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Learn How Winning World Cup Football Strategies Are Similar to Successful Lead generation Campaigns

“Be true to the game and the game will be true to you.”

I don’t know about you, but I’m already beginning to tick off the days until 11 June and the opening of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It’s the first World Cup ever to be held on the African continent and it promises to be a wonderful spectacle. Would it be that I were there to enjoy it…

It also leads me to ponder on the many striking parallels that exist between planning a winning strategy for the World Cup and managing a successful lead generation campaign. Planning and executing a B2B lead generation campaign is all about beating your competitor – the Opposing Team – to get the appointment. And, as with any game of skill, it relies as much on tactics as it does on strategy.

The Strategy is in the pre-lead-up: know your targets and their requirements; do your research on their strengths and weaknesses, their size, their competitors, their market segment, decision makers, etc.

How are you going to position your campaign? This will depend largely on what you’re selling. For example, if you’re selling a big-ticket item into a large corporation, in all likelihood the decision making process will be complex and the lead time to close of sale quite long. 

It also depends on the nature of your leads and how you manage them. Some leads are simply raw names on a database; others will be more substantial, such as past customers, newsletter or blog sign-ups, or someone who has received a previous cold call, email or sales letter. Still others will have expressed a strong degree of interest in a product.

In the case of the former group, you may be better placed focussing your strategy on a lead-nurturing programme: rather than bombarding raw prospects with ill-timed sales pitches, you send them targeted communications which contain useful content based on the recipient’s role in the company. With stronger leads, a telemarketing agent – or Striker - may decide to go straight for a strike at goal and ask for an appointment. As with the perfectly placed strike in a game of football, knowing when to go for the close in a sales situation is all in the timing.    

Now we come to Tactics. The launch of your lead generation campaign is the game and kick off. The whistle blows and it’s time to make contact. Let’s say you’ve commenced your campaign by emailing a prospect some targeted information. This is the time you may well get issued with a Yellow Card, i.e. “Either stop sending me stuff I’m not interested in or stop contacting me altogether!” Worse still is the dreaded Red Card you receive when someone asks to be removed from your database.    

It’s inevitable that this will happen on occasions (unless your name is Gary Lineker!) but it’s possible to minimise the number of Yellow and Red Cards you receive by making sure your Midfield Players - or marketing support - are doing their job properly. This means that the material they send out – email, direct mail, blogs, whitepapers, e-books, newsletters, articles, tutorials, etc – must be as relevant as possible to your target prospects and forms part of a properly integrated campaign that ties everything together in a logical and compelling format.  Think of the data you send to support your campaign as your metaphorical Wingers whose job is to feed the ball to your strikers – your telemarketing agents. Likewise, the Defence is the responsibility of your campaign or programme managers, whose job it is to maintain quality control and make sure that all processes are in place.  

Needless to say, if we’re to follow this analogy through to its conclusion, it’s the job of the Coach – or manager of your in-house telemarketing and e-marketing team – to train and motivate the rest of the team forward to Win the Game – the appointment – through to winning the World Cup – making the sale.

And finally… an Unusual Lead Generation / Marketing Opportunity

This is a one off sales pitch, something I am normally against, but it’s a win win situation!

We have recently developed a “Digital Interactive World Cup Lead Generation Campaign” for a client who unfortunately cannot execute the campaign in time, due to last minute internal data issues.  So, in mutual agreement with our client for  wavering the outstanding fees owed  on  this project, we have retained the rights and ownership and are able to now offer this innovative Digital World Cup Lead Generation Campaign to you for just £1,495 + VAT.*   That’s a substantial saving of 70% off the RRP of £5,000. This rate is only offered because the original client has already paid for the majority of the design and development work and we simply want to recoup our profit margin on the job.

Click the url to play the Penalty Shootout which forms part of the interactive lead generation campaign

If you would like to know more about how you could use this innovative lead generation campaign to boost sales for your business please call me on 01256 85 30 40 or email me ncampbell@emarket2.com and I will send you the Campaign overview workflow PDF doc.  *It is offered as a self service campaign for £1,495 +VAT (you roll it out) or on a fully managed basis (we roll it out for you) for £1,995 +VAT whichever suits your budget and resources.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading and, as ever, your comments and ideas are very welcome. 

And always to a higher response!

Norman

Drop us an email now to see how quickly we can generate sales leads for your business