Welcome to the Marketing in the Wild Podcast. I’m Julia from Stratos Creative Marketing, where we are obsessed with finding real-life in the wild stories about business and marketing.
Hey, everybody, something I’ve been talking a lot about lately is lead generation, so attracting new leads and then also moving them into a relationship so that they can make a purchase. So here’s the deal, is there’s a lot of ways to do this. We’ve developed a way that works for us and works for our clients, but I wanna talk you through how you can develop your own. So the reason we created this is because I was seeing a lot of our clients struggle to get people from point A to point C, or A to B, whatever. I was seeing our clients struggling to get people from their social growth into their purchasing funnel or getting people on their email list, but there was no follow-up. Or maybe there was a follow-up and they had good open rates, but there were no sales.
So that’s where we decided to come up with this lead generation model. We call it The Machine, you’ve heard about it before, probably if you’ve been around. I know it’s a lame name, don’t tell me. But it works, and that’s what matters. And so the reason that we came up with this is because I started realizing that marketing is actually pretty needy. We have our things, like what I would call presence, like our website, our messaging, our visual branding, social media accounts, email setup. Those are basic things that we all have to have if we’re running a business. And once you have them going, you don’t necessarily have to make a ton of additions or a ton of changes, but this is the part where marketing is needy.
Then we have our growth factors. We have lead generators, ads, Google or social media, SEO, our social media content, our sales emails. Those are the things that you have to have if you’re gonna keep growing. You can just have the presence, and you will be on the internet. But how are you gonna get people to your page? How are you gonna get them on your email list, and how are you gonna sell to them? So that’s when we started modeling this lead generation machine. We realized we needed to have three portions of it. There’s the attracting, which is for the new leads, there’s nurturing, which is for the current followers, and selling to that captive audience to get them to make a purchase. So there’s a lot of ways that you can do this. Attracting, you could do it with ads, you could do it with speaking opportunities, you could do it with networking. Basically, how are you meeting new people, and then how are you getting them on your email list or into your circle, into your LinkedIn?
A lot of people are using LinkedIn to nurture their audience and they’re doing it in excellent ways. So then once you get into the nurture category, then we have their social media, we have blogs, we have emails. Basically, how are you giving them content that makes sure that they know that you’re the expert so that you are nurturing that relationship so that they’d go from just liking you to knowing you and trusting you. And then the last thing, selling to your captive audience. You could totally use some of the things that we’ve already talked about, like your social media, but then this is also where sales emails come in, sales conversations. So basically, what you need to have good lead generation is attracting, nurturing and selling. For us, that looks like moving people through ads, social media, and then sales emails. So for attracting, we’ve picked ads, for nurturing, we’ve picked social media, for selling, we’ve picked sales emails.
So if you think about this from Donald Miller’s three stages of customer relationships, we have curiosity, enlightenment and commitment. Curiosity and essence is attracting people. If we’re piquing curiosity, we’re gonna attract them. If we nurture them, then we’re also giving them this enlightenment. We’re explaining things, we are showing them the ropes. We’re sometimes showing them how much it takes to be able to do what we do, and why they should hire us. But either way, people are walking away saying, I know more because of X, Y, Z, because of their brand. And then the last stage of relationship is commitment, and that is selling. So getting people to buy in. This is like the marriage step to get people in the door and on your crew.
So like I said, for our lead generation machine, we’ve picked ads for that attracting, social media for nurturing, and sales emails for selling. What I love about this is that when we put up an ad, we’re usually doing lead generation ads where we’re offering, hey, let us give you this resource in exchange for your email. We can set this up automatically through social media, which is awesome. But we’re also inadvertently nurturing people. I don’t know if you realize that, but by giving them a resource, we have said, “Hey, here’s something that’ll solve one of your problems. It might not solve all of the problems that our services solve,, but it’ll give you a jumpstart or it’ll give you the first step.” So we’ve attracted them saying, “Hey, we’ve got a solution for you”, but then we’re also nurturing them. We’re starting to build that relationship.
So the second piece, like I said, is social media. I love this for nurturing. It’s a way to meet people where they’re at. We also do this through nurture emails too. We’ll get to that in a second, but social media is a way to touch base with them in a social environment on their phones, which are pretty intimate places if you really think about it. And we get to build that relationship with them, especially if you get conversations going in the DMs or in the comments. This is where we have a chance to do human to human marketing, which you know is a hill that I would die on.
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Emails, third piece. This is where selling comes in. We also do nurture emails, which also helps with that nurture relationship. But the majority of our calls to action are gonna come in those emails. We’ll often do like a hybrid email where we’ve got some nurturing going out, and then we have some sales sprinkled in. But we’ve also started to do it for some of our brands and some of our companies where we do nurture on one day and a sale on a different day. It’s worked really well. Our team always jokes, like, it’s amazing when marketing works, which guys, we should not be surprised because we work in this industry. But there is something magical every time somebody takes that call to action that we’ve sent out in an email.
So here’s the deal. Obviously, there’s nuts and bolts on how to set all of this up. Like you have to know how to do lead generating ads, you have to have your content pillars for social media, you need to have your email service provider set up to get your leads. If that was all jargon, don’t worry. We have lead generating workshops coming up this fall that I’m happy to walk you through the nuts and bolts, or set up a call with us and we’re happy to walk you through it. But here’s the deal, your lead generator does not have to be the same as ours. Ours works, and it works for us and it works for our clients. But remember, all the way back to the beginning, I talked about the different ways to attract. If you pick one that works for you, run with it. I know a lot of people who do a fair amount of speaking opportunities and they get a ton of new leads. Do they need to have something that captures emails? Yes. Don’t do a speaking opportunity without it. But if that’s what attracts new leads , and that’s how you get in front of new faces, that could be customers, run with it.
If your deal is networking and you just wanna go to all of the events and meet all of the people, by all means, do that. But if you’re an introvert like me-ish, I would say that I’m an ambivert, I love ads. I love ads because we’re getting into people’s pockets and into their emails across the nation, not just people that I’m meeting at events or not people that are already in my circle. Let’s be honest, a combination of a few of these is gonna work even better. So pick one, run with it, add a second one, add a third one. Stratos, we personally do all three of these. A lot of our clients are just doing ads, but whatever you do, keep at it. It’s gonna take some time to attract the right people, but make sure that no matter what, you have a way to capture their emails.
Then nurturing. So nurturing, my examples were social media, blog and email. So nurturing emails. These are really, really good ways. I mean, speaking opportunities honestly would even fit into nurturing in some regard too. So like while there are lines, they’re kind of blurry lines, you guys. But social media, blog, email, you guys know that we love repurposing around Stratos and Marketing in the Wild. My ideal scenario is that we are producing a blog that then becomes social media posts and becomes an email. If a blog feels too heavy for you, pick one of your lanes. Maybe it’s social media, where you’re just putting out something here and there. If you listen to one of our last solo episodes, we talked about doing things differently and giving people permission to do things in their industry differently. And here’s what I’ll tell you, is if social media is not your jam, just put out one post a week, you guys. One post so people know that you’re alive, and then maybe you want to have these more personal connections. And so maybe email is where you show up because you’re gonna send out more personal emails.
Or maybe you’re a researcher and you love to write blogs, spend time in your blog, make them really, really good, and then use your email to just send those out to people. So again, just like a retraction, when you use a combination of these, these will be more successful. But the primary goal is to pick one and start with it.
Lastly, you need to have a sale. A sale call to action, whatever you wanna call it. You have to have a way to get people to say yes or no. Our examples that we have are social media, sales emails, sales conversations. For us, sales emails often lead to sales conversations, but some of our sales emails lead to a call to action where they’re paying for an event or maybe they’re coming to a free event, which then turns them back into nurturing and then brings them into sale again. Either way, this phase works intricately with that nurture phase because if you’re sending out all of your nurture information, people will be more likely to say yes because it’s a no-brainer. Like make it a no-brainer, you guys, with how much information you are giving away for free. So you could totally include calls to action in your sales emails that then leads to sales conversations.
Maybe what you’re doing is you’re networking with people, then you’re connecting with them on LinkedIn, and then on LinkedIn, they decide to have a conversation with you and you reach out to them, and then you have the sales conversation. There’s a lot of ways to do this, you guys, but you have to have all three. If you are attracting and then selling, you’re gonna lose your audience. Your audience is gonna get exhausted, and it won’t be trusting. If you do nurturing and selling, you’re literally going to be talking to the same people over and over again, and you’re not gonna get fresh people into the pipeline. If you do attracting and nurturing, but you skip selling, you’re not gonna make any money. You’re gonna get an audience, you’re gonna nurture them, and then there’s no call to action. There’s nothing that you’re asking them to do. You’re not asking them to step into this next phase of relationship with you.
So this is my homework for you. Think through these three phases; attracting, nurturing, selling, which ones are you doing really, really well? Which ones do you need to improve on? We all have places to improve on. Stratos does. We do a really, really good job of nurturing, and we’re doing a great job of selling, but one thing that I wanna do better at is attracting the right people. So that’s my assessment of ourselves. At Marketing in the Wild, we’re really, really good at nurturing the people who do follow us and inviting them to listen to our podcast. But again, our attraction is the weaker point. So that’s something that we’re focusing on this year.
So think about your own marketing. Which phase do you need to build more muscle in? Which one do you need to maybe try out a new technique? Which ones are working for you? Which ones are working well for you? So here’s the deal, you guys, start working on your lead generation machine. Whatever it looks like, you do you, find the one that’s right for you, because it might not be the one that’s right for us. But here’s the deal, the faster you figure this out, the faster you’ll reach success because you are finding the new people who can become customers. You’re showing them how you’re an expert by nurturing them, and then you’re asking them to join you. Whatever you’re doing in your service or in your product, to join you in that next phase of relationship.
Per usual, if you have any questions, pop onto our Instagram or send me an email. I’m always happy to field any questions that you might have. I am so grateful for you, and the fact that you’ve spent this 15, 20-minute chunk of your day with us. I really, really appreciate it. If this has been helpful to you, would you please share it with a friend? We’re trying to reach new people, you guys. Just like I said, attracting, we’re trying to attract new people, and all of our followers help us with that. So thanks, you guys. Have a great one!
Friends, thanks for tuning into this week’s podcast episode. I am so glad that you have. If you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have, I just ask you to subscribe so you know each time we have a new episode coming out. If you loved our podcast and wanna give us a rating or a review, I promise, we will read each and every one of them. A special shout out to our friend, Carson Childers, who is producing our podcast. We really appreciate him and all the hard work that he’s done for us.
Also, thanks to the Stratos Team. They have been behind the scenes doing all of the graphic design, brainstorming, et cetera, et cetera. Really, this wouldn’t be possible without them. I’m thankful for each and every one of you guys.
Lastly, listener, we’ll be back next week, and I hope you will be too.
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