What is Targeted Lead Generation?
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Targeted lead generation is when you break down a large market into smaller segments to focus on a particular group of potential customers. It produces higher-quality leads and reduces churn.
However desperate you are for leads you can’t waste scarce resources going after the whole market and filling your sales funnel with random leads. Your target leads must be those with the highest potential to become customers.
When you go after the whole market you are spreading yourself too thin and most of the leads you will get will be very cold – not likely interested in what you are selling.
So let’s expand on lead targeting with a practical example:
For instance, if your audience is a group of medical professionals, you can narrow it down to surgeons working in the top 100 hospitals all over the world. Furthermore, you can narrow your results down to surgeons who perform an average of 100 surgeries per year.
In short, with lead targeting, you will be separating a segment of customers based on their characteristics, jobs, status, etc., so you can concentrate on specifically serving each of them them.
So, instead of reaching out to an entire market, you will put all your effort into building a relationship with a specific, defined group within that market. The goal is to narrow your target leads to people who are most likely to become customers and work on them individually. These will be your target leads.
In many ways targeted lead generation mirrors market segmentation. So let’s touch on its various types to help us understand the concept of targeted sales leads.
The 4 Main Types of Market Segmentation
Market segmentation is an important step in the targeted lead generation process. It groups your total addressable market into groups that you can target individually.
You can define a segment of potential customers based on the following:
- Demographic Segmentation: gender, age, marital status, education, religion, race, etc.
- Behavioral Segmentation: user status, spending or purchasing habits, brand interactions, etc.
- Psychographic Segmentation: beliefs, values, personality, interests, lifestyle, etc.
- Geographic Areas: area code, neighborhood, region, city, country, etc.
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You can also take into consideration other things like company size, industry, or annual revenue, whatever you think can separate a market segment from another.
Through targeted lead generation, your brand can have a more specific target market. This means you can focus on a small group of potential customers that are most likely to benefit from your service or product and go from there.
Working on segmented groups will help keep your marketing plans focused and more organized.
For example, if your company is selling day planners, you may want to focus on a more specific market. Instead of marketing to the masses, you can concentrate on selling it to business owners, freelancers, teachers, or even students. These are smaller and more specific segments of your product’s potential market.
5 Reasons Why Targeted Lead Generation is Important
Targeted lead generation is essential because it produces a more holistic marketing strategy. It forces marketing and sales teams to work together in creating an ideal customer profile that streamlines and focuses lead generation.
Here are 5 reasons why it’s crucial to follow a targeted lead generation strategy:
1 Keeps you focused
One of the greatest benefits of targeted lead generation is it allows you to be more specific when it comes to your brand direction, initiatives, and marketing strategies.
Because you are focusing your lead generation on a specific customer profile, you are able to create a narrower vision that gets everyone in your organization on the same page. You will have more direction in shaping your marketing and business plans.
2 Helps you build deeper customer relationships
Because you know a lot more about your potential customers, it becomes easier to personalize your marketing messages. This improves the effectiveness of your marketing and makes lead nurturing easier.
Customers appreciate being heard and so a personal approach can help you create longer-lasting relationships. If your customers feel like you understand them, they will appreciate you more and become more loyal to your business, and if you’re consistent with your marketing, product quality, and service, they’ll grow to become long-term customers.
3 Makes it easier to convert leads into customers
Targeted lead generation produces a smaller subset of prospects that you can reach more cost-effectively with your messages. And when you’re talking directly to your target market, you’re more likely to gain their trust, understand their pain points and more accurately match them with the right solutions.
4 Unlocks new insights for product improvement
Getting to know your customers on a deep level can help you gain a new perspective on your products and services.
When you understand your market, you can see things from their point of view and can more easily put yourself in their shoes.
With the insights gained from that, you will have what you need to improve your offers. You can start seeing what features you may need to add to your product to serve your customers better.
5 Helps you stand out
Once you stop reaching out to everyone in a generic way and start choosing a particular way to approach them, you will definitely achieve a higher rate of customer satisfaction.
If your customers can identify with your brand and your unique propositions, they’re more likely to choose your brand over a competitor that isn’t particularly targeting them.
10 Targeted Lead Generation Strategies
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Targeted lead generation is more than just choosing a group of people to approach. It requires you to have a well-thought-out plan and strategy on how to get these leads.
1 Speak at public events
Events such as seminars or webinars can offer you a unique way of generating targeted leads.
For instance, conferences can give you an opportunity to share your business. With this, you will showcase the kind of solutions and services that your business offers.
The speaker serves as the face behind your organization and it allows your audience to get to know your business better. Through this, potential customers will find it easier to inquire about the services that you offer.
2 Encourage referrals
Your existing clients are one of your best sources of new leads. As users of your products, it easier for them to identify people from their network who could also have a need for your product. In a way, they do some of the targeting work for you.
Typically, your customers have a wide network of friends and family. Some might even have businesses you can work with.
With that said, they can serve as your one-way ticket into that network and help you generate even more targeted leads. To make this happen, you simply need to design a referral program that would encourage your customers to pass on referrals.
Giving incentives is a great way to make your referral program successful. It’s up to you what kind of reward you’re going to offer in exchange for referrals.
However, most companies usually offer discounts in exchange for referrals. This is an excellent idea as it forces the existing to make a purchase to redeem that discount. You get two sales from that one referral.
Another great incentive is offering your client free additional services, but only for a limited time. You can choose a service that’s less likely to eat nto your bottom line when given to customers free of charge.
That said, if you’re confident and close enough to your customers and you’ve treated them well, you won’t even need incentives. Happy satisfied customers will gladly recommend your products if you ask.
3 Engage your LinkedIn connections
LinkedIn is an excellent tool for generating targeted business leads.
According to Hubspot, LinkedIn is 277% more effective at generating leads compared to Twitter and Facebook.
LinkedIn’s professional look and tools attract companies and professionals who see it as the perfect platform to build their networks.
Merely building a presence on the platform and positioning yourself as a source of expert industry knowledge and valuable insights will help you attract a specific profile of business leads. But for even faster results and more targeted leads, you could also upgrade to LinkedIn Premium.
By upgrading to LinkedIn Premium, you can enjoy more functionalities and tools that can improve your targeted lead generation. With a premium subscription, you can see who viewed your profile and contact them directly. It even offers additional filters that allow you to make more specific searches.
For even faster results, you could also throw some money at LinkedIn ads. Ads give you more targeting power and expand your outreach to people you would not be able to reach organically. Linkedin statistics state 75% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn ads.
By the way, LeadFuze has a LinkedIn extension that pulls lead data directly from your LinkedIn, giving you an extra lead source.
4 Make effective use of landing pages
Your landing pages are your chance to make a lasting first impression. Boring landing pages drive away potential customers, so put some effort into their design and content.
You can check out how to make a killer landing page here.
In B2B lead generation, highlighting your services isn’t enough, you have to explain the value they offer to your market.
One common mistake most businesses make is to use their landing pages as a pitch. A high-performance landing page showcases how a proposed solution benefits the lead. So make sure that the testimonials aren’t the only thing on your landing page that showcases your solution’s value.
Your sign-up process should also be more convenient. Create simple forms that capture only the basic details and contact information. Potential clients may leave your page if they have to fill out long forms.
5 Take advantage of email marketing
The people on your mailing list are technically leads that you can nurture into sales. Similarly, you don’t want an email list that is filled to the brim with random people that don’t fit a specific profile.
Use SEO to segment your audience and make sure only people with specific interests and demographic profiles can access your email sign-up forms.
You should consider that some contacts on your email list have signed up for entirely different reasons than you envisage. Some may be after the free stuff that you offered and not what you are selling.
6 Start a blog
A blog is a library of articles containing informative and reliable content. It allows you the opportunity to introduce your business to an audience of people who would not have found it otherwise.
People now turn to the internet when seeking information. This also includes businesses looking for particular services. Make sure you have a blog where you educate potential new customers on how to solve their problems and how your products could be the solution they are looking for.
Make sure the information you share offers real value. If the content is of poor quality and doesn’t target anyone in particular, people just aren’t motivated to read it. If it is not optimized for search engines, they may not even find it organically.
When you’ve successfully built a strong rapport through your blog, readers are more receptive to your marketing approaches. When they regard you as an expert in your field, they are more likely to trust what you pitch as the solution to their problem.
7 Use contact forms to qualify leads
On your website, your contact form is the bridge between you and your potential customers. When optimized for targeted lead generation, your contact forms can collect more specific information.
Instead of providing the generic name, email, and message fields, you can include a drop-down menu that segment people according to the nature of their inquiry. This way, you already know which leads are interested in buying your products and which ones are doing general research.
Effective contact forms should not force people to think (or work) much to answer your question. Make sure your forms aren’t too long or too complex.
8 Utilize free trial marketing
Free trials offer potential customers to sample your product with no commitment. Often, consumers hesitate to buy or sign up for solutions because of the fear they may not live up to their expectations. Free trials remove that obstacle.
You can offer a free trial period or a demo to show your target leads how you provide solutions and services.
A 15 to 30-day trial period gives prospects plenty of time to test out your product. Even if they don’t end up signing up after the free trial, the collected contact information counts as a targeted lead because you know specifically what they are interested in.
9 Make use of paid ads
Whether you are using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google search, paid ads allow you to target leads directly. Facebook, for example, can segment audiences right down to their local neighborhoods, among other demographic qualifiers.
Google display ads target people according to their searches and the ads they click on as they research their purchases online. You know when you search for something once and then the next thing you know ads about what you searched for are popping up everywhere and you get tempted to buy.
Need help automating your sales prospecting process?
10 Automate your lead generation process
Targeted lead generation can be difficult and time-consuming. Unless you automate the process with a lead generation software like LeadFuze.
LeadFuze can help you narrow down your search in multiple ways and allows you to find audiences that perfectly match your offer. With its suite of tools, you can easily break down a large market into specific segments.
LeadFuze gives you all the data you need to find ideal leads, including full contact information. The tool has been successfully used by marketers, recruiters, and salespeople to look up phone numbers and email addresses for lead generation purposes.
To generate leads, you simply enter basic info about your ideal customers (industry, employee size, role, and keywords), and Fuzebot – the LeadFuze artificial intelligence assistant will sift through our large database to find you the closest matches to what you are looking for. You can use a variety of filters to zero in on the leads you want to reach.
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LeadFuze also automates your outreach emails. Do you want to email 50 fresh leads daily? 1000? Perhaps a little more? LeadFuze can do that for you once you configure your funnel.
Those who do not respond will receive scheduled follow-up emails from your email account, while those who do will be deleted from further automation. All you need to do is respond to those who have already indicated an interest in your business.
Cold emailing is a highly successful strategy of acquiring leads for your organization.
With LeadFuze it is possible to automate your entire marketing process. This makes the robust LeadFuze CRM a more cost-effective method of generating leads and managing your marketing as compared to other channels.
Don’t Spread Yourself Thin – Target Leads That Are More Likely to Convert Into Paying Customers
It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned marketer or not, lead generation is an enduring business challenge. Without a constant stream of leads that you can nurture into paying customers, your business can’t grow. But you don’t need just any leads; you need targeted leads or leads that fit specific criteria.
You will not boost your sales by pitching your products to any person whose contact information you are able to collect. You need to optimize your lead generation to only target those leads that have the highest chances of converting into paying customers.
What targeted lead-generation strategies have you tried in the past? If you are struggling to find leads using manual processes, LeadFuze automates the entire process, saving you time and guaranteeing you high-quality, targeted leads.