lead generation
I’ve been doing a lot of business development work for the American Marketing Association lately to support the launch of AMA TV. Ok, “business development” is a fancy word for sales.
The point is that I’ve been on the phone. A lot. Calling. A lot of companies. In a weird way, it’s kind of fun.
In that time I’ve noticed a lot of bad habits. One in particular seems like a clearly missed opportunity.
At the moment, I’m calling through the AMA’s list of past advertisers and sponsors. Some of these companies no longer exist, many haven’t been contacted in a couple of years. No big deal, it just means that I often encounter a situation where I ask for a person who no longer works there.
Me – “Hi, can I speak with John Smith?”
Receptionist – “John hasn’t worked here for years” … and silence.
Nothing illustrates "Who's there?" like a creepy eyeball picture.
There’s no follow up. No attempt to discover why somebody is calling and looking for a former employee.
I could be a past customer looking to start a new project. I could be a sales prospect who is finally looking to get started on a project.
Okay, I’m an sponsorship sales guy looking to sell stuff, but in the conversation above no one knows that yet. If I responded with, “Oh, thanks, goodbye” the receptionist would happily hang up the phone and go on with the day and have no idea whether a new customer just walked out the door.
Take the time to ask the next question.
“John actually isn’t with the firm anymore, but is there anything I can do to help you?”
It’s a simple question that will probably not yield anything useful 99 times out of 10. But it only takes an additional 2 seconds to ask it. You never know.
Would it surprise you to learn that association job board candidate lists can be comprised of 70% to 80% nonmembers?
Allright buddy, I'm going to need to see a receipt for that membership.
I know what you’re thinking … those people will never join. They’re just using us to find a job and we’ll never hear from them again.
That’s probably true. The majority of those job candidates will never join your organization.
Of course, the majority of the people who take advantage of your “one time only” discount to the next conference won’t join either. The majority of people who received a complimentary copy of your trade publication won’t join. The majority who went through your certification program won’t join.
Here’s the difference. In all those other programs, the lead generation program cost you money, and those “never join” prospects are a drain on your resources.
For an association job board, the candidates are your inventory. Even if those people never join your organization, never attend and event and never subscribe to a single publication, their applications to jobs on your job board are what allows you to enjoy the non-dues revenue profits.
In other words, on that job board that you’ve been grumbling about you’re not only meeting what is probably your members’ core need – career enhancement – you’re building your member prospect list and getting paid to do it.
Almost 10 years ago, the American Marketing Association faced a dilemma similar to that faced by many professional associations.
Hey you! DMA! What are you up do down there?
Non-dues revenue had the potential to provide a cushion against variations in the organizations core offerings, but the online job board was stubbornly refusing to cooperate.
It did generate money. It could even be argued that it generated a significant volume of money – just not quite enough to provide that cushion.
The answer turned out to be teaming up with rivals.
I got my eye on you AMA!
Many associations faced this exact dilemma, and through the leadership of their common job board technology vendor – Boxwood – AMA led in the creation of the Marketing Careers Network.
The Network allowed a group of rival associations to maintain individual branding and databases, but still share resources and drive each other’s online job boards to amazing levels of success.
Read the details in a new Case Study – Winning Job Board Glory.
I had a consulting meeting with a startup firm last week where we started shaping out the marketing plan for the company. This is a firm entering a crowded marketplace with several established competitors, although none of the 800-pound gorilla type.
The company is led by a long-time salesman. He’s a good one. Long track record of success. Conscious of the habits he’s built that made him successful and will continue to do so in the future.
The difference is that he’s responsible for more now than just sales.
I am carrying you people
Like many salesmen, he has the attitude that marketing is what those semi-useless people over there do to generate sales leads. He’s polite about it, and to be honest only about half wrong judging from how I’ve seen marketing operate in many other organizations.
The attitude is going to lead to trouble, however. A company built on sales and … other stuff … is an inherently unstable beast. The only thing that will drive success in such an organization is raw muscle work. It’s simply a question of out selling the competition (note that I said outselling, not chopping prices).
Based on what I’ve seen of his sales skills, I believe he’ll be able to take the new firm to a respectable level of success. However, he’s not going to get further than that because sales can only go so far. You can’t always assume that you’ll have a superstar on staff to pull everything else through. If you’re the CEO, you can’t always be the superstar because you have too many other decidedly non-superstar duties to attend to during the day.
That’s why marketing matters. Yes, we generate leads and that is critical to the company’s growth. However, what’s really important is for us to fill in the institutional gaps that sales alone can’t fill.
If you have a marketing program, you can flub a sales call and still get that customer later because next month’s white paper will click in a way that you didn’t. If you have a brand, you can survive a goof-up in the service area. Assuming that those two scenarios are relatively rare events,
I’m in the market for a Bluetooth headset and a computer mouse. I know … the nation’s GDP owes me a debt of gratitude.
The point is that I know exactly what I want (product if not a specific brand). I know exactly where to get it – Office Depot or OfficeMax. I have cash in my hands. Well … I have a debit card in my hands at least. I’m simply looking for which of these two fine establishments will get my money.
But first – I want a deal. Give me a coupon. Give me an offer. I demand the illusion that I’ve conned your retail store out of a few dollars.
I had a coupon that would have been perfect, but it expired yesterday. Damn.
I’ll go to each company’s website and look for coupons or offers. The products and prices are pretty much the same. Whomever woos me with the greatest ardor (is that a word?) gets my cash.
Oh Office Depot, why do you torment me so?
Hmm, Office Depot intrigues me with their offer of a mobile text coupon. I’m an Internet Marketing guy (because I capitalize those words) and you offer to let me live by what I do! I send the text message. I get the reply. And nothing else.
Office Depot just got a text from someone looking for a coupon – a sure sign of an impending purchase – and they don’t have the system primed to send me a coupon. I have to wait around for the “up to 5 a week” I’ll be receiving now. Well, I’m irritated and the first of those 5 had better be good or I’m going to slap you with a STOP reply. Because I’m a badass.
OfficeMax, you have your opening. Impress me.
Hmm, nothing in the online flyer fits my need, but it is fun to pretend to be flipping pages with their little Flash app. Wheeee!
Ah, here we go. All I have to do is give them my email and zip code and they’ll give me offers exclusive to my local store. Small price to pay. I enter my info and …
Um. There are no offers. No coupons. I gave away the store (or my email) and got nothing. You promised you’d call me the next day! I feel so dirty now.
The lesson here is to make sure you think through processes from your customers’ perspective. Yes, both OfficeMax and Office Depot have online couponing programs to drive traffic and business. My snark aside, I’m sure those programs drive a significant volume of track-able revenue.
However, a new prospect doesn’t live according to your publishing schedule. I want to purchase now. I want my coupon now. You are free to pop me into your regular outbound marketing schedule, but don’t forget to feed the need that drove me to your website in the first place. I came there to buy something.
Maybe the direct mail marketers will treat me better. I think I hear the mail truck.
I’m putting together a pair of presentations for Roosevelt University to help alumni navigate the world of social media. This one is a bit of an evolution of the presentation I gave a few weeks back for Catalyzing Collaboration in two ways:
- Focus on Job Seeking
- Build a questionnaire follow-up
Iteration 1 of this idea is going to be more low tech. I imagine there’s a module for polling that lets you build a questionnaire. I’ll simply have that send me an email and I’ll produce a short assessment by hand. Longer-term, maybe I can automate it.
Obviously, the idea is for this to serve as a lead generator. I provide useful information and ask for permission to add the recipient to a newsletter list. I’ve counseled several clients to do something similar. It’s about time I did one for myself.
The details aren’t yet worked out, but the presentation will be on August 4 (downtown campus) and August 5 (Schaumburg campus).
Note - View the recording of the Social Media for Job Search and Career Needs presentation.
MeetUp offers professional associations and societies an excellent way to connect with new, potential members. That’s fairly obvious and bourne out by the Chicago AMA‘s experience in the past year. We don’t have figures on membership growth yet, but the MeetUp has delivered 400 more people to the prospect list for events and membership, if nothing else. Since we had only 2000 to start with, that’s 20% growth of the opt-in list in a very short period of time.
Once you have a base, however, there are opportunitites to spin off a series of easy-to-produce, paid events. For Chicago AMA, we’re looking at a series of four career oriented events with a prominent local career coach/recruiter.
It’s almost a franchised program – four modules. We just need to rent a small meeting room for 40 people or so and charge $40 per person to attend. Set it up as a revenue share and Chicago AMA could yield $400 in additional revenue per meeting. Say the four-course series goes every two weeks (i.e. – $800 per month revenue), then we’ve conjured almost $10,000 in new revenue per year, a measurable member benefit, increased footprint and enhanced brand value.
I’d say that’s pretty promising.