Lead generation for engineering services overview
Engineering services are difficult to sell because the market is very fierce with so many competitors. Engineering companies are often found struggling to find clients.
In today’s era, it’s all about technology and going digital is vital for many businesses. But it’s not easy to shift your business from doing traditional marketing practices to digital marketing. Most engineering service companies are hiring a digital marketing agency to help them with it.
However, hiring digital marketing services doesn’t come cheap. Also, it’s difficult for business owners to really understand if the digital agency is doing a good job or not since there are many black-hat tricks to manipulate the digital marketing performance metrics.
It’s much better for business owners to do digital marketing in-house. This way, you control the cost and the performance. In this article, we’ll take you through some of the most crucial lead generation steps to get clients.
Prospect generation
To generate leads, you first need to find a substantial number of prospects to reach out to. Prospects become leads when they show real interest in buying or using your products/services.
Many engineering service businesses found it hard to generate good prospects. Generating good prospects will save a lot of your time, effort and investment.
On the other hand, bad prospects are just a straight-up waste of investment. You will need to avoid bad prospects at all costs.
Strategies for prospect generation
There are a few ways to generate prospects. When implemented right, they can help you generate a lot of excellent prospects effectively.
- Use a few digital marketing software to generate prospects.
- Build a scraper to harvest prospects on web pages.
- Use paid ads such as Facebook & Linkedin lead generation ads to collect prospects and leads.
- Manually collect prospects on Google search and their websites.
- Buy prospects from a reliable B2B leads database.
Each strategy has its own pros and cons. The two first strategies mentioned above require technical knowledge to run and optimize so that you’ll get the best results. If you’re a beginner or not into software, you may find them very challenging to go about.
Using paid ads is a great way to generate prospects and leads, however, this strategy may not be suitable for small and medium-sized businesses because it can be very expensive.
The 4th strategy doesn’t cost you a penny, however, you will need to spend time manually searching for the right companies, visiting their websites and collecting prospects. For very small businesses that sell high-value items to a very highly targeted audience, this can work for them.
The last strategy is probably the fastest and most affordable way to generate prospects. All you need to do is choosing a reliable B2B leads database.
Buy prospects from a reliable database.
There are many lead databases on the Internet but only a few of them really give you the best value for your money.
I’ve found that many of our clients reported that they wasted time and money on buying bad prospects from other data brokers on the Internet who always claim to have the best quality data.
It’s hard to know if the data brokers live up to their claims and promises or not until you try them out a few times. If you’re not lucky, you will waste money and time on those few trials.
There are some tips to minimize the risk for your business that you should know about.
- Ask if the data provider offers free trials or not?
- How responsive their customer support is?
- Are there any refund policies?
- Are there any discounts for first-time users?
At Limeleads – a leading leads database, we offer all the above-mentioned and many more such as a $79 detailed Cold Email Course free of charge. We’re committed to giving our clients the best value for their money.
Simply perform a few-click sign-up and get your free trials (no credit card is required).
Outreach strategies to turn prospects into leads.
Now that you have a substantial number of prospects, it’s time to reach out to them and turn them into leads and ultimately, buying clients!
However, do not rush doing this without a real strategy. When it comes to outreach, there are two most popular strategies that stand out.
1. Cold emailing.
Cold emailing is the most popular outreach strategy nowadays. many businesses are relying on this method to generate leads and customers.
Cold emailing is preferred by many of today’s digital marketers because it’s affordable, automatic and much less annoying than cold calling.
However, running an effective cold emailing campaign requires technical knowledge. Below are cold emailing’s best practices that you should keep in mind.
- Set up your DNS records, SPF, DMARC, and DKIM records properly for email deliverability
- Warm up your sending email addresses.
- Craft a concise and appealing email subject for open rate.
- Write a concise and well-organized message for readability (bullet points are highly recommended)
- Follow-up even when you haven’t had any reply
- Make sending email automatic to save time.
- Do not be pushy as it takes time to turn prospects into leads.
If you’re not confident in doing all the above on your own, hiring an email marketing specialist is recommended. However, you will also need to understand the process so that you can control the campaign’s performance.
2. Cold calling
Cold calling is one of the oldest forms of outreach. It has been around since the invention of telephones.
Even though this strategy is becoming less popular, many businesses around the world are still using it. Whether it works for your business or not, you’ll need to try to find out.
There are some cold calling’s best practices that you should know about.
- Practices – Practices before hands can help reduce your anxiety significantly. Do not practice alone, instead, ask a colleague or friend to be your practice partner.
- Be Comfortable – Being comfortable will help your prospects be comfortable as well. However, you’ll need to remember clearly what to ask, a few questions work.
- Do not sound like a robot with scripted answers and questions.
- Listen to the conversation – Actively listen to your prospects’ challenges or difficulties. Do not interrupt while they’re speaking.
- Outline the offering as a solution – stop telling the prospects constantly about what features your products or services have, instead, tell them how they can help them solve problems.
- Let the prospects ask questions – Encourage your prospects to ask questions.
Cold calling can easily make the prospects frustrated when done incorrectly. If everything goes right but the prospects still got irritated, don’t be disheartened just yet, it’s cold calling so there will be some of them who get frustrated.
Cold calling done right can convert your prospects fast compared to email marketing. One of the biggest disadvantages of it is that you can not reach a lot of prospects fast compared to cold emailing.
3. Hyper-targeting ads
Hyper-targeting ads is a marketing strategy that allows businesses to reach their desired audience and deliver extremely customized messages right where they will most likely see them.
This can be done through various channels, including Google Ads and social media platforms. With hyper-targeting ads, businesses can target users based on their search phrases, location, interests, and more.
Hyper-targeting ad is important in marketing because it allows businesses to reach their ideal customers and turn prospects into clients. By delivering highly relevant and personalized ads, businesses can increase the chances of conversion and improve their return on investment.
There are several strategies that businesses can use to hyper-target their ads and turn prospects into clients. These include using paid search and paid social to nurture prospects, creating effective landing pages, incorporating live chat or feedback widgets, etc.
If you have a high-quality prospect list, running hyper-targeting ads can be straightforward. You can simply import your prospect list into the ad systems and let them target your ads to only the people in your list.
While starting hyper-targeting ads is simple, it is important to have a sizeable and verified prospect list to achieve the desired result.
Conclusion
Generating leads for engineering services by the use of digital marketing is not easy, however, it’s inevitable in today’s tech era.
If you’re moving your marketing effort from offline to online, we recommend getting prospects by buying from a reliable leads database.
When it comes to outreach, it’s advised to focus more on cold emailing and less on cold calling.
If you got stuck at any stages of your lead generation effort, do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected] or our live chat support. We’ll be happy to help you out!