Catching the attention of prospective buyers is tricky business. The majority of marketing departments consider lead generation a top priority and spend over half their budgets on it. But, there’s a better way.
Enter: lead generation outsourcing.
Lead generation outsourcing is the practice of using another party, such as an outsourced sales team, to handle some or all of the processes involved in attracting and nurturing leads. Lead generation outsourcing can help you cut costs and attract prospects without sacrificing efficacy.
In this article, we’ll talk about the do’s and don’ts of lead generation outsourcing, including what lead outsourcing can do and how to find the best solution for your business.
- Lead generation outsourcing includes aspects of the marketing funnel, including content creation, analytics and data management, and web page optimization. You can outsource the entire lead generation process or specific parts of it.
- Many businesses outsource to reduce costs, increase efficiency, or allow their internal teams to focus on their primary roles.
- Outsourced lead generation best practices include choosing the right outsourcing model and provider, using outsourcing to target multiple channels, and ensuring that you optimize your entire lead gen funnel.
- Meanwhile, some mistakes to avoid are neglecting to plan for outsourcing and having a vague customer profile or lead scoring system.
The Benefits of Outsourced Lead Generation
Lead generation outsourcing can provide the same benefits as outsourcing other business functions, including reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and allowing your internal team to focus on their primary roles. Outsourcing is also increasingly important in gaining access to talent, new technology, and refined processes.
What Can You Do With Lead Generation Outsourcing?
Lead generation services cover a lot of ground. With this help, you can work on building interest, providing information, creating content, optimizing web platforms, and more. You can outsource the entire lead generation process or specific parts of it.
If, like many businesses, you decide on the latter, here are some ways to approach deciding what to outsource.
Outsource Stages of the Funnel
You might decide to outsource specific parts of the lead generation process. For example, you could hire a virtual assistant to generate interest with TOFU content and ads, or you might contract an agency to create MOFU lead-nurturing workflows.
Designate Specific Tasks
Maybe your team is good at creating content but not at optimizing web pages. Or maybe they’ve figured out how to tweak ads, but aren’t great at contracting influencers.
With lead generation outsourcing, you can offload specific lead generation techniques and methodologies, such as prospecting leads, B2B cold calling, or optimizing web pages for search or performance to a virtual sales professional.
Manage New Channels
Buyers these days tend to prefer a multichannel approach when deciding what products or services to buy. This means that you need to prospect for leads through your website, social media channels, email newsletters, ads, and more. Learning each of these platforms is a lot of work, so outsourcing your lead generation to focus on one or more of them will save you a lot of time and money.
Customize Your Virtual Team Based on Your Needs
Lead Generation Outsourcing Best Practices
If you want quality leads, you need to take some time to get your outsourced services off to a good start. Here are some guidelines for starting out strong.
Choose the Right Outsourcing Mode
There are a number of ways you can approach outsourcing.
A traditional setup involves entrusting one or more processes to a lead generation business. Agreements are based on hours worked or task volume and there’s minimal involvement from your team.
Another option is to hire a managed service. Managed services are arranged based on results (guaranteed by service level agreements) but require closer collaboration.
The last option is to work with an outsourced team of freelancers or virtual assistants. This option offers greater flexibility, but requires you to oversee the process as your team of assistants gets ramped up.
Before starting a lead generation outsourcing agreement, take time to assess your objectives and constraints and choose the appropriate outsourcing model for your business. Some companies might prefer a more expensive contract with a lead generation business, while some will prefer the flexibility, affordability, and scalability of a modern outsourced team.
Outsource for Omnichannel Marketing
Buyers prefer gathering information at their own pace and appreciate a multi-channel marketing approach. How your customers and prospects interact online will determine how to outsource your lead generation.
For example, you may want to outsource top-of-funnel content creation (or distribution) to help capture quality leads early in the process. You could also contract a lead provider to use targeted ads across a wide range of social networks, bringing them further into your funnel for pitching by email, chat, or sales calls.
Have Your Funnel Ready
Regardless of how you approach outsourcing your lead generation, it’s good to have each step of your funnel ready to take in leads. Here are a few tips when analyzing your current marketing funnel.
Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are incentives, such as information, tools, or assets, that you offer to people in exchange for their information. White papers, study/survey results, and design or copy templates are some common examples of effective lead magnets.
Landing Pages or Capture Forms
A landing page is a web page designed specifically to capture a lead’s information. A good landing page should be simple and include just enough information to get visitors to enter their details and click through.
Generally, each lead magnet should have its own landing page. General-purpose magnets, however, might just have a lead capture form that you insert into other pages on your website.
Retargeting
Most leads won’t visit a page on your site (or one of your social media profiles) more than once. Because of this, it’s important to use retargeting or reactivation techniques to remind them of your service.
Search ads, display ads, social media ads, and email marketing (if you’ve already gotten their email address) are good ways to prompt interest in your business, especially after the lead has had more time to research your business.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring refers to qualifying leads based on their qualities and interest and how well they line up with your established customer profiles. Good lead scoring relies on having strong analytics and customer relationship management tools.
If you don’t have the budget or time to manage these stages of the marketing funnel, you can easily outsource this process to a dedicated team.
Focus on Website Optimization
The last thing to consider when getting ready to outsource your lead generation is your website. Website optimization plays an important role in determining who comes to your website and who will eventually convert.
One primary consideration is page loading speed. This is part of Google’s algorithm scoring, meaning slow-loading pages are less likely to be featured in search results. And even if visitors do reach your page, they will likely bounce if it takes too long to load.
Google research found that a 2-second increase in loading time led to a 32% rise in bounce rate. A further two seconds showed a 90% increase.
In addition to load speed, it’s also important to have a good user interface and smooth user experience. Ensure that your website’s UX and UI are designed for conversions and that it’s easy for visitors to find the information they’re looking for.
Common Mistakes When Outsourcing Lead Generation
Having discussed how to make the most out of your lead generation outsourcing, now let’s cover what not to do.
Not Being Prepared
Failing to prepare, as they say, is preparing to fail. With outsourcing, it’s important to set aside some time to guide your chosen service provider.
Just like with bringing on a new hire, there’s an adjustment period. And after that initial period, you’ll also need to spend some time on regular evaluations and realignments.
Poor Lead Qualifying
Knowing who to target is essential for lead generation. If you don’t properly identify your customer profile, you’ll end up squandering resources on poor-quality leads.
Knowing your customers means identifying characteristics at different stages of the buying process. Be clear about what makes a marketing-qualified lead, a sales-qualified lead and, conversely, what makes for a negative persona.
You may not have all the information to properly qualify your leads yet, but as you gather more information, you can refine your targeting and personas.
Related Topic: What is Lead Qualification? A Beginner’s Guide
Only Relying on One Source or Channel
Relying on a single source of leads can cause a slew of problems.
A common issue of only focusing on one channel is that you can’t control changes that might happen with that channel. For example, leads from one social network could suddenly become harder to reach if its algorithms change.
In addition, communicating through only one channel limits your opportunities. Many potential leads might simply drop off your pipeline if you don’t engage with them on their terms.
Use Smart Outsourcing to Gain an Edge
Outsourcing lead generation is a balance between exploring new sources and optimizing what you already have. Because of this, many businesses turn to outsourcing to access new opportunities. The flexibility of outsourcing allows you to take some tasks off your plate while you focus on growing your business. Save time and money by outsourcing your lead generation.
Want to see how Magic can help you outsource your lead gen and grow your business? Book a call now!
Match With a Vetted Virtual Assistant in 72 Hours!
