You’re considering hiring a lead generation company but don’t know where to begin. So, you start searching the internet to look for industry-leading service providers.
Say, you type in “lead generation companies” into Google, and you see 20+ companies are offering similar services. But are they worth your time?
The point here is; despite the digital space being flooded with thousands of lead generation companies, choosing the best one for your business is still challenging.
There are a lot of companies that can generate leads for your business, which makes it tempting to hire anyone with 3 good reviews. But is that a sound criterion to make such a critical decision? Surely not.
Instead, a proper understanding of your business objectives and a thorough analysis of a lead generation company should guide your decision.
Therefore, in this read, we’ll share what a lead generation company is, how lead generation companies work, what you should expect from them, top lead generation trends in 2023, and expert tips to hire the best one for your business.
What is a Lead Generation Company?
A lead generation company possesses a tremendous amount of consumer data and information to help businesses identify new prospects using a strategic sales process.
A company collects and organizes data in different categories depending on its target niche.
The single goal of a lead generation company is to help businesses fill their sales funnels with predictable and qualified leads.
They use various marketing tools, strategies, and industry-leading sales professionals who are the best at what they do.
How Do Lead Generation Companies Work?
Take a moment and search Google for the “best lead generation company.”
You’ll be overwhelmed to see the number of search results with every company claiming to be the masters of lead generation. Some focus on specific niches and have a massive database of the market, while others tinker around very broadly.
When you dig into these companies, you’ll realize only a few actually generate real results. But, if you are not a pro at interviewing or scanning through companies diligently, you may end up burning some time and cash.
The best lead generation companies analyze your niche, create ideal customer profiles (ICPs), and develop outreach strategies that are highly scalable and deliver results
💡 An Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a term used to identify customers who would benefit the most from your products/services. Lead generation companies develop detailed profiles of your ideal customers to ensure that marketing campaigns are as effective as possible.
Lead generation companies serve as an extension of your in-house sales team by providing you with detailed data and a solid action plan with a single goal: to help you grow your business.
How to Find the Best Lead Generation Company in 2023
1. Research is Key
Kurt Lewin said years ago, “No research without action, no action without research.” The quotation stands true in this fragmented internet world where you probably have many options when searching for lead generation service providers.
Research is the key to hiring a good lead generation company that can help you secure qualified leads.
For example, if you shortlisted the top 10 B2B lead generation companies, the next step is to filter your research to pick the best out of them. For this, you can do the following:
Read Their Case Studies
Case studies provide an in-depth view of how a company solves its client’s particular problem. Typically, they can be found on a company’s website.
If you own a Fin-Tech company, look for a company with a history of generating leads for Fin-Tech companies.
If you don’t find any case studies on their website, you can ask them to provide you with one or share their strategy to see if they have the tools and understanding on your ideal customer profiles.
Check Out Reviews
Reviews serve as social proof of a company’s performance in the market and what its clients say about it.
Good lead generation companies have reviews on Clutch, Glassdoor, and Goodfirms. In addition, you can type the company’s name and “reviews” into the Google search bar to see its Google profile rating based on real users’ feedback.
Look Out for Their Professional Certifications
A company’s workforce’s professional certifications show how skilled it is. You can easily find a company’s professional certifications and achievements on their website in the form of a trust signal slider.
View Their Clientele
The best lead generation companies like to display client reviews on their websites to demonstrate their success.
You can find customer reviews on a company’s website, either in text or video format.
Learn Their Lead Generation Process
Last but not least, pay special attention to how they generate leads and how they filter out prospects and create customer personas.
In addition, you should visit their lead generation services page to find out what services they offer and what industry they specialize in.
2. See Their Success Stories
Since the rise of the internet, businesses have been vying to showcase their success stories and competitive advantage over their competitors.
Because there are now so many choices and ways to research, customers have a bit of a challenge.
The following are some options to look into if you are looking for success stories about a company:
➡️ Read their clients’ reviews
➡️ Check out their case studies
➡️ Look at their business partners (if any)
➡️ Positive Google reviews
➡️ Client Testimonials
➡️ View their Social Media Channels
3. Find Out How They Generate Leads
The most important tip on the list is this. Before hiring a company, ask them about their approach to lead generation and what strategies they use to build personas, target prospects, and generate leads.
It’s important to consider the following factors when generating quality leads:
Creating an Ideal Customer Profile
A company develops ideal customer profiles by using different customer characteristics such as profession, income level, education level, etc.
To determine if their findings are relevant to your niche and customers, you will want to determine how they perform the initial search.
Reaching Out to Them Via Personalized Emails
Ideally, you’d want the marketing company to reach out to qualified prospects via personalized emails.
The goal is to ensure the targeted prospect is interested in scheduling an appointment.
A sales representative must be knowledgeable about email marketing trends to convey your brand’s message effectively.
💡 To maximize the effectiveness of an investment, you should understand analytics beyond the methodology they use to get appointments.
Engaging With Them on Different Channels
An effective lead generation company doesn’t just rely on one outreach method; they target prospects across multiple platforms to increase conversions.
Look for companies with an omnichannel outreach approach to target your ideal customers.
Scheduling an Appointment
Sales representatives must understand how to schedule an appointment with the right person and why they’re setting one up.
A sales rep’s ability to personally connect with the prospective client is key to ensuring that they both understand why they are connecting.
Ask The Right Questions
You would want sales and marketing to ask potential customers the right questions. The process begins with them understanding your market position, service offerings, and the value you offer to the market.
You can do this by reading their sales scripts and modifying them as necessary to personalize your brand’s message.
Check If They’re Consumer-Centric
Naive companies only see sales and marketing to pitch services and products across platforms. This will not only irritate your target customers, but they will also turn to a brand that focuses on their pain points.
Make sure the company you hire puts customers and their pain points on top of the list before making any sales pitch, email templates, or social media marketing copies.
Flexibility is Vital
This illustrates a client-oriented, problem-solving approach. As opposed to having a set of fixed services, the company adapts its offer to the needs of the business.
Client Onboarding
Securing a client is one thing and retaining the client is another. Consider the post-onboarding procedures a company follows to ensure your clients stay.
4. What’s Their Key Metrics Reporting Style?
You’re investing time and money in hiring a lead generation company to help your business grow. However, this can only be accomplished if you have access to key metrics.
Therefore, it’s essential to ask how they report key metrics and how often they do it. These metrics involve conversion rates, the number of visitors on a landing page, email marketing open rate, clicks on a paid ad, etc.
The best way to monitor these metrics is to work with the company to establish key performance indicators (KPIs). KPIs serve as a pathway to achieving your goals associated with lead generation.
Following are a few examples of KPIs for business development:
➡️ Getting 25K Clicks on a Paid Ad
➡️ Increasing a Landing Page’s Traffic by 15%
➡️ Increase Email Marketing Lead Conversions 25% Each Month
The success of your lead generation strategy and business depends on your team being on the same page with reporting and metrics.
This will enable you and the lead generation company to stay on track and measure success effectively.
5. Look Out for Red Flags
There is no such thing as “guaranteed results” in lead generation, and if a company offers one, it’s making a fool of you. Additionally, never fall for companies that offer low prices and a one-fits-all lead generation strategy for every business.
There are a few more red flags you should watch out for so you don’t fall prey to cheap lead generation companies:
➡️ A company that only offers mono channel sales outreach methodology
➡️ You should not consider non-data driven lead generation companies
➡️ Never hire a company if its processes and methods are obsolete
➡️ Be mindful of companies who show you inaccurate leads data
➡️ Drop the idea of going with a company that’s not equipped with the latest tech and tools
➡️ Be wary of companies that stretch your sales cycle and leave you to cash burnt in the end.
Top Lead Generation Trends in 2023
If you look back a couple of decades, you’ll realize so many trends have come and gone. Things are rushing, demanding us stay vigilant to get the best out of a trend.
Take lead generation, for example. Some trends (like lead automation) have transformed the way we prospect and reach out to potential buyers, and some of them flopped miserably.
It’s exciting to see trends coming and then predict which ones will stick. At least, we now have a good eye for spotting trends that will stick for a long time – that’s not too difficult.
In this section, we’ll discuss promising lead generation trends in 2023 that have the potential to revolutionize the lead generation market.
1. Account-Based Marketing is The New Normal
Account-based marketing (ABM) is the new normal that is turning heads.
HubSpot reports that 62% of marketers have seen positive results from implementing an account-based marketing strategy.
The need for Account-Based Marketing arose when B2B marketers realized their efforts are wasted on a broad set of audiences and demographics that are not their ideal customers.
They bait those leads with super sales-oriented USPs to hope at least one of them will be hooked.
So you see how vague this process is with no certainty that this practice will bring measurable results.
On the other hand, ABM puts you in control by enabling you to target highly-convertible customer accounts that matter to your business.
Once identified, you can utilize your resources to target those accounts with a compelling brand USP. As a result, with each successful ABM campaign, your ROI gets better.
The best part? You don’t take shots in the dark anymore since you only target highly-convertible accounts to fill your sales pipeline with the most profitable leads.
2. Hyper-Personalization is The Real Deal
Sounds like a buzzword, right? Well, most of our teammates thought the same when we first heard the term “hyper-personalization.”
Some didn’t pay much attention since marketers have a habit of using such buzzwords over time.
But, hyper-personalization is the real deal in lead generation. Understand this with the help of the following example.
Spotify offers a wide range of account personalization to its customers. From custom account themes to prioritizing your favorite music genre and creating personalized playlists, Spotify provides a world of customization.
It becomes difficult to leave the platform thinking that all the effort you’ve put in would be lost. So, you just keep on buying the subscription every month. Bingo – Spotify makes it so difficult for you to leave the platform.
On the other hand, you can always ditch a Netflix subscription if you don’t feel like binge-watching anymore since Netflix provides no such value as Spotify that makes its users second-think their decision.
According to a SmarterHQ study, 72% of consumers only engage with marketing messages tailored specifically to them.
Additionally, this same study found that 86% of consumers are concerned about their data privacy.
The message is clear: People are willing to compromise their privacy to receive personalized marketing offers.
B2B businesses can learn a lot from such marketing campaigns by reaching out to their clients with fully personalized emails, calls, and inMails (on LinkedIn).
3. Omni Channel Outreach
What’s the secret to driving more qualified leads to your sales pipeline? It’s multichannel outreach. What does that mean?
You’re most likely to have success when you use a variety of communication methods together — not just email or cold calls or both, but email, cold calling, LinkedIn outreach.
You might also consider social networking sites as part of your multichannel outreach strategy. It’s best to use a combination of all to reach out to your targeted customer profiles.
One thing is for sure; omnichannel outreach will have its day in the sun in 2023.
4. Interactive Content is the Battleground in Lead Generation
The truth is that people don’t read anymore. Instead, they skim, scan, and skip through content. So if you want to catch their attention, you need to make your emails engaging, informative, and visually pleasing.
Writing a long-drawn-out sales letter will bore your readers half to death. But there are ways to put an end to that.
First of all, you can use interactive content in your emails.
💡 Interactive content is any type of content that allows users to engage with it directly, and interactivity is precisely what you need in your email outreach if you want people to read it.
The most common interactive content types are quizzes, polls, and infographics. You can ask questions or present a series of statements and ask the recipient to choose which one they agree with most or add up the numbers in a list and have the reader predict the total – the possibilities are infinite.
5. Increasing Customer Lifetime Value
As well as attracting new potential customers, a lead generation campaign should also help increase the lifetime value of existing customers.
In fact, if you focus on coming up with new ways to do this, you might find that it’s easier to attract new customers than you might’ve imagined.
This makes sense when you think about it: happy customers are more likely to refer others to your business, and they’re more likely to buy from you again in the future.
The critical point here is that a customer acquisition strategy is not just about generating leads – it’s about increasing customer lifetime value.
What To Expect When Outsourcing Lead Generation
Businesses hire lead generation services to achieve sales goals. But most of them possess little to no knowledge of how they will achieve those goals.
This is why they are unclear about their expectations when hiring a lead generation company.
If you’re in the market with zero knowledge of what to expect from a lead generation company, the first thing you should do is map out your needs.
For example, if you’re looking to fill your sales pipeline with quality leads, you should expect a company to do the following:
➡️ Conduct thorough market research
➡️ Create ideal customer profiles
➡️ Specify platforms for outreach
➡️ Write exceptional marketing copies that pique the audience’s interest
➡️ Compel them to book an appointment with your business
➡️ Close the deal
This is a typical process that top lead generation companies follow, however as a customer, you’ll see companies offering lead generation services with different names.
For example, there’s a company X that offers data enhancement and offers it in various sub-categories such as research and analytics, B2B email list, database scrubbing, and email verification – all of which are related to the process of gathering information about leads.
So, if you’re familiar with the lead generation process mentioned above, it will save you a lot of time searching the internet.
On top of that, you will know what your goals are and what you should expect from a lead generation company.
How TechNerds’ Lead Generation Services Can Help Fill Your Pipeline With Qualified Leads
TechNerds is North America’s leading full-service digital agency that utilizes the power of the latest tech and tools to help you reach prospects faster.
We leverage refined searches across different platforms to get you quality leads from various industries and niches so that you get profitable leads that stand a high chance of converting.
Doing that not only expels raw leads in the process but also shortens your lead-to-conversion time.
By hiring us, you get the chance to work with industry-leading business development and lead generation experts who help you grow your clientele and increase your bottom line.
Here’s how our best lead generation services help fill your pipeline:
➡️ Searching & Identifying Quality Leads
➡️ Reaching Out to Them Via Personalized Emails
➡️ Engaging With Them on LinkedIn
➡️ Getting Them to Schedule A Discovery Call
➡️ Measurable Results for Better Return on Investment
➡️ Closing the Deal
➡️ Client Onboarding
Also Read: Kick Your Sales Into High Gear With TechNerds’ SDR Team
If your marketing funnel campaigns are not generating leads throughout the buying process, now is the time to rethink your lead generation process to maximize sales and customer lifetime value.
It’s your time to make a bold move and take your brand to the level you always desired to reach.
