How to Generate Sales Leads Without Cold Calling
Cold calling is the backup sales strategy for many businesses that need to generate sales leads. While it has the potential to find new clients and grow a business, it is also unreliable in its effectiveness and can be an inefficient use of resources, time and money.
There has been a drive towards using other strategies that target warm leads by reaching out to better-qualified prospects.
In this post, we will explore why cold calling is inefficient and look at some alternatives for generating sales leads.
Why is cold calling not the best way to generate sales leads?
Cold calling is the most traditional way of generating new sales leads. However, 80% of people do not like receiving cold calls and prefer contact by email.
The process of cold calling can be inefficient as there is no way to automate the calls, and a large proportion of calls will go to voicemail.
While there is a place for cold calling, it is more successful if calls are concentrated on existing customers.
Alternative Strategies to Cold Calling for Generating Sales Leads
- Cold Email Campaigns
Since buyers prefer email contact, a cold email campaign is an obvious alternative to cold calling.
It is a direct form of communication that can be read at the recipient’s leisure.
It is possible to make the process more efficient by automating some aspects of the process, including finding contact information, using persuasive templates and organising automatic follow-up emails.
Professional lead generators will give you access to tools that provide appropriate contact data.
Tools can be used to ensure that your emails are sent out at scale, so you enjoy a far greater reach.
Alternatively, you can use a more personalised approach to ensure your emails contain relevant information for prospects. This approach will often reap bigger yields.
GDPR compliance is essential but cold emails are not prohibited, providing specific rules are followed.
- Content Marketing
Content marketing should be an essential part of any marketing strategy. When it comes to lead generation, excellent content will provide a draw for new prospects.
To ensure your content marketing brings in leads, research the kind of questions they would be asking. Most people’s first port of call if they want information is to search on Google.
You want your content to provide informative, expert answers to critical questions so that visitors click through to your products and services. Quality content helps to build trust in your expertise.
The beauty of leads generated this way is that they will already be interested in your business and will be better qualified than many leads generated by cold calling.
- Referral Advertising
Referrals from existing customers positively affect leads and can drive purchase decisions.
Every generation is likely to be positively influenced by recommendations from others.
Referral marketing is where you encourage your satisfied customers to spread the word about your products or services. It is often done by providing incentives.
Many home delivery food services, such as Hello Fresh, offer incentives to existing customers to refer friends and family with discounts earned for every referral. It brings in new leads as well as encouraging existing customers to stay.
As well as building referrals through incentives in your products or services, you can gain referrals by providing outstanding solutions and services.
If you offer products or services that your customers love, they will naturally spread the word. It isn’t a quick fix, but it should be part of your long-term strategy to build your brand.
- Social Media
Traditionally businesses used events and conferences to reach out and connect with new prospects, but now it is possible to find, connect and nurture sales prospects online.
A wide variety of social media sites can be used depending on your niche, ranging from Facebook to Linkedin.
You can use a Lead Generation company to maximise your reach across multiple sites by using programs that allow them to run campaigns on a single platform.
In addition to advertising campaigns, you can build an online presence that engages your audience and grows trust in your brand. It is all about starting meaningful, directed conversations.
- Data Driven Targeting
Using data to provide information on your prospects is a way to ensure that your marketing has a better conversion rate.
Campaigns that are driven by data will ensure that you target quality prospects who are more likely to engage with your business.
Mobile data can be used to ascertain intent and interest based on browsing history, while GPS technology can generate leads from precise locations.
It is essential for positive sales leads to not just focus on the right demographic but also buyer intent and behaviour.
- Retargeting
Retargeting is an effective strategy for generating sales leads. It focuses ads on previous visitors to your website by ensuring they see your ads while browsing other sites.
Essentially, your ads follow your users around, making your brand seem more significant than it is and sending out signals that your brand is already popular. Since your visitors have already shown an interest in your business, they are more likely to convert than random buyers targeted by cold calling.
Retargeting is essentially an automated way of nurturing prospects and continuing to build a relationship with potential buyers. These prospects are 70% more likely to convert compared to cold leads.
Lead nurturing is an essential part of creating sales. Retargeting ads and email campaigns to existing leads are well worth investing in as they can increase revenue by up to 760%.
Final Thoughts
Investing in strategies to generate sales leads is undoubtedly worthwhile and can be more successful than cold calling.
To maximise the reach of these strategies, you will find that hiring a lead generation professional will give you the advantage of scaling up your campaigns using AI and utilising their expertise to target campaigns.
For a successful Inbound Investor Lead Generation Service, get in touch with Pinnacle for more information about how we can assist your business to grow and get a better ROI.
