Kickstart Your Marketing ROI — Part Two

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Create an Effective Inquiry Generation Process

Now that your foundation is laid, you can begin to generate inquires to fill the pipeline that will ultimately generate qualified leads that your sales force can convert to customers. But before you begin this stage, remember to solidify the business case and show how you will report the results.

The next step is to develop a compelling, "personalized" direct mail piece that addresses the target audience's pain point. Remember that businesses don't buy products for business, people do. Your messaging then must address their issues both from a rational standpoint as well as an emotional one. It is critical to remember that you are not trying to get them to immediately purchase the product – unless of course they want to. The goal is to get an inquiry. Putting forth an offer (e.g. a white paper, case study, free gift) in your direct mail piece will move a number of the recipients to ask for the offer and generate inquiries to begin filling the pipeline. Give them multiple ways to respond to your offer, including a business reply card, the web, or a toll-free phone number. Once a request for the offer is made, be sure to fulfill it within 24 hours.

Track, nurture and measure

Once you have generated the leads, you are now ready to further utilize the CAM software. This stage is critical as it moves the inquiry down the sales path. There are many ways to nurture the leads, including newsletters, webinars, case studies, simple surveys and press releases, to name a few. What is key here is that you stay engaged with the prospect during the decision making process. Based on the criteria of when this individual qualifies as a solid lead, the contact can be given to the appropriate sales representative for conversion opportunities.

Over a period of time you should continue to monitor the financial results and determine how it matches up with the original projections. Only then can you look at what modifications may need to be made to further enhance your customer acquisition process.

At first this all may seem a little daunting, but the best marketers in the business are already doing this and doing it very effectively. Interestingly, the top ten utilizers of this direct marketing approach are business-to-business firms. Should you have questions about your lead-generation program, we would be delighted to discuss this with you more in detail.

Craig O'Neal
President/CEO