One of the oldest and truest maxims in the business world is: “You have to spend money to make money.” You’ve got to invest in your business to be successful, and spending money to generate leads is one of the best investments you can make.
There are many ways to spend money to generate leads, especially online. You can invest in marketing automation software, which can be costly, but also very effective and useful. You can spend money on online ads. Whatever path you choose is up to you, but don’t hesitate to take the plunge. Here are some reasons why:
1. It will cost less in the long run
There’s only so much you can accomplish with traditional marketing methods. Print ads, like yellow page ads, and commercials are expensive, with no guarantee of success. If you misfire with a major print campaign, changing tactics or starting a new campaign will be a major expense.
With online lead generation, you can try lead generation tactics for a much lower cost. If you invest in marketing automation software, there will be some upfront costs involved, but actually using the software will be very cheap or even free. And you don’t get charged by the amount of web traffic you have or the number of clicks your website gets.
2. You can market directly to the audience you want
If you’re generating leads through traditional marketing methods, you have limited ways of targeting your desired audience. A billboard ad will get a lot of eyeballs, but will they belong to the people you want to see it?
With online lead generation methods, you can go after exactly the audience you want to appeal to. For instance, if you decide to use Facebook advertising, you can designate your audience based on things like gender, age, education and workplace. That way, you’re not wasting money on a shotgun-spray marketing approach, where you fire a wide blast and hope you connect with someone.
3. It’s easier – and cheaper – to follow-up
When you use marketing automation software, you can keep tabs on the relationship you’ve built with your customer. For example, Hubspot will allow you to keep a running history of your interactions with a lead, as well as when they visit your site and what pages they look at. You can set up workflows to do things like automatically send emails to a lead if they visit the site after a long absence, or if they fill out a form on your website. Hubspot will also score leads for you, so you can aggressively court the best leads.
You may not be used to making large monetary investments in online products, and it’s hard to realize something’s value when it’s not a tangible physical object. But spending some money for online lead generation is not only a wise investment, it will help your lead generation efforts become smarter and more effective.
To read more on this topic, download our free eBook "A Guide to Online Lead Generation for Business Owners".
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