Marketers are being asked to do more with less when it comes to lead generation. Diminishing budgets means that affordable lead generation is top of mind for many marketers in 2018.
You need to make every penny count, but how? What can you do to draw in more leads with a shrinking budget?
You put a lot of time and energy into your content marketing efforts. But if you aren’t answering your customers’ most pressing questions, what are you doing?
Enter marketing and sales alignment. Ask your salespeople what the most commonly asked questions are.
Then write, record, and design content answering those questions. This kind of content is great because it will draw in leads by touching on known pain points.
Within your ungated blog posts, consider using “content upgrades.” A content upgrade is gated content that enhances your ungated content.
Say you write a blog post about solving data storage issues. You write a blog post outlining the steps someone could take to solve their data storage issue. A content upgrade for this could be a gated case study showing how several different brands solved their issue with your software.
Consider places where content upgrades make sense. Keep a list of your gated content and make sure you drop links to these posts wherever it makes sense.
Don’t just link to these pieces of content. That is too passive. Place visually appealing images in key locations. I suggest putting content upgrades in the middle of your blog posts to break up the text (particularly after a relevant paragraph) or at the end.
Another way to utilize content upgrades is to gate part of the post. Give away the beginning for free, then collect more leads by gating a piece of it. Maybe it’s an extra 5 tips at the end of your post. Your audience already trusted your brand enough to get through most of your post, so it’s not a massive leap for them to signup to get more value.
These are logical and relevant locations for content upgrades. They are a natural way to guide a user from low-risk ungated content to a place where you can ask them to exchange information for something a little more valuable.
Networking is the king of B2B marketing. The more you network, the more leads you will have.
This can be done in both the real world and the digital one.
Go out to networking events, attend trade shows, and connect with local business people that are potential leads.
Online, connect and interact with influencers and potential leads alike.
You want to be careful to not just network with everyone. Networking is only low budget if you are focused. Be very choosy as to what events you attend, and people you connect with.
Be mindful to not neglect those you’ve already interacted with. This includes prospects, partners, and existing clients. Continue to network, connect and interact with these groups, even if they aren’t ready to buy (again).
Giving out free trials and demos of your services is a great way to lure leads into signing up for your mailing list.
This late-funnel, low-budget lead generation effort is super effective. It removes the friction and anxiety that your clients may feel as they near the purchase decision. By giving them a low-risk option to actually try the product you sell, you increase the likelihood that they will convert.
Another low-cost method for filling your funnel is to buy campaign engagement data. Campaign engagement data has a low cost per lead and little to no friction because you buy contacts that have never filled out a form.
This means that while leads are aware of your brand and offering, they are not fatigued from entering their information into a form repeatedly.
Campaign engagement data is a great way to launch a lead generation effort, no matter how big or small your budget is. You get more contacts for less effort, time, and money than traditional marketing methods.
Low to no budget? No problem. All you need to succeed in these low budget lead generation tactics is a little bit of cash and some elbow grease. Give them a shot.
Originally published at www.hipb2b.com on April 9, 2019.
