Getting an insider’s view on what works can save you a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money! The Welleslley Hills Group is a specialist marketing agency for professional services firms. They surveyed 700 firms and broke down the different lead generation methods to 33 in all – so in fact I am going to give you a list of all 33.
Please note: they are lead generation methods and arguably Welleslley Hills excluded referrals as a lead gen activity – presumably because lead-gen is a more pro-active task than receiving referrals. However, some of their other research clearly shows that referrals are still the main way that your prospects will know about you. For more information on a good referral system visit Increase Referrals With This System
So without further ado the 33 methods ranked by the percentage of firms that found them effective.
Now the BIG caveat here is that what works for some may not always be so successful for others and effective implementation means the difference between great results and lackluster response.
Interestingly “warm” calls are voted as the most effective method. How do you get those “warm” calls? You have to do other activities first such as emailing, snail mailing, networking and “cold” calling. In fact “cold” calling is only rated as effective by 10% of all the firms and is 25th on the list. This shows that in reality sometimes you have to do a combination of things together and they have to be in a system.
Another example is running your own in-house events. Forty-five percent of firms think this is successful. But how did they get the attendees there in the first place? A whole barrage of techniques can be used and often need to be used. Again some techniques that seemingly give low returns can be necessary to enable other methods to work.
So now you know what seems to work – what next? I’d recommend picking methods that suit your time, budget, and expertise. If you’re happy to talk in front of 20+ people you could arrange your own in-person event. But that will involve promotional activities, maybe building a list of contacts etc. So the whole process will take time to execute.
Whatever you choose you need to measure its effectiveness for yourself. It is vital you know how many new leads you get, how many leads eventually turn into clients, and what revenue you get from each of those. You also need to track expenditure for each component of the marketing campaign. Over time you can put the pieces together and when you want to get $100,000 in more revenue next year, you will know how much you’ll need to spend, what you’ll need to do and how long it will take before you get your return on your investment. In marketing, measurement is everything.
