Leads, prospects, potential customers, prospective clients, qualified sales, opportunities are all names used to describe a company’s main reason for existence.

A business, of any size, needs customers in order to survive.

Finding those leads, customers, prospects, or whatever you want to call them through lead generation campaigns is a first step and the key to success.

Thanks to technology and revolutionary advances in social media, capturing leads has never been easier if you know what works.

But, with any type of lead generation campaign, trust is a major factor and needs to be intertwined into the foundation of every campaign. 

Steven Covey once said that “trust won’t necessarily rescue a poor strategy, but low trust will almost always derail a good one.” I subscribe to that message wholeheartedly. 

Social media has certainly revolutionized how we build relationships and the speed at which we do so, but information is moving so quickly that it can be dangerous. 

As we’ve seen, it’s sometimes hard to separate fact from fiction and because of that trust has been greatly impacted. People tend to take the written word as gospel. 

Over the last few years, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that (probably you too) that you can’t believe everything you read and see just because someone posts it on Facebook. And just because you see it on Twitter doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

 To be honest, sometimes it’s hard to know what to believe. 

And that is where the trust factor comes in...

 Establishing trust early with your prospects is vital. Continuing the trust and personalization throughout your relationship with them will ensure that your client base looks to you as the authority and has faith in your mission. 

With all of the spam, identity theft, phishing, and smishing out there, sometimes it feels like clicking on a simple email could crash your entire computer or steal your identity...Which has presented some challenges for email marketing and email campaigns. Sometimes it’s hard to even get your email in the door (or inbox in this case) because of corporate rules and filters.  

And yet despite this, “studies show that prospects still prefer to be contacted by businesses through email. 86% of business professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes.”1

With any lead generation campaign, it’s important to decide if you’re going after cold contacts, warm leads or a combination of both and there are various the most important factor for success is your communication. That you present yourself in a very approachable and human (non salesy) way. .

At Connect 365 we suggest our clients get leads in 3 primary ways. 

#1. Email Outreach: Reaching out to cold or warm prospects through personal email to get a positive conversation started. 

#2. Social Media Content: Posting thought leadership content on your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter profiles/communities to build your brand, stay top-of-mind, and paint YOU as the authority in your space. 

#3. Trials/Demos/Meeting: Getting Your prospects to try your product or have a conversation with you about how you can help them solve the problems they are currently facing or may be facing in the future.. 

Typically it ends up being a combination of all three that has the most success. 

Regardless of the strategy, creating a personalized messaging strategy that can be implemented with simple automation is the consistent key for success. In other works you want to make your prospects feel special while spending a little of your time as possible on the implementation. Connect 365 provides you with various templates, campaign ideas, and a playbook that can be customized to fit your individual situation.  

There are short-term and long-term strategies, but let’s focus on short-term strategies and campaigns first to help you drive success.

Expert Content Lead Generation Campaign

Perfect for: Anyone. Whether you have unique content or you are simply sharing curated content applicable to your prospects' interests, this is one of our most recommended short-term lead generation campaigns.

Outcome: Book appointments or meetings with either cold (or warmer prospects).

It is important to  put your expertise on display and provide unique content early on. Remember it’s not about you, but what’s important for your clients and what unites them. 

Prospects have a limited attention span so it’s important to show value immediately.  All email outreach and follow up content should be focused on highlighting benefits to THEM. 

So in this campaign it is imperative that you highlight how they can benefit from engaging with you right away. This doesn't mean you list out the features one by one. Keep the focus on their needs, their goals, and their wants. 

While initiating the conversation is important but you don’t want to overwhelm them off the bat... so keep it short, simple and give a compelling reason to chat and connect with you in the future.

Short Term Lead Generation Campaign With Group Invites: 

Perfect for: Anyone. Whether you manage your own group (on LinkedIn, Facebook or elsewhere) or you are simply sharing information on a third-party group that is applicable to your prospects' interests. 

Outcome: Book appointments or meetings with either cold (or warmer prospects).

Don’t lose sight of your prospects. They want to feel valued. They only want to communicate and associate with people they can benefit from. This is natural. They are on a mission and anything that does not help them get there is just noise. 

So when launching a group invite campaign, make it very clear that the group you're inviting them to join is for people just like them. 

Emphasize why being a member of that community is relevant to them and most importantly HOW it adds value to their lives and business. It’s important to create a unique reason why your prospects would be interested in speaking with you. Your call to action should be simple and compelling.

And the best part is that a lot of the content can be almost completely hands off when combined with social media automation.

Direct Lead Generation & Outreach Campaign

Perfect For: Those targeting warmer prospects. B2B companies can target colder audiences with this campaign, but this direct approach is typically best reserved for warmer contacts. (We aim for more of a relationship-building campaign first for colder contacts.)

Since this campaign is intended to speak directly about how you can help them right away and ties each message into their desired results, it’s typically a better play for warmer prospects. 

A simple way to do this is to provide examples of how you’ve helped other clients and people just like them achieve success. While we don’t want to be salesy it would be a mistake to avoid talking about your experience in helping similar people overcome the unique problems that they need to solve.

This campaign allows you to introduce big benefits and relays your experience. Relevant data referencing back to these successes allows you to exert your authority, foster truth, and gain qualified leads. It also gives you the connection to check-in and to ask for a follow-up response.

How To Get Your Lead Generation Campaigns To Stand Out 

Priority Delivery

Don’t rely on 3rd-party email servers to target your smaller lists OR segments of your email. Deliver your emails to look and get delivered through your main account. 

Authentic Messaging

Choose a messaging style and tone that feels unique to your prospects. Reference why you’re reaching out, provide examples of other clients like them, keep your copy short, and put an emphasis on adding value to your recipients. 

Frequent Follow Up

Sales are won and lost in the follow-up. Don’t rely on just one message or one campaign. You need to maintain consistent top-of-mind status and build relationships with your audience.

Know When to Ask for Help 

Attracting your best clients and prospects is not easy and sometimes that’s when it’s important to know when to call in the experts. At Connect 365, we help you build relationships with cold prospects and nurture warm leads into long-lasting clients with a simple, streamlined process. 

Take a 14-Day Test Drive to unlock full scripts and tools and learn how to customize campaigns to attract the right leads.  Connect 365 can help! 

From email automation to lead management to social media automation, we can re-energize your marketing strategy and turn prospects into lifelong customers. 

Your Turn

Learn How to Implement The Trust Equation in My Upcoming Lead Blueprint Workshop

Want a better way to get leads and clients? Sign up for my upcoming workshop that goes step by step through our lead generation process that has been so successful in our clients’ businesses -- the L.E.A.D. Blueprint. 

In the workshop, I’ll be teaching:

• Exactly what an Authority Leadership Platform is and how you can leverage our Authority Amplifier process to position yourself above the competition, putting your business on an entirely different playing field.
• How to target high-end prospects using online platforms (social media + email) in a unique way that builds instant trust by doing the polar opposite of what most ‘salespeople’ try
• How to develop real relationships online using a highly-personal Multi-Touchpoint Messaging Campaign to naturally guide the conversation towards an appointment
• The right way to automate processes that build trust, improve credibility, and increase responsiveness in your campaigns.

Join an upcoming workshop session by signing up here!

Implementing the Trust Equation is a game changer and can propel your small business in front of more prospects, generate more leads and grow your business. 

From email automation to lead management to social media automation, Connect 365 can help you turn those cold leads into warm prospects and create long-lasting, lifetime customers. 

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1. (2020) Hubspot. The Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2021. Available at https://connect365.io/lead-generator/ accessed on 31 March 2021.