How effective are your marketing efforts at driving growth? 

It’s every marketer’s dream to have on-hand lead generation tactics that push higher marketing ROI. After all, marketing spend that brings in considerable revenue gives you leverage when negotiating your budget for future campaigns.

So, back to my question… 

Do your marketing efforts feel monotonous or stale even? Are you only seeing a trickle of leads coming through your pipeline and even fewer conversions? Would you like to add some pizzazz to your lead-gen efforts?

Here are some cool creative strategies that may help bump up your numbers.

1. Interactive Content

There’s content aplenty across the internet—good, bad, untouchable. Even the most casual search is likely to produce a ton of information making your potential for standing out that much harder.

In gamifying your content, you use interactive techniques to attract and engage prospects. This strategy taps into the human subconscious by offering thought-provoking and immersive experiences based on the user’s participation. 

As the user participates, they don’t feel “marketed to” lowering their barriers and granting you access to their space. Best examples include assessments, quizzes, simple games, calculators, interactive infographics, and webinars.

To launch an effective interactive content strategy, consider:

• Budget. Depending on the resource you want to create, you’ll find several free and paid tools. Content like quizzes and infographics are relatively easy to do, but games may require considerable time and money.
• Technical requirements. There may be a learning curve to creating and uploading interactive content or operating its software. Familiarise yourself with any restrictions or limitations before embarking on the task. 
• Know your audience. Not all audiences will react in the same way to the various interactive content formats. Determine what works for your specific audience and leverage it.

2. Create Listicle Videos

With fun music in the background, listicle videos are a creative and snackable way to share information. These listicles are typically numbered lists that share succinct information in bite sizes. Audiences love them because they know what to expect and how long the video will run.

They can sort through information quicker and contact you if they require clarification or additional information

So, if you want to fight the information overload and hook your audiences, you’ll be better off packaging your message in a listicle video.

Top considerations include

• Determine if you’ll appear on the video, use live footage, or stock photos in a slide-show presentation. For the first two you’ll need a professional camera or cellphone with a high-resolution camera. If you’re going with photos, high-quality and visually appealing ones will do.
• Add subtitles. These are a sure way for audiences to follow precisely what you’re saying. Make your subtitles concise and use a reasonable (and sizable) font for legibility.
• Use music. It’s a great match for visuals and creates a feeling of moving forward. Be sure to pick something that syncs with the message you want to convey. If there’s narration, check that the music doesn’t overpower the voice, otherwise it will turn off your viewers.

3. Cold Calling

How exactly is cold calling creative?

The technique has been around for decades. What has changed is the way we conduct it. In yesteryears, teams were handed a list of names and numbers with the expectation that they would turn up hot leads.

Today’s teams rely on tech, intent, and sales triggers to start business conversations with potential customers. They understand that there will be multiple touch points before the prospect signs the dotted line and the cold calls are an initiator of this process.

Best practices

• Work on your unique value proposition. What’s in it for your prospect should they decide to work with you? Most businesses want solutions that improve efficiency and operations or cut overheads. Clearly express what benefit they will derive from your solutions.
• Be careful with the questions. You want to incorporate intelligent questions to learn more about your prospect but don’t make it feel like an interrogation. Sprinkle them within the conversation to keep your audience from raising their defences.
• Share provable numbers. Get your back-office team to share percentages of the value they have produced for similar businesses. Keep these numbers (and case studies) handy in case the prospects ask for proof.
• Study common objections. You can put together a booklet that covers objections in-depth and the answers that elicit positive responses. It may help you qualify your leads.

4. Work With Influencers

Brands partner with industry leaders, analysts, influential customers, etc to drive brand messages to corporate buyers.

B2B influencers offer unique and unbiased points of view that their followers rely on to assess the viability of products/services. You won’t just be reaching your audiences but also gaining access to the influencer’s network.

You can partner to co-create branded content or allow them to think up thought leadership content that points to the content on your site.

Where can you find suitable influencers?

Does any of your staff, associates, or clients command substantial respect within your industry and a sizable following? Are there niche bloggers within your industry that you can approach?

Tools such as BuzzSumo, Upfluence, Traaackr, Brand24, and Followerwonk may help you identify an influencer. 

Once you’ve chosen one or several, familiarise yourself with their work before putting in a pitch.

You’ll need to introduce yourself and the business, mention and compliment their work then explain why you want to partner with them. Detail the reasons you believe their audiences will benefit from your content and ask for their opinion. 

Their response will shed light on the next step.

5. Run a Podcast

Statistics show that up to 80 percent of audiences listen to entire podcast episodes or at least most of them. In an increasingly distracted age, this is tremendously advantageous, as you can hold your audiences’ attention long enough to communicate value.

Going in, consider the following:

• Name your podcast. Brainstorm names that convey your character and tone and align with your message and overall vision for your podcast. Make it descriptive, make it professional, make it fun.
• Will you conduct interviews? Interviews are popular because you host experts who share different perspectives to help your audiences think critically about the topics, challenges, and potential solutions.
• Length of the podcast. It depends on the topics you’re covering. 15 minutes is ideal for niche audiences but so is 45 minutes for general audiences.
• Have specific CTAs for each episode. From newsletter subscriptions to following you on social media, mention your CTA at the start and end of the show to encourage further engagement with audiences.