There was a Linkedin question posted on the 29th of February – perhaps the whole leap year effect brought out the best out. The question asked, ‘What type of lead generation strategies for software industry do you recommend?’ Well, given that Linkedin is limited to 4,000 characters could only assume that the person asking the question was hoping for a single answer. I could only assume that the same person would ask a hedge fund manager ‘what type of investment strategies do you recommend’.
Ironically, both answers are pretty similar – a balance portfolio. In marketing this means a combination of online marketing such as banner advertising and pay-per-click, event marketing such as tradeshows, seminars (online and offline), cold calling which including telemarketing, word-of-mouth and referral campaigns, channel marketing and advertising. Depending on your industry some of these initiatives should be weighed more than others. Specialty software for example would do better at a niche tradeshow than say cold calling. A broad horizontal software service for SMBs for instance would do better with PPC campaigns than with a live seminar – though you may want to try both.
The key is to invest some time and money in a combination of these items and always measure the results.
Many of today’s marketing programs could be started and stopped with very little notice; Google Ad words could be set up online and your could pause your account or double it instantly. Clearly, planning for an industry tradeshow takes time and money but many programs have less up front costs. Regardless, always measure your return on these programs increasing your investment in those that are working. One last thing to remember is that marketing in today’s world is very fluid. What worked great 2 years ago produces poor results today. Think of where direct mail is today.
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