How does your sales team generate leads? Do you cast a wide net, advertising your solution to as many people as possible in the hope that at least some of them will become customers?
That strategy might bring you plenty of leads—but they won’t be quality leads. Not many of them will make it all the way to the bottom of your funnel and turn into paying customers who stay loyal to your company.
If your conversion rate isn’t what it should be, and you’re spending too much on customer acquisition, you could benefit from targeted lead generation. But what does that mean, and how do you go about it?
Keep reading to learn all about generating targeted leads, and how Breadcrumbs can help.
What is targeted lead generation and why does it matter?
Targeted lead generation is the process of dividing a large market into smaller segments, so that you can zone in on a specific group of potential customers. Namely, those who are a good fit for your ideal customer profile (ICP).
These are the people who are genuinely interested in what you’re selling, and who will benefit from buying or using your solution. They’re the ones with the highest potential to become customers—and loyal customers at that. In B2B sales, this would include companies relevant to your industry.
Here are some of the key reasons why targeted lead generation is an essential sales strategy for small business.
It keeps your focus on high-quality leads
By narrowing down your target audience and reaching out to the right people, you’re more likely to get qualified leads and conversions. This will also help reduce marketing costs, because it’s more cost-effective to focus your efforts on a smaller group of prospects. You’ll increase productivity, instead of wasting time and money trying to capture the whole market.
It fosters strong customer relationships
With targeted lead gen, you’ve done the research into your prospects—so you have enough data to personalize your messaging and tell them specifically how your solution will improve their lives. When they feel that you understand their needs and pain points, you’ll come across as a caring and trustworthy business – the foundation of a lasting relationship.
It helps you improve products and experiences
Having a better idea of what customers want (and what they think of your offering) isn’t only useful for making sales and improving marketing materials. You can also use the information to create new products and services or enhance existing ones through process improvement, including extra features and user-friendly experiences.
It makes you stand out from competitors
Think about it. Targeted lead generation is a great opportunity to show prospects why your company is the best. You can use an omnichannel and multichannel approach, and send them personalized messages and tailored propositions on their preferred channels; this way, they’ll likely turn to you instead of competitors who don’t care enough to do the research.
Getting started with targeted lead generation
Before you get going on your strategy, here are the first steps you need to take.
Set your goals
Whenever you embark on a new strategy, you should set realistic goals for what you want to achieve. For targeted lead generation, think about sales objectives such as increasing qualified leads and customer lifetime value, and how targeted lead generation can help with this. Remember to make the goals specific (e.g. increasing leads by 20% over three months) and measurable.
Define your ICP and TAM
Make sure you have a definitive ideal customer profile that shows exactly who you should be targeting with your outreach—and who you shouldn’t waste your efforts on.
It’s also helpful to calculate your total addressable market (TAM), which is an estimate of the total revenue opportunity for a product or service. This helps you determine the level of resources required and which products or customer segments to prioritize.
Total # of potential customers x Annual Contract Value (ACV) = TAM
Create a database
A well-organized database is essential for targeted lead generation, housing all customer information in one place. You’ll need to keep it updated, which is made easier when you use the right software. A CRM (customer relationship management) platform stores customer data generated from all your channels, while a CDP (customer data platform) collects the data and feeds it to your tools. (Click the link for more on CRM vs CDP.)
Segment your lists
Using your database, you can now segment your potential customers by their characteristics and attributes. For example, demographic segmentation is based on things like age, gender, and education level. Other categories for segmentation include psychographic (personality, values, interests, lifestyle), behavioral (brand interactions, website usage, purchasing habits), and geographic (region, city, country, area code).
Plan your outreach
When you’re targeting specific personas, you need to create the right messaging for each one and make sure it’s personalized. Consider the prospect’s pain points and personality, as well as which communication channels they prefer. What type of content do they like to read? What’s the best way to persuade them that your solution is the best choice?
TOP TIP: However tempting it might be to buy a list of ready-made leads, it’s a risky business. These lists don’t contain qualified leads, and they may not be accurate. The email addresses on it might already have been contacted multiple times, or have unsubscribed. The owners will probably ignore you or mark your messages as spam. And you could even be breaking data privacy regulations.
10 strategies for generating targeted leads
Now let’s take a look at some tried-and-true strategies to help you generate and nurture high-quality leads.
Set up sales cadences
Using a sales cadence—a sequence of touchpoints that gives sales reps a schedule for following up with each prospect—is a great way to nudge targeted leads through your sales funnel. You can expect to close more deals in a shorter period when every rep uses a consistent process.
You’ll already be aware of their communication preferences, so use this to their advantage and tailor each interaction to them. This is where a unified messaging platform is super-valuable, as you can keep track of messages on all channels and easily switch between them.
Embrace social media
Chances are that you’re already using social media for building brand awareness. But it’s also ideal for targeted lead generation—it helps you find people who are truly interested in your offering, and makes it easy to connect with them.
You can use social media networks to share lead magnets and position yourself as a source of expert knowledge. You’ll need to make sure you publish posts at the right time to grab the right people’s attention, and use a mix of content styles to appeal to your target audience.
LinkedIn is perfect for capturing professional B2B leads. The Premium version enables specific filtering to segment your searches. It also shows you who has viewed your profile so that you can make direct contact with them.
Invest in paid ads
Following on from the previous point, you can use paid advertising to generate targeted leads—not just on social media but on every channel you use. Highly-targeted ads are primed to pop up when your prospects have actively searched for something related, enticing them to visit a specific page or make a purchase.
As well as using audience browsing behavior to identify the right places to advertise, you can base your paid ads on segmentation such as demographics, interests, or geographic location. Paid ads also allow you to experiment, such as running A/B testing to see which ones work best and narrow your focus even more.
Keep on cold calling
You might think that cold calling is a thing of the past, and that it doesn’t apply to targeted lead generation. But it can still be an important part of your lead generation marketing funnel. It’s not exactly cold calling as we used to know it, because you’re not starting from scratch with a call out of the blue.
Instead, in this scenario, you’ll need to validate your potential leads before you call them to make sure they fit your ICP. It’s also a good idea to start your sales cadence with email or a social media message before the call. When you do speak to the lead, make sure you get right to the point and tell them how your solution will meet their needs.
Use lead magnets
For prospects who are farther along the funnel, you can share content such as product brochures, pricing, case studies, and client testimonials—basically anything that outlines the benefits and ROI of your product or service. These are your lead magnets, which will hopefully pull the lead toward you.
You have the option to use gated content, if you think your leads will be happy to share their data via a form. E-books, whitepapers, webinars, and templates are often gated in this way. But for leads at the top of the funnel, it’s better to use ungated lead magnets to provide value and help build awareness of your brand.
Create awesome landing pages
First impressions count for a lot in lead generation, so creating targeted landing pages is a perfect way to show prospects what you have to offer and how it fits their specific needs. The idea is to direct visitors to pages that offer something of value, such as a free trial, a product demo, or lead magnet content. Make sure the sign-up process is simple and convenient.
To generate targeted leads, make sure each page fits a specific purpose and includes a clear CTA that will entice leads to take action—then set up targeted ads that will bring people to this page. Again, you can run A/B testing to find which landing pages work best.
Write a blog
Alongside your lead magnet content, it’s well worth including a blog section on your website to target particular segments of your audience at various stages of the funnel. Make sure it’s optimized for search engines, using keywords that these prospects will use to look for a solution.
It’s an opportunity to show your expertise in your industry, and educate leads on how they can solve their problems (using your product, of course). For example, if you’re marketing a B2B ecommerce platform, you could write a blog comparing similar platforms, or an article on the latest trends.
Tap into referrals
When you’re looking for targeted leads, referrals from existing customers are a great source. These customers are ambassadors for your company, and they’ll have a network of colleagues and friends in the same industry or sector—who already fit your ICP.
So, how to encourage referrals to these leads? In most cases, you can just ask your satisfied customers if they’ll recommend you to others. But you could also offer incentives, such as discounts or gifts.
Use automation
Just as it does in every aspect of business, automation saves you time and money on generating targeted leads. For example, you can use AI to summarize conversations and update your CRM with new data from interactions, as well as scheduling automatic follow-up messages and social media posts.
Automated sales tools often include lead scoring tools, which significantly reduce the resources needed to determine a lead’s quality. With Breadcrumbs, you can generate lead scoring models as the system automatically analyzes your data and makes suggestions.
Nurture your leads
One of the most important parts of the strategy is to nurture your targeted leads. Not only does this help you to build a strong relationship, it also gives you the chance to gather as much information as you can—which you can then use to personalize your outreach even more.
You’ll need to supply relevant, informative content throughout the customer journey, plus after-sales support once they make a purchase. Be available across all your channels, and set up a smart on-brand chatbot to handle inquiries outside of working hours and make sure you never miss a message.
The takeaway
When it comes to leads, you need to prioritize quality over quantity. If you ensure that each prospect is genuinely interested in your product or service—and that they’re a good fit for your solution—you’re much more likely to get that all-important conversion.
By focusing only on targeted leads, you’ll be able to save time and money, create improved products and services, and stand out from your competitors. Follow our actionable tips to set up a winning strategy and reach out to the right people with the right messaging.