Mastering Lead Generation: Manage Online & Offline Leads
Cecily Giancaterino
May 22, 2023
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11 min read
Marketing
Did you know that 91 percent of marketing professionals say lead generation—the process of identifying and nurturing potential customers—is their most important goal? However, many B2C and B2B marketers only focus on generating leads from online channels and ignore the potential of offline marketing activities. You should combine digital and offline lead generation for more successful business outcomes.
You can apply the four steps of the lead generation process—pre-targeting, finding leads, reaching out to leads, and reporting—to online and offline efforts. In this blog post, learn more about omnichannel lead generation and how FiveCRM can help you source and cultivate more leads in your telemarketing call center.
Key Takeaways:
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The Significance of Gathering Online and Offline Leads: Explore the importance of collecting both online and offline leads to maximize lead generation efforts. By utilizing various channels, businesses can reach a wider audience, capture diverse customer segments, and increase the chances of converting leads into customers.
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Online Lead Generation Strategies: Discover effective online lead generation strategies, such as creating compelling landing pages, implementing lead capture forms, optimizing website content, and leveraging digital advertising. These tactics help attract potential customers, capture their information, and nurture them through the sales funnel.
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Offline Lead Generation Techniques: Offline lead generation remains relevant in the digital age. Learn about traditional methods like networking events, trade shows, direct mail campaigns, and print advertising. These offline strategies can complement online efforts and provide opportunities to connect with prospects who prefer non-digital interactions.
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Integration of Online and Offline Lead Generation: The integration of online and offline lead generation channels is crucial for a comprehensive approach. By synchronizing data and aligning marketing efforts, businesses can create a cohesive customer experience and gain valuable insights into customer behavior for targeted campaigns.
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Lead Nurturing and Conversion: Effective lead generation is not limited to capturing leads but also involves nurturing them and converting them into customers. Explore lead nurturing strategies, such as personalized email campaigns, targeted content, and follow-up communication, to build relationships and guide leads through the conversion process.
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Tracking and Measuring Lead Generation Success: Tracking and measuring lead generation efforts is essential to evaluate performance and optimize strategies. Implement tools and analytics to monitor lead sources, conversion rates, and ROI. By identifying successful channels and making data-driven decisions, businesses can continuously improve their lead generation efforts.
Leads, Explained
Before you embark on your omnichannel lead generation strategy, understand the difference between a lead and a prospect—two terms that confuse some businesses:
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A lead is an unqualified contact. That's someone who hasn't moved through your marketing and sales pipelines.
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A prospect is a qualified contact. That's someone who has already entered your sales cycle.
In other words, a lead is a potential customer who hasn't established a relationship with your brand just yet. A prospect is a potential customer that has moved into your sales process and has already engaged with sales reps.
It's also important to differentiate between lead generation and lead conversion:
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Lead generation is all about sourcing and establishing relationships with unqualified contacts.
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Lead conversion involves converting leads into bona fide paying customers, but this process happens much later in marketing.
Online vs. Offline Leads
Most companies should identify, nurture, and manage both online and offline leads.
What Are Online Leads?
Online leads are those who have landed on one of your digital marketing channels from a search engine, website link, or through word of mouth. Those digital marketing channels include your website, blog, or one of your social media platforms. Many quality leads come from web forms on your website; visitors fill out these forms if interested in your products or services. (Web forms let sales teams build profiles about potential customers.) Online leads can also come from surveys and landing pages.
What Are Offline Leads?
Offline leads come from non-digital marketing channels. For example, you might have met someone face-to-face at a business conference or generated a lead through a direct mail campaign. As offline leads don't come from the internet, it's harder to track your target audience. However, you can still monitor these leads through various methods, such as creating a custom landing page for offline customers and including it on printed marketing materials. Offline leads might also come from telephone inquiries and word of mouth.
Combine Online and Offline Lead Generation Marketing
Online and offline lead generation marketing are not mutually exclusive. Take content marketing, for example—one of the most lucrative online lead generation strategies. Research shows that 73 percent of companies spending 10-70 percent of their marketing budget on this method were very successful.
Content marketing for online lead generation is pretty self-explanatory: Create compelling click-worthy content on digital channels that captures potential customers. However, you can use the same content in offline marketing materials such as brochures, catalogs, leaflets, and flyers. Repurposing online content for printed materials can be a cost-effective way to generate offline leads. If you already have a killer online content strategy, you could generate a high response rate from potential customers.
Lead generation tip: Include a QR code on printed materials that links to a landing page. That allows offline leads to learn more about your products and services. QR codes also make it possible to track offline leads.
You can also combine offline and online lead generation marketing with business cards. It's often difficult to collect information from potential customers at conferences and other in-person events, especially if those events are busy. Handing out business cards to potential customers with contact information—your phone number, website, email address, social media links, etc.—is helpful when networking because it increases brand awareness. Including a URL to a custom landing page for offline customers on business cards also allows you to track inbound leads after an event. You could create a custom landing page that encourages offline contacts to book a demo of your product or sign up to your email list.
Whatever methods you use, make sure your online and offline lead generation efforts are consistent. That means using the same logo, font, brand colors, and design features in both online and printed materials.
Email Marketing for Online and Offline Leads
Personalization is important in online and offline lead generation. Referring to a lead by their first name in an email, for example, can increase engagement and loyalty. You can take this further by mentioning in an email how you came across an offline contact. (You could write something like "It was great to meet you at the recent conference.") You can also include a new lead's first name in printed materials like brochures, flyers, and data sheets if you have this information at the beginning of your offline marketing campaign.
Where possible, try to differentiate between digital and offline leads during email campaigns. You could add offline contacts to one email list and online contacts to another list. Doing so lets you nurture both types of leads using different techniques.
The End Goal
Although offline contacts require different lead generation techniques than online ones, all leads will eventually end up in your conversion funnel. Making full use of already-published online content, providing contact information at networking events, creating custom landing pages, and personalizing emails when generating offline leads will supplement any online marketing activities you undertake. Using the right lead generation processes at regular touchpoints will establish relationships that keep your brand at the forefront of leads' minds.
Conclusion
FiveCRM is a CRM for telemarketing call centers that stores up-to-date information about online and offline leads. The platform enhances contact management, allowing salespeople to learn more about leads' interests, hobbies, and purchasing decisions before communicating with them over the phone through cold calling. Integrated email marketing capabilities also help nurture offline and online leads.
FiveCRM comes with analytical features that provide real-time insights into online and offline leads, helping agents discover trends in customer data for more successful lead generation outcomes.
Here are some FiveCRM use cases that also enhance lead generation in your call center:
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Suitable for B2C and B2B companies, FiveCRM lets you automate and manage workflows, callbacks, follow-ups, and automated dialing sets. That helps you reduce call transition times, enhance outreach, and improve sales efficiency during outbound marketing.
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Manage up to 999 different databases and get unlimited storage when scaling your business and implementing marketing strategies.
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Specialized marketing and performance tools streamline lead gen efforts by monitoring operational performance and capturing high-quality leads in your call center.
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Customizable lead scoring tools let sales reps optimize lead generation and lead management by focusing on the most lucrative new customers in the sales cycle.
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Produce and track data about department performance, monitor a buyer's journey, and improve sales growth in your contact center with the latest key metrics.
Contact hello@fivecrm.com for a demo or get FiveCRM now and generate more effective leads.
FAQs
Q: Why is it important to gather both online and offline leads for lead generation?
A: Gathering both online and offline leads is important because it allows businesses to reach a wider audience and capture diverse customer segments. By utilizing various channels, businesses increase their chances of generating more leads and converting them into customers. Additionally, incorporating online and offline lead generation strategies provides a comprehensive approach that caters to different customer preferences and behaviors.
Q: What are some effective online lead generation strategies?
A: Effective online lead generation strategies include creating compelling landing pages, implementing lead capture forms on websites, optimizing website content for search engines, leveraging digital advertising channels, and utilizing social media platforms. These strategies help attract potential customers, capture their information, and initiate the lead nurturing process.
Q: Are offline lead generation techniques still relevant in the digital age?
A: Yes, offline lead generation techniques are still relevant in the digital age. Networking events, trade shows, direct mail campaigns, print advertising, and other traditional methods provide opportunities to connect with prospects who prefer non-digital interactions. Integrating offline techniques with online efforts creates a balanced and well-rounded lead generation approach.
Q: How can online and offline lead generation be integrated effectively?
A: Integrating online and offline lead generation involves synchronizing data and aligning marketing efforts. Implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system can help centralize lead information and track interactions across channels. By utilizing consistent messaging, branding, and personalized communication, businesses can create a cohesive customer experience that enhances lead generation and conversion.
Q: What is the importance of lead nurturing in the lead generation process?
A: Lead nurturing is crucial in the lead generation process as it involves building relationships and guiding leads through the conversion funnel. By implementing personalized email campaigns, providing targeted content, and following up with leads, businesses can stay engaged with potential customers, address their needs, and increase the likelihood of conversion.
Q: How can businesses track and measure the success of their lead generation efforts?
A: Businesses can track and measure the success of their lead generation efforts by implementing tools and analytics. They can monitor lead sources, track conversion rates, and analyze return on investment (ROI). This data-driven approach helps businesses identify successful lead generation channels, optimize strategies, and make informed decisions for continuous improvement.
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