4 Ways to Reinvent Your Lead Generation Approach During COVID-19

‘History can bring luck: this is what we can call optimism’ – Stephane Hessel

History has shown that events that cause global negative effects can result in positive changes thereafter. For instance, after the 2008 recession, we saw the inception of start-ups like Uber, WhatsApp, and many more. Today, these start-ups have grown to be the big brands they are.

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped everything and you’re probably worried about how your business will survive and how to stay connected with your audience during this time. We may not have all the answers to this crisis but we’re here to help.

In this blog post, we’ll talk about how you can look at these challenging times as a new-found opportunity for your lead generation strategy. Let’s get to it!

Best lead generation practices for the new normal

Your audience is probably now more active online, looking for information that your business can probably give answers to. Here are 3 best practices you can use for a pulse check on your lead generation efforts:

• Focus on customer experience now more than ever: Focus on instilling optimism and confidence in customers by providing the right information, tracking feedback in real-time, and rewarding the prospects that engage with incentives.
• Build and increase trust: Deliver consistency and quality to show customers that you’re there for them in the same way as before. Provide your customers with transparency and keep your communication channels open. This way, you can build trustworthy relationships with your customers.
• Shift budget to digital strategies: Your customers, as well as prospects, are working from home and are spending more time in front of their screens. So, to boost demand, this is the right time to allocate your marketing budget to digital strategies over traditional events or summits.

New lead generation approach during crisis

To pivot your marketing plan in times of crisis, we’ve created a checklist of 4 ways that can help steer your lead generation strategy in the right direction.

1. Optimize your website: Conduct an audit of your website and evaluate where most of your online traffic and outreach comes from. Add lead generation forms on high-traffic pages to get better quality leads.

2. Leverage your marketing automation platform: This is the time to look at your contact database and use your marketing automation platform to improve your lead generation. Here’s how.

• Nurture existing customers through lead scoring: While lead scoring is primarily used to score prospects, you can also use lead scoring for your existing customers to determine how ready are they for a cross-sell or up-sell. You can send relevant and educative content about your additional services or products to determine which clients are engaging with your content and the ones that might be ready for a cross-sell or up-sell.
• Re-engage inactive customers: Use your marketing automation platform to set up custom triggers that identify an “inactive user”. If a contact hasn’t engaged with your campaigns for a while, your marketing automation platform will send out an automated email to the ‘inactive user’ with an offer for a free trial, early access to a new product, etc, to re-engage inactive customers.

3. Refine your content marketing: Perform a content audit and fill the information gap with educative content ideas that are engaging and useful to your audience. You can fuel your content with marketing automation to deliver the right content to the customer according to their stage in the buying journey.

4. Generate digital content: To reach your audience at this time, increase your digital footprint. You can use the following resources to enhance your lead generation efforts:

• Virtual events: Replace postponed or canceled events with virtual events. The world of virtual events opens you up to a wider audience.
• Webinars: Webinars help educate your audience about your product/service and showcase how your product solves problems. Add an interactive Q&A session at the end of the webinar to give your audience an opportunity to engage with you 1:1 real-time.
• Video: 59% of executives say that they would rather watch a video than read text. Dive into video marketing and create content such as tutorial videos, promo videos, testimonials, etc, to generate interest and engagement among your audience.
• Podcasts: 74% of people listen to podcasts to learn about new things. Create podcasts to educate your prospects more about your products and services virtually.
• Chatbots: Add a chatbot to your website to help automate marketing and lead generation efforts while being present 24*7 for your customers’ queries.

As all marketers try to make sense of this new world order, they must adapt to this changing environment and multiply marketing efforts with the aforementioned ways to come out of the crisis stronger.

Is your lead generation strategy ready for the new normal? Talk to us!