Your Complete Guide to Understanding Targeted Lead Generation
Generating leads can be difficult for any business. This is because businesses often cast a wide net, hoping to attract anyone and everyone. Then, they are disappointed when those same leads fizzle out. However, targeted lead generation helps attract the right kind of customer – the kind ready to hear what you have to offer.
Instead of targeting any random person who visits your website, imagine you’re only going after a specific, narrow subset of prospects with very similar interests. This makes the targeted aspect of lead generation so powerful. You and your team can concentrate on highly qualified customers that are more likely to buy.
To learn more about optimizing your lead generation strategy and attracting customers ready to engage with your offerings, contact Infintech Designs for expert guidance.
Table of Contents
What is Targeted Lead Generation?
In business-to-business (B2B), targeted lead generation involves pinpointing businesses or professionals that perfectly fit with a company’s ideal customer profile. It’s like finding the perfect missing puzzle piece, but for your business.
To find these hidden treasures, this practice identifies common threads such as industry relevance, interest, or a need for your offerings. Essentially, you want businesses most likely to benefit from whatever you’re providing.
Why Targeted Lead Generation is So Powerful
Generic marketing can only go so far these days. Although it’s easy to simply buy B2C sales leads off a website, the truth is you may waste a lot of resources that way – with little to show for it. In contrast, a highly-targeted approach focuses laser sharp on those more likely to become paying customers and helps to:
- Increase Conversion Rates
- Save Resources and Boost Profits
- Establish Trust with Customers
Think about it this way: would you rather talk to 100 mildly interested customers? Or one extremely interested customer ready to sign on the dotted line? Targeted lead generation lets you choose quality over quantity and build relationships with potential customers.
Understanding the Power of Targeted Campaigns
Imagine spending countless hours crafting the “perfect” email marketing campaigns only to have very few open it. Even fewer reply back. Instead of blaming the messaging, ask yourself if you are targeting the right people in the first place.
Research from the MarketingSherpa’s lead gen benchmark report shows that this is a common mistake many business owners make. Those employing laser-focused methods receive up to 50% more opens. Targeted campaigns get you noticed by the right people, but they save on advertising dollars as well.
How to Effectively Reduce Advertising Costs by 50%
Let’s say you have a customer who just purchased $5,000 worth of goods from your online retail shop. However, that sale took many hours of marketing dollars through Facebook Ads to finally nurture to that point.
Imagine you could cut those marketing expenses by more than half using targeted lead generation. It may sound too good to be true, but research by the Aberdeen Group shows just how effective this method really is at boosting the bottom line. But first, you have to learn who your target market is.
Targeted Lead Generation Begins with Data
Generating highly-targeted customers that actually convert to sales comes down to understanding a simple truth: data is king. This information can be broken down into specific market segments, allowing your sales and marketing departments to hone in on a very specific prospect. This information is comprised of four primary categories:
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Demographics | Things such as a customer’s age, gender, religion, or marital status let you instantly understand who they are from a bird’s-eye view. Consider what is most important to them in a product or service. |
| Behavioral | This can provide crucial details on spending and purchasing behaviors, or whether a prospect habitually stays loyal to certain brands. For instance, a younger demographic tends to be more experimental with trying new products. |
| Psychographics | This category provides insight into a prospect’s lifestyle choices, what they value most, their beliefs, and even their unique personality type. It helps you “speak their language”. |
| Geographic | Where your targeted demographic is physically located in the world will instantly clue you into things like their native language (for ad copy purposes), local customs, typical socioeconomic status, and even what competitors are local to them. |
By further zeroing in on this information through hyper-targeted lead searches using internal databases and CRMs, a clearer picture of your ideal customer begins to appear. Generating targeted leads with this level of detail helps you craft content tailored to their needs and pain points.
How to Find These Customers
Once you understand your target demographic, now comes the hard part: attracting their attention and letting them know you even exist. There are many ways to accomplish this, but you need to utilize several lead generation strategies across multiple fronts if you want any real chance at success.
Let’s take a closer look.
Powerful and Effective Methods for Capturing More Leads
There’s a good chance you are already employing at least one or more of the most powerful techniques to grab the attention of new targeted prospects, such as:
- Social media
- Cold calling
- Email marketing
Although they are important weapons to have in your arsenal, it’s important to leverage their true potential if you want to see results.
The Allure of Social Media
Platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter each serve as valuable ways to connect directly with customers in a more personal setting. Surprisingly though, many businesses don’t seem to be utilizing their strengths fully.
Creating Cold Calling that Doesn’t Sound Like Cold Calling
Let’s be honest, nobody enjoys receiving those “out of the blue” phone calls from strangers. That’s why your approach to cold calling should not sound so cold. It needs to add perceived value for the person on the other end of the line.
Start by crafting targeted lists that break potential leads up based on needs and common traits. For instance, you may decide that those generating at least 5 million or more in revenue each year receive a completely different pitch. Now, instead of it being some “random” phone call, it’s targeted. And once they feel heard, they are more likely to engage.
Building an Engaged Email Marketing Strategy
Building a powerful email marketing campaign is like nurturing a tiny, fragile plant. It takes consistency, a genuine interest, and providing the exact right amount of nutrients (or in the case of customers, valuable information when they need it most).
To make sure they read your emails (instead of dumping them into a spam folder), make sure to do the following.
- Include the recipient’s first name in your subject lines to create an instant, human connection. This simple tactic gets more opens than a non-personalized approach.
- Incorporate elements, such as quizzes or brief questionnaires, that allow the customer to self-segment.
- Don’t be afraid to incorporate “shock and awe” tactics, such as providing a huge discount (50% or more) to entice immediate action. However, use this method sparingly and infrequently. You only want customers that really need what you provide to sign up. Otherwise, they become a drain on your time and money.
Conclusion
Targeted lead generation comes down to finding what your customer most desperately needs and convincing them (without even being pushy.) that your product, service, or brand perfectly fulfills it. It’s all about quality over quantity, although many don’t understand how important of a difference that truly is.
This new approach to an outdated concept requires leveraging technology alongside savvy tactics while creating an emotional connection at the same time.
For guidance on implementing targeted lead generation strategies that resonate with your audience, reach out to Infintech Designs. We’re here to help you connect meaningfully with potential customers.
FAQs
What is a targeted lead list?
Unlike a general list, targeted lists laser focus on common traits that a select segment of customers share. This could be as general as income levels and geographical area or as specific as the size of their business (or the amount of profit they generate annually).
The power of these highly-specific lists lies in allowing your marketing to speak directly to a prospect’s needs as if it were custom-tailored specifically for them. Building a large net of potential customers should not be the goal. You want quality leads over quantity.
What are the most effective types of lead generation?
The simple answer is the ones that make the customer feel the most heard and special – not “spammy” or generic. Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Outbound marketing methods still work extremely well, despite recent trends toward AI and Automation.
They need to be smarter than before. This means making that phone call count by providing undeniable value, whether that be offering a special discount unavailable elsewhere, or giving exclusive insider secrets in exchange for signing up.
There’s still a huge need for things like cold calling in B2B settings. However, most companies rely solely on a more archaic, outdated approach, which costs them dearly. Successful targeted lead generation through direct mail and other outbound strategies relies on a carefully honed process.
- Referral Systems are the holy grail.
You need customers truly excited to be sharing your name to have any real chance at success. Offering perks to sweeten the pot, such as deep discounts, free products, or an upgraded service plan, are powerful tactics to encourage sharing. Gladly recommending your brand should be the norm.
It all starts with understanding exactly who it is that you serve. Use your marketing data and customer resource management systems to identify common trends before even thinking about running ad copy. Look at customer acquisition costs. Determine where your happy customers are coming from.
