Attract ideal clients using email-powered digital campaigns
An online lead generation campaign drives a stream of sales-qualified prospects into your professional service firm’s sales process.
An effective online lead generation strategy adopts a funnel methodology and is powered by the following components:
- Premium content offers – to attract potential prospects into an email-list based nurturing funnel
- Email address acquisition campaigns – to utilise specific traffic sources to grow your email list
- Lead nurturing campaigns – to nurture email subscribers from cold users into hot advocates
Begin your lead generation campaign using a premium content offer
A “premium content offer” (also known as a “lead magnet” or a “top of funnel offer”) is a downloadable or watchable piece of content, in the form of a PDF or a video, offered to website visitors in exchange for their contact information.
A premium content offer is used to capture prospects into an email-based nurturing funnel, or provide more value to existing subscribers.
An effective premium content offer:
- Attracts ideal clients,
- Helps them deeply understand your unique capabilities and experience without you having to “sell” to them,
- Deepens their relationship with you (thus making them “like” you), and
- Positions your paid services as the next logical step in their decision-making process.
What are some examples of a premium content offer?
Some great examples of premium content offers include:
- Templates and tools: Examples include factsheets, checklists, spreadsheets, and calculators.
- Webinars: Webinars are live or pre-recorded presentations that provide educational content. They allow you to interact with prospects and position yourself as an industry expert.
- Case studies: Case studies provide real-world examples of how you’ve helped one or more clients solve a problem or achieve a goal. Case studies allow you to “show, not sell”.
What are the qualities of an effective premium content offer?
An effective premium content offer:
- Contains coveted information that is hard to obtain elsewhere.
An effective premium content offer will provide coveted, hard-to-get information that gives readers or watchers a feeling of exclusivity or prestige. The more coveted the information, the more your subscribers will respect you as an authority in your industry (and thus will be more inclined to want to work with you). - Can’t be created using Artificial Intelligence tools.
Gone are the days of offering an ebook about the “7 steps to XYZ”. AI has dramatically raised the standard of free content available on the web. To solve this, your content offers must be unique, compelling, and expertly delivered. - Can be consumed quickly.
No-one reads whitepapers or e-books anymore, unless academic analysis or high-stakes evaluation practices are woven into your industry (or your ideal clients engage in these processes). An effective premium content offer will be fast to read, and easy to understand. - Contains your business’ points of difference.
A effective unique selling proposition (“USP”) is the cornerstone of effective marketing. An effective premium content offer will contain strategies and tactics closely related to your USP. Otherwise, your competitor down the road could create something just like yours. - Is challenging to implement.
Lastly, the strategies, tactics, and/or information inside your premium content offer should be difficult to actually implement. Ideally, you want to explain how to solve an unwanted problem or create a desired outcome… but make the solution far too hard or inconvenient for your subscribers to implement themselves. You want to position your paid service as the next ideal step for each subscriber.
Next, get your pipeline humming using an email address acquisition campaign
An email address acquisition campaign collects the email addresses of potential customers or clients, with the intention of sending them ongoing manual and automated email communications that:
- Nurtures them through their decision-making process to engage you
- Indoctrinates them into your “world”
- Educates them, and thus deepens their perception of your expertise and experience
- Isolates your competitors, leaving you as the logical option for them
An email address acquisition campaign helps you capture more prospects who are not yet ready to buy/engage you, however may do so in the future.
An email address acquisition campaign can be executed in different ways, including:
- Through a sign-up form on a website or a landing page,
- Through a social media ad, or
- Through offline events or promotions.
Finally, convert your prospects & email subscribers into warm, sales-qualified leads
Imagine having a sales conversation with a prospect who:
- Has transported themselves automatically from being “solution aware” to “product aware” (of your service) without any manual intervention from you
- Already knows the scale of your expertise and experience
- Has seen, first-hand, how you’ve solved some challenging problems for your clients
- Feels like they “know you already” and see you as somewhat of an “information celebrity”
- Likes you, both from an emotional and logical perspective
A lead nurturing campaign will help you achieve this, and is either conducted via:
- Marketing automation. An ‘automated email sequence’ is a stream of pre-written emails designed to nurture a subscriber from cold to hot without any manual intervention from you.
- Manual broadcast. It’s also important to nurture your list using manual email communications, containing your latest education and insights, case studies, and other unique, educational content.
How To Get Predictable Online Lead Generation For Your Business
The quickest and easiest way to get a thriving, business-growing online lead generation funnel for your professional services business is by requesting a consultation with one of our specialists.
