How to Make Outsourced Lead Generation Work for You

Outsourced lead generation saves you hours of time and valuable resources. However, the actual returns of your outsourcing depend on what you do BEFORE and AFTER your lead generation campaigns. Lead generation outsourcing is just one part of a big strategy.

Learn how to set your lead generation outsourcing campaigns up for success so you’re seeing greater profits from your investments.

Key Takeaways:

• Outsourced lead generation allows you to grow, access fresh talent and tools, and save time.
• Build a strong business plan, goals, and customer profiles to guide your outsourced team.
• Unify your data so you and your outsourced team are on the same page.
• Nurture the leads you generate with timely and personalized content.

Should You Outsource Your Lead Generation?

Outsourcing is very common, as 66% of U.S. businesses outsource at least one function. Outsourcing continues to grow in popularity, with cutting costs being a leading reason companies outsource.

Many marketers struggle with lead generation. It’s time-consuming, yet a crucial step in marketing to ensure consistent sales growth. Instead of tackling all the moving parts of a lead generation strategy, marketers lean on outsourcing to lift the load.

Here are some benefits of outsourced lead generation:

• Supports scalable growth: Easily grow or scale back as needed without hiring or firing employees.
• Accesses different talent: Connect with talent outside your in-house team for new expertise and lead-generation knowledge.
• Uses leading tools: Access the leading tools (keyword research tools, customer data, and qualification tools) to improve lead generation.
• Frees up your time: Hands off tedious lead generation tasks to others so your team can focus on core business tasks.

7 Tips to Take Control of Your Outsourced Lead Generation

Here are some tips to maximize the returns of your outsourced lead generation strategies.

1. Set Expectations

What do you want to get out of your outsourcing campaign?

You need to set goals to ensure you gain the returns you want (and need) from outsourcing. These could be financial goals or a set number of leads you wish to generate.

Setting goals also helps the outsourcing team understand your desired outcomes, giving them a benchmark to reach.

Use your goal to define your success and determine whether your investment pays off. If you aren’t meeting your goals, discuss with the outsourcing team to establish realistic goals and identify strategies that might help them reach the goals more effectively.

2. Focus on Building your Brand Image

Lead generation is like a fruit tree. It can potentially yield high returns, but the quality of the fruits depends on where you plant the tree. If you plant an apple tree in the middle of a desert, it won’t grow.

So, before outsourcing your lead generation, look at your business model. Do you have a strong foundation for your lead generation to grow from?

A strong business model has the following:

• Clear message
• Unique selling point
• Strong purpose
• Unified brand

The more information you can provide your outsourcing team, the more successful they will be at generating quality leads. They’ll understand your business better to make it more attractive to potential leads.

3. Establish Your Ideal Customer Profile

For your outsourced lead generation strategy to work for you, you must first let the team know WHO you want to attract.

Define a good lead by building an ideal customer profile. This profile outlines the business titles, industries, locations, and demographics of your ideal customer, giving the team a clear picture of your preferred customer.

Your outsourcing team uses this information to customize its strategies. They’ll be able to reach customers with the correct titles and industry-specific content and address their unique pain points.

4. Work Closely with the Outsource Team

The best lead generation agencies become an extension of your team rather than a separate function. Thanks to modern tech, you can toss out the data siloes and miscommunication that often occur with agencies that use outdated systems.

Instead, adopt software that your in-house marketing team and the outsourced team can share. Each team imports real-time data to ensure everyone is on the same page and accesses accurate information.

5. Qualify Incoming Leads

Even with an ideal customer profile guiding your outsourced lead generation, you’ll still generate leads that don’t match the profile. So, you need a clear process for reviewing the potential of new leads to become a customer. That way, you’ll only invest in marketing-qualified leads.

Instead of doing this in-house, outsource to an agency that qualifies leads before you receive them. This guarantees that all the leads you pay for are quality leads that match your ideal customer profile.

6. Build a Follow-Up Strategy

Not all leads you attract are ready to purchase. Only 4% of website visitors are ready to buy. So, trying to sell to every lead your outsourced team generated from your website or other strategies isn’t the best use of your resources.

A follow-up strategy like an email drip campaign nurtures incoming leads to warm them up to your business, build trust, and lead them through the sales process. Once the lead shows enough interest in your business, you can move them to the sales team to close.

To maximize your return, establish the follow-up strategy at the same time you set up your lead generation outsourcing. That way, you can start an email drip campaign or other processes immediately as leads come in to avoid them growing cold.

7. Regularly Clean Data

Data changes quickly. People get fired, change positions, and change their contact information. Once you receive leads, keep investing in that data to ensure it doesn’t grow stale.

Regular database cleanings – called data audits – look for errors, outdated information, or duplicated entries. This ensures you’re working with the most updated information. 

Convert More of Your Leads

Set your outsourcing strategy up for success with the help of Televerde. We’re your all-in-one solution for customer lifecycle marketing. Our team of marketing experts helps you establish metrics, generate leads, and qualify contacts to ensure your lead generation campaigns yield the maximum return possible.

Contact us to learn more about our lead generation services.