B2B Lead Generation in the Digital Age: Webinar Recap
Earlier this month, Payoneer hosted a webinar with Chloe Franken-Ututalum, Founder and CEO of SOPHI Inc. – a Philippines call center specializing in digital marketing, customer service and back-office support. Chloe leads the company’s business development and holds a degree in Mass Communications from Silliman University and an MBA from the Ateneo Graduate School of Business.
During the webinar, Chloe shared her deep industry knowledge, delivering a results-focused presentation on lead generation. From identifying your client profile to generating inbound and outbound leads, Chloe offered numerous helpful tools to boost sales and optimize marketing efforts.
If you missed the webinar on B2B Lead Generation in the Digital Age, don’t worry – you can still access the full recording.
In the webinar, Chloe goes step by step, outlining how to generate leads, build business relationships, and leverage marketing content to propel growth. Lead generation is the foundation of success, or as Chloe explains: “Your door is only as good as the number of people who walk through it.”
Let’s look at some of the main takeaways from the webinar.
Trappers
Throughout the webinar, Chloe illustrates the stages of lead generation using a very apt metaphor: the marketing team is dubbed ‘trappers’ – with high-quality content, they attract clients to your website. As she explains, inbound lead generation is basically like setting a trap so that people find your business through your content and hopefully are converted into customers by your sales team.
The first step in creating targeted content to draw inbound leads is to know your customer. You need to picture your client and enumerate their characteristics, from geographical location to what social media platforms they use. This lets you design tailored content that brings in leads that are more likely to qualify and convert. Pitching to everyone will likely fail because the message isn’t getting to the people who need to hear it.
So, trappers put together different kinds of marketing content, be it video, blogs, webinars, or infographics, that show leadership and expertise in your specific industry. You can use ads to boost visibility but at this stage, the content is focused on adding value and not on self-promotion. Once your audience comes to your website, you can make an offer – for example to sign up for your newsletter or an eBook. If your prospect takes the offer, you can begin pursuing them in a more direct way.
Chloe offers some great tips on how to optimize your content to keep trapping new leads.
- Create high quality content
- Stay consistent and keep updating content
- Research link sharing opportunities and be judicious
- Do your keyword research and know what your client is searching for
- Repurpose your content
- Use the right social media platforms for your audience
- Make your headlines clickable.
Prospectors, Hunters, and Nurturers
Once a lead lands on your website through high quality, targeted content, it’s time for the sales team to convert the lead to a customer. Nurturers are the team members that research qualified leads and evaluate their suitability before passing them over to the ‘hunters’.
Hunters pitch your product and close sales with qualified leads generated by the marketing department trappers. Once the hunter has closed a new client, customer care takes over to ensure that they keep coming back. These are the ‘farmers’ who nurture clients and make sure that they are satisfied with the service you are providing.
Of course, Chloe emphasizes, if you are a freelancer or a small business, you likely don’t have a full marketing and sales team. You will likely be doing a lot of this work yourself, but following these tips will help keep your lead generation efforts streamlined and effective so that you don’t waste time.
Cold-Emailing: Do’s and Don’ts
While inbound lead generation is funneled down from marketing content, outbound lead generation relies on connecting to potential clients at conferences or by emailing leads directly. As Chloe’s great metaphor explains – outbound lead generation is like hunting or fishing. You have to get out there and actively pursue potential leads, while in inbound lead generation the prospects come to you.
Chloe continues to share her best practices for cold emailing prospects. For example, personalizing an email after doing a little bit of research will always perform better than a totally generic email. Another great tip is which tech tools can promote efficiency, scalability, and lead organization. Whether for keyword generation, CRM, or analytics, these tools are integral to expanding and managing your lead generation efforts, plus she offers recommendations for alternatives if you are a cash-strapped freelancer or small business looking to avoid paying for expensive software.
Summary
We highlighted some of the main takeaways from this insightful webinar, but there is still so much more to learn by watching the recording. Payoneer’s world-leading cross-border payments platform empowers businesses, online sellers and freelancers to pay and get paid so they can focus on growth and profitability.
Want to learn more on how to generate leads and create high quality content?