A corporate lead is a person who works for a company and shows interest in developing a business conversation with your company.
Most leads will not buy, even if they show a clear interest in evolving. They are the speculative leads.
Regardless of what you do and your ability to demonstrate value and benefits, speculative leads will not convert into customers.
Technically, I call this degree of speculation the degree of problem awareness. Leads, at any given time, are at one of these stages:
- Unaware of the problem and unaware of the possible solutions.
- Aware of the problem but not of possible solutions.
- Aware of the problem and possible solutions.
- Aware of your company's problem and solution.
- Convinced that your company's solution is the best (customer).
The more aware the lead, the greater the chances of conversion.
So our mission is to raise awareness among our audiences as effectively as possible in order to obtain the highest volume of customers within a given market.
We call this process lead warming. Some call it relationship marketing, which is right too.
Therefore a speculative lead can become the convinced lead, i.e. a customer.
An unready lead may approach your company with no conditions to buy, but may get those conditions in the future.
The problem is you spend too much time on the speculative leads and lack energy and dedication on the more mature leads, the ones who will become your customers more quickly.
To warm up your leads and cold audiences without engaging personally, i.e. in one-on-one tartative, the most effective strategy is to write articles and distribute the most valuable content possible.
Exactly that.
The best way for you to engage with your audience, all of them, is to write articles about your field. Write as if you were talking to a friend, wanting to help you succeed in what you solve.
They can be videos, if you handle cameras well, or they can be texts written and published on your social networks and distributed via email marketing.
This works for all audiences: cold, warm and hot. And it's a type of content that can override any other type, even if you're about closing the deal (proposals, contracts etc).
Write about news about your company, the market, tips on your product/service, everything that can add value to your readers.
Depending on how interactive people are, you can separate a list and make an approach phone call or even send an engagement email.
It is the simplest and most efficient way to warm up cold audiences.
