There are many elements to marketing that can prove effective for growth of a business. However, at the heart of every marketing strategy should be a focus on generating sales-ready leads. After all, if the marketing isn’t generating leads and revenue, then it’s not working. The best marketing today doesn’t rely on loose metrics like frequency, reach, impressions, or branding. Not to say those concepts aren’t important, but they don’t create a concrete direction for a marketer to make decisions. Marketers can however make intelligent marketing based on how many qualified leads come through the door and ramp it up or down specific to the source.
A new book by David T. Scott titled The New Rules of Lead Generation - Proven Strategies to Maximize Marketing ROI is a resource that every corporate marketer should own. The New Rules of Lead Generation helps marketers by defining a lead and more importantly defining what kind of lead a business wants. Tacking on some more traditional thinking, he identifies what stage in the buying cycle (attention, interest, decision, and action) the lead could be in and then suggests developing products/services that solve a problem at each particular stage. In his book, Scott walks through what he’s identified as the 7 most successful lead-generation marketing tactics.
The 7 Most Successful Lead-Generation Tactics
- Search engine marketing
- Social media advertising (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter)
- Display advertising (a.k.a. banner ads)
- Email marketing
- Direct mail advertising
- Cold calling
- Trade shows
Scott provides some valuable best practices and insight well learned from his own personal experience. He talks about how to measure and optimize your campaigns and encourages marketers to embrace a integrated approach, which combines multiples tactics together for the biggest payoff.
The book is an easy read and although may seem a bit obvious to those with many years of experience in direct marketing, it will drastically reduce the learning curve for a new entrant. I could also see it being used as a powerful internal selling tool to provide to senior leadership to explain “why” the strategy is lead generation instead of simply branding.
For more information on The New Rules of Lead Generation: