Finding ways to improve your return on investment (ROI) on your lead generation campaign is an essential marketing strategy. Luckily, altering your strategy doesn’t mean having to make significant changes to start seeing results.
The right lead generation strategy is essential to the long-term growth of any company. Without lead generation, your team may wonder why you’re failing to meet business recruitment goals. You could have the best product or service in the market with a strong price point but none of it will mean much if you don’t have a system in place to generate leads.
Oftentimes, minor modifications to your lead generation strategy can increase business attraction and have an impressive impact on an EDO’s success.
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It goes without saying, a lucrative return on investment is the ultimate goal of lead generation and it signifies that a proper strategy is working. Lead generation isn’t exclusive to getting a high volume of prospects into your pipeline, the efficacy of a properly implemented strategy is also very important.
So, what exactly can economic development and investment attraction organizations do to improve ROI on lead generation campaigns?
If those billboards, ads, and TV spots aren’t yielding the return on investment you’re looking for, changing your marketing efforts might be the right move. Lead generation can be a great way to increase your company’s profitability. Whether that means generating leads on your own or working with a third-party lead generation provider, we’ve put together some of the top strategies for how lead generation can help with your business recruitment efforts.
Set a plan with clear goals
Setting clear goals for your organization means aligning marketing objectives throughout the organization. Involve the business recruitment team to make sure sales and marketing strategies run smoothly and have the same objective. Ensure your metrics are quantifiable and pay close attention to progress. From the top, focus on delivering quality over quantity and make sure measures are taken to expedite progress after identifying fields that might need improvement.
Before starting a campaign, organizations should have a plan to guide their actions. Considering the following questions before implementing your plan:
- Who are your targets and prospects?
- Where are they located?
- What will the frequency be?
- Is your budget enough?
Organic traffic
Getting organic traffic to your website is like having customers walk into your storefront. By increasing your rank on search engines, you’ll have waves of potential leads landing on your website, which is a cheap alternative to paid ad services. A big advantage of ranking organically on search engines is once your website is optimized for search engines, minimal work needs to be done in the backend to maintain a profitable pace of leads — it’s all about getting there.
A great way to generate more organic traffic is by improving your search rank on Google. Getting your company on the first page of Google establishes your EDO as an authority and allows more leads to find you. Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about relevance and landing on the first page is a powerful asset to your brand.
ROI tends to take longer with organic searches as the campaigns tend to be slow to start, meaning your company will have no returns for a while. With lead generation, businesses can immediately start generating revenue as soon as they invest.
Create quality evergreen content
Content is the currency of marketing. Content helps to build up credibility and increases your reach and exposure. Instead of creating content just for the sake of it, focus on evergreen content, pieces that will do well over a long period of time and improve your search engine rankings.
However, just posting content will not be enough, you need compelling content to collect leads. Social media is full of businesses competing for attention, and you need to be able to stand out against your competition.
Posting regularly can help your EDO/IPA expand its reach and generate more leads organically. Your followers and network should be up-to-date with what you are doing, and your content should reflect your services and expertise, allowing you to establish yourself to potential leads through your page.
Your content should be focused on the audience you are trying to reach, whether it’s through a podcast, blog or simply regular posts on your page, it needs to be relevant to stand out to potential leads. Images need to be crisp, and content needs to be honest, sharp, and interesting. Make sure any links you are using are clear and you are giving your audience tempting call-to-actions.
Your content can be one of the most powerful ways to not only create awareness about your location and region but also reach more leads and reap a great ROI.
Individualize social media interactions
The average person has seven active social media accounts and spends nearly three hours a day on them. Investment attraction agencies looking for a greater return on investment should take advantage of all that social media time. Be active and consistent across the social media platforms that are good for your organization and don’t rule anything out.
Social media can amplify your presence, showcase your assets, increase your reach and help you target the leads you have been searching for. If you know how to use social media for lead generation and are willing to invest your time and energy into the right strategies, social media will be a vital tool for your lead generation strategies.
Be active and consistent across the social media platforms that are good for your organization and don’t rule anything out. Do you think you have an interesting angle on TikTok that can drive leads? Give it a shot. It’s recommended that a business has three or four different social media channels to promote its brand. The ones you choose should obviously depend on who your target market is and where they digitally hang out.
The best part about using social media for lead generation? It doesn’t have to cost a lot, unlike other more traditional marketing strategies. You can choose to use paid features, but you can also get results just by investing your time. Paid social media includes content that brands pay social media platforms to share with specific new targeted audiences who are likely to be interested, either through “boosting” their organic content, or designing unique advertisements. If you are looking into utilizing one of the many paid features on different sites, it is important to find the one that works best for you. Check out some of the paid social media options LinkedIn offers to its users.
Hashtags on Twitter and Instagram are great tools to connect with like-minded individuals and brands. LinkedIn is the clear leader in B2B networking and it has impressive traction as a B2B lead generation network.
Be sure to personalize your social media interactions to reinforce that there’s actually a human behind the screen. Personalized requests, messages, and interactions are great to cut through the initial prospect of spam and non-sensical marketing. The best social media results come from being an active member of the digital community.
Be active with online reviews
If your website doesn’t have a testimonials page or a reviews feature, it might be worth considering some. A study by RevLocal, a digital marketing agency based out of Ohio, found that over 90% of consumers read online reviews when considering a product or service. Reviews help to build consumer trust, improve search ranking, and ultimately improve conversions. RevLocal says that consumers are likely to spend 31% more on businesses that have good reviews.
The same principle applies to investment attraction. Encourage your local business community and past investors to post reviews on your profile page highlighting the assistance your organization provided.
Review and analyze your data
Speaking of reviews, reviewing your own in-house data can help to determine behavioral changes in your client’s personas so your company can adjust accordingly. Improve your market research, data gathering, and overall analytics to determine your ideal audience, where leads are coming from, which method is generating the most leads, and which leads are converting into projects.
When it comes to ROI, metrics and numbers don’t lie. Use data to identify trends and learn from them constantly.
Stay on top of Google
Getting your company on the first page of Google establishes your company as an authority. Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about relevance and landing on the first page is a powerful asset to your brand. High-ranking search engine companies will be able to see a good ROI.
In conclusion
A good lead-generation strategy is a catalyst for the long-term success of any economic development and investment promotion agency. For your campaign to produce the desired results, organize your strategy to attract high-quality leads and a beneficial return on investment. The quality of your leads will influence your ROI’s quality. It’s integral to attract relevant investors who are interested in what it is your region is offering.
Start by implementing a few of these lead generation strategies and keep up to date, ensuring the lead generation tactics can be translated into new investment projects.
