Preparing a Lead Generation Campaign

Every business needs to generate leads to stay in business.

Start by defining a hard offer and a soft offer for your campaign.

The hard offer is for prospects who have an immediate interest in talking with you about your product or service. Their need for a solution exists right now, and you can help them solve it. The hard offer is typically an initial meeting or phone conference and the response mechanism is usually the telephone or the net.

A small percentage of your audience is likely to have an immediate need so only a small percentage are likely to accept the hard offer.

The soft offer is for prospects who see a value in your product or service and who might have a need for it in the future. Most of your prospects are in this category. The majority of responses to a lead generation campaign are going to come from the soft offer.

The soft offer is usually for information about the product in the form of a brochure, catalog or information package. The reply mechanism is typically an online response form, a reply card or a fax-back form.

The next element of the lead generation campaign is to identify the problem your prospect has that your product or service can solve.

For example, you can see from the services listed on this site that I partner with clients in many ways. But for a lead generation campaign, I focus on only one service - one solution.

Stating that problem in a dramatic way gives an effective opening for lead generation copy. It's also useful to identify an information gap in your prospect's knowledge about the problem, or show how to identify and choose a solution.

The next step is to create a premium you can use as an incentive for your prospect to take action. it can be a special report, an information booklet or an e-book giving advice on the problem and how to solve it.

now it's time to find a list of potential buyers. That can mean locating the media (newspapers, magazines, radio shows) that reach them. Or, we can take a look at doing joint ventures with people who are already marketing to your target market.

Next we create promotions for the available media. Every successful promotion identifies the problem, explains why your product or service is the ideal solution and makes both a hard and soft offer to generate responses. A premium is included as part of the soft offer to increase response rates.

A very effective approach for a lead generation campaign is to set up copy around the case study of a customer who used your product or service and had spectacular results.

Sharing the customer's story, including their name and photograph, and providing the quantitative results they achieved is a thoughtful way of persuading your prospects to want the same results for themselves.

Help your customers see themselves achieving the great results shown in the case study. Then include five or six other examples to show that many clients are getting good results.

Part of a lead generation campaign is being prepared to respond to those leads. Prepare an inquiry fulfillment kit you will send to people who respond to your promotion.

The inquiry fulfillment kit typically includes a pocket folder with a cover letter, your business card and an order form or needs assessment. You can also include article reprints, more case studies, a client list, and, of course, testimonials.

Two versions of this inquiry fulfillment kit are required - an online and an off-line version. Leads that come through the internet should receive the online version immediately, and give them the option of asking for the off-line version.

Leads that come through "traditional" avenues get the off-line version of the kit. Of course, all your advertising copy will invite responders to include their e-mail address so you give them immediate gratification by sending the online version of the kit.

Every promotion should be tested in small quantities with each test key coded for tracking. This is how you know which lists or media gave what results.

The objective is to measure the number of responses so you can determine a percentage response rate, and the cost per inquiry. You can then track the conversion rate, and the cost per order, to determine which promotions are giving the best results.

This tells you which promotions are likely to be winners with larger audiences. It also gives you information for the process of continually improving your direct response marketing to increase leads and sales.