It seems every few minutes a new COVID-19 update comes to light. Travel bans are preventing B2B meetings with clients and prospects, conferences are getting cancelled, businesses are putting in place plans for the reduced workforce, and remote working for the masses seems like a real possibility. But what about marketing? What does all this mean for your lead generation efforts?
Event Marketing – The Alternatives
If you banked heavily on event marketing for your lead generation this year, it’s time to action / put together a contingency plan for your lead generation strategy. For the most part, you can write off most face-to-face meetings, conferences or events. Here is some suggestion for different tactics that you can use to offset the reduced lead generation from events this year – they aren’t a like-for-like replacement for event marketing, but they will undoubtedly help you to achieve your lead targets.
- Webinars & Vlogs
A powerful way of presenting a message to a broad audience quickly, without having to be face-to-face, over the next few months webinars and vlogs will become a much larger part in the marketing mix. If you can action this quickly, there’s a space here that you can capitalise before a massive influx of webinars and vlogs appear.
- Telemarketing
If you use events as a way of generating new target accounts and contacts, telemarketing might be the best alternative tactic you can use when you need to engage and identify new leads and opportunities. Telemarketing is a powerful way of building human relationships that other tactics can’t compete with, in the B2B space. Better yet it can all be done remotely so you won’t need to meet face-to-face! For more information on telemarketing, check out our telemarketing page here.
- Social Media
Social media is an excellent way of communicating with new prospects and customers as well as generating brand awareness. However, most, if not all, large companies aren’t going to be buying based on messages they’ve received on social media. It’s a powerful way to get your foot in the door, but it needs to be followed up and actioned on with other tactics to get the most bang for your buck. Services like telemarketing, email marketing all come to mind here.
- Email Marketing
Email still dominates the conversion game. And again, in the next few months, we’ll see a much more content being pushed by email as companies try to subsidise their lead generation losses from events. If you can come up with a powerful message that resonates with your buyer persona’s, you can quickly put more leads into your pipeline. Need support with your email marketing, our expert team is at hand to help.
- PPC & Paid Social
PPC & Paid Social has always been a quick and powerful way to generate leads, but it comes at a cost which if not managed properly can lead to a very low ROI. You’ll also need to have a highly converting landing page or clear call-to-action that hits home with your target market. Failing on any of these will typically lead to a campaign that hurts your bank and doesn’t produce the desired results.
These are just a few different suggestions we think you can use to help keep your lead generation efforts in full swing as events start to fall out of the marketing mix for the next year. But what do you think?
We’re offering free consultations to companies looking to remap their lead generation efforts for the year. If you’re interested in getting some idea’s and support, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
