct or accurate reply.
Lead nurturing is easier with AI because it offers the warmth and connection that humans do, to an extent.
Because this is currently a developing technology, it can move faster than humans can.
It can reach out to thousands upon thousands of potential leads using the same approach.
Apart from reaching out to prospects and leads, their programming allows them to extract and develop their own insights.
We can use this technology in predicting trends and consumer behavior.
AI also helps filter out leads based on their data patterns.
This addition of AI to lead generation technologies has shown significant results.
There are AI assistants developed to work alongside you to qualify leads for conversion.
LeadFuze‘s FuzeBot is a good example. It continues to work, filtering leads whether you’re online or offline.
Another advantage that AI has brought about is the convenience of no errors.
As humans, we make mistakes.
But AI assistants? No errors, everything is in tip-top shape, all the time. Fewer errors mean more accuracy, but they are still prone to dysfunction.
There is a never ending list of advantages that AI has brought to the world. One of the best things that it can help you with is taking care of the day-to-day tasks that add to the list of things you need to do.
It is conducive to higher productivity rates and gives you more time to tweak your strategies and pitches to be the best they might be.
Because of this advancement in technology, it has eliminated time-consuming tasks.
AI assistants will cost you less since they can do different jobs all at once. While hiring and paying a team of different backgrounds can be expensive.
Artificial Intelligence is a phenomenal recent development in the world of tech, and in the world of lead generation.
Augmented Reality (AR)
Another emerging trend is the augmented reality, which offers users a brand new exciting experience.
The popular Pokémon Go game makes different Pokémon characters appear in the actual world, right through your screen.
This new technology has made some waves in the gaming industry and also has a more exciting experience where the user feels like he is a part of the game.
But this technology is not only for fun and games.
It’s become a creative way for brands to interact with their target market.
AR is now one of the leading lead generation technologies.
In augmented reality, it’s common to fuse digital objects into the actual world, making them seem present.
Marketing and sales strategies take advantage of this new technology.
Ikea is one of the more popular brands to take on augmented reality as their marketing strategy of choice.
Example of Lead generation technologies
(Image Source:Ikea Place)
Mobile apps and AR goggles are available for viewing AR scapes.
With the recent events like the global pandemic, marketing teams can use AR to provide an in-store experience without breaking health protocols.
Prospects and potential customers can try products before they decide on whether they want to buy your products.
Augmented reality applications have already begun rising. We can see different uses of AI that enables customers to:
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Try on different make-up products,
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Try on clothing items
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See furniture and other home items in actual size
There are no limits to the things AR can do for marketing!
This can be extremely valuable for companies who need strategies that allow customers to try before they buy.
Augmented reality also provides the advantage of being able to do virtual tours.
Coffee shops, hotels, and other real estate companies have used this method for prospects to get a glimpse of what their space might feel like.
The visualization of actual products, the close to reality experience, can help convert leads faster.
Lead Generation in a World of Technology
Customize Audiences
To generate more leads, you need to: Identify your targeted audience and come up with a way to establish a presence within them.
Facebook has come up with a specified technology for this purpose. It allows you to find existing audiences, create lists, and find engagements within the same platform.
Their lead generation technologies are evolving daily to create a more precise base of audience.
This also targets audiences close to or like your already established set of customers.
This means you can generate higher quality leads, which in return boosts your return on investment (ROI).
Facebook ads are pesky, you speak of a single product once and you can locate it on your feed instantly!
Then again, that’s how you know it works.
Cloud-Based CRM
The customer relationship management (CRM) of a company is one of the most important tools that a stack will contain.
This manages both prospect and customer data. Its invaluable information helps companies study customer behavior.
Since customer behavior is predictable via artificial intelligence, cloud-based CRMs have also emerged.
This means that CRM data is being hosted on a cloud, instead of on-premise deployment.
The advantage of this is that accessibility can happen from any of your devices, anytime, anywhere, and not confined to just one device.
Cloud-based CRMs also update in real-time or instantly.
Automation as a Standard
Automation has revolutionized how marketing happens.
No more setting appointments, scheduling calls, sending emails, and researching prospects.
Automation tools can do all that and more.
They’ve already integrated it into our daily lives without us even noticing.
Reaching out, qualifying and reporting leads got easier.
Page Builder
As we are now living in a digital world, people now expect businesses to have an excellent website. If a website’s missing, most people doubt the business.
Having a website will be one of the best advantages of your business.
They bring in a ton of leads from a single click. So make sure you build a good one.
This where integrating lead generation technologies can represent an opportunity for a business.
This where integrating lead generation technologies can represent an opportunity for a business.
An optimized landing page is easier to have using page builders for your site.
Apart from this, Page Builder helps pages get optimized for mobile view. It works great with your theme and is customizable without the tedious process of building webpages.
How Does All This Fit Into My Existing Sales Stack?
Consider the tools and channels that you already have in your tech stack.
What do they do for you and what are they missing?
It may be easy to get blinded and swayed by these new and exciting technologies, but what good is it going to do for your business for having too many?
Make sure the tools you invest in are really going to help you reach your goals.
The most important consideration is how well your tools are going to work with each other.
Despite the promise of a platform to deliver significant results, it won’t really work if it doesn’t integrate well with the rest of your tools.
Ample training will also need operating new tools.
While some are user friendly, they need quite the number of people to operate it.
Other Considerations
With the surge of technological advances, the journey that buyers take down the funnel has shifted.
Because of the amount of information at everyone’s disposal, buyers have become more careful.
They’ve grown wary of marketing strategies that feel like vendors are only interested in selling.
The market has also grown heavily saturated throughout the years.
Prospects have more options, and businesses have more competitors.
This means marketers have to work twice as hard on their campaigns to be effective at all.
Technology can surely put you ahead of your competitors, but only if you use it on a personal scale.
Key Takeaway
Many of today’s new technological advances can definitely help generate leads faster, better and more .
Technological trends can become overwhelming and even scary to take on.
Marketers have a lot on their plates already, so making use of these kinds of technologies can help make their day-to-day easier.
Yet, the training and integration of these technologies may seem complicated and time-consuming. But it will be of a significant benefit to your business.
It is important to choose the right stack of tools to use for your business, as it will have a big impact.
Editors Note:
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