How To Outsource Lead Generation

Lead generation is a key component to the success of every business. The more leads you’re able to attract, the more likely you are to increase your sales. However, as a business owner, you may not have the time to focus on generate leads. This is exactly why outsourcing lead generation is beneficial. Not only does it give you time to focus on other tasks, it also puts your business in a position to make more money

Continue reading to learn everything you need to know about outsourcing lead generation.

What Is Lead Generation?

To put it simply, lead generation is a marketing practice that entails identifying people who may be interested in the products or services your business offers. Those people are then referred to as leads. There are several ways to generate leads. By outsourcing your lead generation, you can work with a professional to help identify the process that will work best for your business.

How to Outsource Lead Generation

Now that you’ve learned about the ‘why’, it’s time to focus on the ‘how’. Below are the steps to outsourcing these very important tasks.

Identify Your Ideal Customer

While it can be tempting to just consider everyone as a potential customer, identifying a specific segment or group of people is more efficient. After all, people who are actually interested in what you have to offer are far more likely to do business with you than people who aren’t.

Since you’ll be outsourcing lead generation to another person, it is vital for you to have a good understanding of your target customer so you can share this information with the freelancer you’ll be working with. If you haven’t figured out how to identify your ideal customer, there are a number of ways to determine who the right customers are. You can do this via surveys, researching your competitors’ customers, and responding to customer comments. Ask yourself some questions, too.

• What are group are you targeting?
• How much money does your ideal customer make?
• Does your ideal customer work in a specific industry?

If you still need insight on creating these buyer personas, this resource may be able to help.

Create an Email Template

Once you have determined your potential customer, you can create email templates that the freelancer will send to your leads. Though you are going to outsource lead generation, this task shouldn’t be one of them. You need to maintain brand consistency and no new hire will know your voice as well as you do.  To achieve consistency, you need to create templates for the emails they will send.

As with any other online endeavor these days, a single email won’t cut it.  You can use services like MailChimp, Aweber or GetResponse, to create a more effective campaign using autoresponders.

Keep in mind that email is still considered one of the most efficient digital marketing tactics which is why it is very important not to mess this up. There is an art involved in crafting a profitable email campaign.  Each email should have an engaging subject line, a simple yet attractive design, it should show brevity, a well-presented offer, and a clear call-to-action.

Make a Tracking System for the Leads You’ve Generated

After identifying your potential customers and setting up your templates, the next step is to determine where you’ll be saving or storing your leads and how the campaign emails are to be sent. Are you going to save them to an Excel spreadsheet or notepad?  Will they be stored in the mail service you use, or will you be making copies on the server? Will the emails be sent in one-day or two-day intervals?  Are they going to be sent in batches?

The answers to all these questions should be in place and properly documented before you outsource lead generation to another person.

Hire a Lead Generation Freelancer

With the system in place, it is now time to hire a lead generation freelancer.  You have to take note that lead generation is a unique skill that not all freelancers possess, so make sure your requirements are specific.

Once you’ve found the right match, you can then walk them through your system.  Give them a rundown of the things they need to do and make them understand the importance of each step.  Tell them about your lead generation objectives so they know what to expect and what their targets are.

Keep Track of Progress

When you outsource lead generation, it doesn’t end with you hiring a freelancer to do it for you.  It’s a continuous process until you and the freelancer are in sync in terms of how the system works and if it’s meeting your goals. This is why it’s important to check in every day at the beginning to see if they are doing the task the way you expected.  More importantly, you need to do this because you want to make sure that they are actually producing results.

You should also setup weekly meetings and give the freelancer a roundup of what happened over the past week.  Tell them what they’re doing right and what needs improvement.  Show them how many leads were generated against the actual expected number. Sharing the statistics will be an encouragement to the worker.

A weekly meeting is a good way of pushing them to perform at a higher level.  It will also give them the impression that you want them to succeed in what they’re doing. You’re not just leaving them on their own after hiring them and passing over the lead generation tasks.

Conclusion

Setting everything up before you outsource lead generation could prove to be a worthy investment. Keep in mind that the main reason why you outsource lead generation is to free up your schedule.  Having a professional deal with your lead generation can also help yield better results.

Plan and follow these steps so you can get the right person who will collect leads for your business every day.  If the freelancer converts one or two leads everyday, you’ll be getting back more than what you invested, which is absolutely great for business.

If you are looking for a good lead generation freelancer to kick things off, we can help you find the right person by when you sign up as a client.