Digital Marketing World speaker Russell Kern took time before the free virtual conference today to chat more with MarketingProfs about one of his passions: lead generation. He is the founder and president of The Kern Organization, a direct marketing agency specializing in creating innovative, high-performance customer acquisition and demand-generation campaigns.
1. What’s the most important fact (or two) about lead generation that people overlook?
The critical importance of the title of the offer, which motivates a response. The title of a webcast or video or whitepaper can affect the quality of the response given and how an offer is positioned. A title, such as “10 Things You Must Know Before You Buy Software” will attract a different kind of lead than “10 Trends in Cloud Computing Today.”
2. Why should anyone care about lead generation?
It’s how to jumpstart the revenue-generation process for a company and how to help increase the effectiveness of the sales channels. Its enables highly paid salespeople to focus on proposing and closing deals versus prospecting for opportunities, which can be done through lower-cost lead-generation methods.
3. What’s your favorite tool/app/idea for lead generation?
I love the use of a survey as a lead-generation strategy. I like how it determines who is in market, what they have currently, and when and why they might replace what they have.
4. Do you have a favorite story about a lead?
My favorite story about lead generation is less is more. Most marketers think they need to generate dozens and dozens of leads for salespeople. The truth is a good salesperson would rather have one highly qualified lead than 10 unqualified. If the marketer would spend more time with an inquiry, confirming interest and desire before passing it to the sales channel, the sales channel will think the marketing program is more effective.
5. What can people expect from Friday’s virtual conference?
They are going to learn a proven 9-step approach to strategically planning a demand-generation campaign. They will learn how to use marketing research and target audience data, translate that data into key insights, and then develop a strategy based on the insights. They will see an actual example of how this process was used to create a winning program for a global software leader.
Russell will be talking about “Effective Brand Integrated Multi-Channel Demand Generation—From Data to Delivery” at the free lead-generation virtual conference today. Get the scoop on registration, other speakers, and sessions at Digital Marketing World.
Tags: customer experience, customers, Lead Generation, Marketing, MarketingProfs, Strategy and Tactics
A very informative post, Russel. I strongly believe that a business’s lead generation strategy can make or break its profitability objectives. The good news is: thanks to social media, targeted lead generation has become much easier than ever.
I agree with you that surveys are excellent market research tools, provided that the surveyed segment represents your niche market. Polls are also very effective in that regard because they are both interesting and short so they tend to have high response rates.
Using a site like linkedin to conduct polls to a specific network can be very effective lead-detection method.
Also, many businesses are coming up with very innovative ideas to use Twitter and Facebook for lead generation purposes. I agree with you 100% that if the marketing department focused on quality not quantity throughout the lead generation process, closing sales will be much easier. Thanks for sharing your valuable insights.
Dear Russel
What you say is correct. Lead generation is both an Art and a Science.
What must be realized is that the target audience is bombarded by info from all sides. We must be able dangle a “HOPE” of knowledge building in order to leave an impression on the mind.
Arindam