A couple of years ago, if somebody had said, “Let’s double or triple our marketing revenue in the next six months," you’d probably laugh or cringe. Not because it’s never been done in marketing before, but because for a SaaS or tech business, long sales cycles usually contribute to having a “paced” marketing plan. However, the last year or so has shifted the market and buying behaviors very quickly. On top of that, there’s a fresh, accelerated demand for SaaS products in almost every industry.
Like many other businesses in the SaaS, tech, and FinTech space, if you, too, are looking to grow exponentially in the next six months, let us tell you — it can be done. Sure, we can tell you the ways you could get 10,000 leads or more in the next six months, but let's dig in a little deeper. We know that lead generation can be one of the most challenging aspects of marketing when the market is highly unpredictable and the economy is going through a “W” curve. Since time is of the essence, let’s get started on how you can achieve your aggressive growth goals and hit the bullseye on your revenue target. Before we lay down the tips, let's understand where things might have gone a little astray.
Revisit and Review Your SEO Progress
When it comes to SEO, results speak for themselves. There’s hardly any hidden value or metric that you need to dig up to understand how your SEO efforts are performing. You can look for a few things — organic traffic, search rankings, click-through rates, backlinks, keywords position, and branded traffic. Measure these against the goals you had set at the beginning of the year and analyze what’s working fine and what’s not.
Revisit and Review Distribution Channels Progress
One of the easiest ways to acquire leads is to market to your target audience exactly where they hang out. Review your distribution channels that you had set as part of your overall strategy and analyze which channels are performing better than the others and where you might need to make a tough decision to smooth out the next six months. For example, if social media is driving better attraction and leads as compared to referrals, then you know you need to up your social media efforts a little bit.
Forecast Cash Flow for the Rest of the Year
Any good marketing strategy begins with the ability to forecast cash flow. If you take a step back and review your cash flow and the channels that achieved that in the last few months, you’ll be able to draw up a decent graph. Based on this, you can predict the cash flow for the next six months — maybe not with ease since you need to take several cost scenarios from a growth perspective into account, but it’s imperative that you take this step. You could either use a tool that gives you a predictive analysis or build your own cash flow forecast. The idea is to use this information in your next set of lead generation strategies.
5 Lead Generation Tips for Hitting Your Aggressive Revenue Goals
Disclaimer: Don't try to execute all of the five tactics together — no two businesses are the same and you need to pick the top two or three tactics that you can realistically implement right away or the ones that make the most sense to your business in its current state. But no matter which strategy you choose, these are going to be highly effective in generating new leads for your business.
1. Create a Webinar Strategy
As per Demio, a SaaS webinar tool, the majority of SaaS companies have a well-established webinars strategy and 92.31 percent are using the recorded videos as lead magnets. If you aren’t already invested in webinars, then it’s time to do so. As a low-cost investment, webinars drive far greater value than some of the traditional lead generation activities. There are many formats to play with when it comes to hosting — single, expert, two experts, and multiple experts. These experts could be industry experts or experts from within your own company — the idea is to leverage their expertise and create value for your target audience. The cherry on top? You could easily convert these webinar leads into sales prospects.
2. Double Down on Growth Marketing
There are quite a few growth marketing strategies you could use to generate more leads, including dynamic content and personalization.
Whether it’s first-touch or last-touch, personalization is not an option anymore — it’s essential. Right from the first time prospects see your ad on Google to ultimately converting through your on-demand webinar or podcast, every single touchpoint can be personalized. This demands that all of the prospect data is centralized within a CRM and that the marketing and sales teams are fully aligned on the idea. This leads us to a chatbot strategy. How well your brand handles the first touchpoint when the visitor lands on your website can be determined from here. It couldn’t get more straightforward than installing a chat plugin on your homepage. The rise of chatbots in SaaS businesses is also testimony to the increasing incorporation of AI in marketing strategies, and there isn’t a better time than now.
Pro tip: If the chatbot is not able to answer a prospect query, give them the option to have an immediate chat with a sales or customer service representative.
3. Offer a Better “Offer”
Sometimes, all it takes is to take a deep look at your offerings and their strategic placement. And sometimes, you just need to incorporate better offers. This goes beyond CTA placements and fonts and colors you’ve used. Analyze your top-performing landing pages and look at what they offer. If the pages you expected most to get leads from aren’t working, then you need to shuffle some things up. As per industry standards, 2.35 percent is a good conversion rate to have on a landing page. But you can aim anywhere between 5 percent and 11 percent to kick the leads up a notch.
To achieve this, look at what’s up for grabs when a potential visit happens on your site. If the offer is not getting you more than 2 percent CTR, it’s time to recognize the massive room to grow. A/B test the form/landing page copy, offer a more enriching/educational asset that cannot be missed, or simply replace the asset with something more exciting.
4. Determine If Paid Social Efforts Actually Paying Off
Before you invest loads more into your paid social efforts, take a good at the cost of your leads. This is an important step that thereafter determines if you should first retarget the audience who already knows you a little bit or start afresh. Next, refresh your buyer persona based upon where they hang out most. It’s a good exercise to go over their interests and preferences again, so you know you’re targeting them right for the rest of the year.
Video marketing and LinkedIn are two of the top platforms where B2B conversions align with the lead generation strategies. It is also estimated that a stunning 80 percent of B2B leads come from LinkedIn. A case study by Zapier explains how with only $500, they saw quite a positive ROI and email list growth.
5. Make the Right Investment Towards the Next Six Months
Do you have a lack of expert-level resources that could take your lead generation to the next level? Or maybe you need one or two more additional experts that you could outsource to get things rolling? Sometimes it’s the lack of resources or one person doing too many things (read: everything) that affects how well the strategy is executed and what kind of results you’re getting. Going back to the cash-flow analysis, you’ll be able to foresee which areas need a dedicated investment opportunity. You might think this would be spilling more cash than you earlier planned on, but look at it as an investment that might potentially lead you twice as much the return, if not more.
Offer Value Before Asking for Anything
More often than not, it’s the messaging that makes visitors to your website run for the hills. If every piece of content is gated, every blog post talks about your products and services, every webinar is priced, and your podcast only streams only on Apple Podcasts, then there are a massive amount of prospects waiting to be “let in.”
Before you expect prospects to hand over their contact information, you need to earn their trust by offering your expert knowledge. Offering value without demanding anything in exchange sets you up for success in the long run, even if you only have six months to turn things around.
