“Dating” Your Prospects

Remember the first time you met that special someone?  Your heart was a flutter, your palms were sweaty, you hoped that they liked you as much as you liked them, and you were elated when you planned your first date.  Although you might have known the moment you met them that this was the person you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, there were still several steps you had to go through before you set a wedding date.

Engaging leads is very similar to dating.  You need to deepen your relationship with prospects over time.  One such way to do this is through lead generation content. While thought leadership content should influence and guide people before they’re in a buying cycle, the content here should be targeted to those who are just beginning to look for solutions.  From writing and marketing countless white papers, case studies, and similar lead generation materials, here are three things I’ve learned you should add to the end of the document to earn the greatest response.

1.      Ask the reader to pass your document to others they know.  2. Ask the reader to subscribe to something.  I like to add a call to action to register for something that continues the discussion. A newsletter or an e-course of some type is nice because it opens up a series of future contacts. 3. After the initial call to action has been fulfilled it is best practice to push prospects to a thank you landing page which contains a secondary offer. This helps to gage how serious a potential lead may be about your product or service.

Always ask your prospect for another date.  I suggest asking the reader to contact you for a discussion. Send the person making the request for a meeting a brief questionnaire to prepare for the call.  This questionnaire should ask the basic questions about their business, marketing and sales efforts to date.  Tailor the questionnaire to the topic of the document they are responding to. This questionnaire further qualifies them as a prospective customer and provides the necessary conversation to jumpstart the conversation. When making this offer, it’s important to not to conduct the meeting like a sales call. Instead focus the conversation on adding value.

By using each of the three calls to action above, we have extended the reach of our clients lead gen content and put in place an automated system for qualifying, engaging, and then passing key prospects onto the sales team.