Earlier this month, FINITE once again hosted an informal call for our members – the FINITE Forum. These calls are a chance for our members to meet each other, get an outside opinion on a campaign idea, discuss any challenges, and/or to network.
On a Thursday afternoon, we were joined by members from across UK, Europe, and Israel, where the conversation centred around a few different areas: from live webinars to direct mail, and from lead generation strategies on a budget to Linkedin automated bot outreach. Here are some of the main points discussed:
Lead generation on a budget
The group began with a discussion on strategies for lead generation and getting ‘through the door’ on a low budget. An interesting talking point was on the success of automating LinkedIn outreach through a bot, or an agency (although LinkedIn in general can be slow burn) which given it’s deployed correctly, has been successful for some in the past, although the question remains as to whether LinkedIn will soon create a system to stop such automation.
Most agreed that although Linkedin outreach is now fairly saturated and not what it was once, it can still work given the right approach. For the best results, marketers and sales reps should look at giving value to prospects, and thinking ‘how can we help you?’ through a community, resource, or perhaps even a contact connection, rather than diving straight into a sales pitch & demo after that Linkedin request has been accepted.
Live webinars over pre-recorded ones for a successful lead generation strategy
The group also discussed webinars as a good lead generation strategy, finding that live webinars tend to work a lot better than the pre-recorded, on-demand ones. The group also agreed that given the right partnership, hosting joint webinars could be advantageous.
When it comes to successful marketing and lead generation in Europe, it’s important to view European countries as different markets, each with its own characteristics, rather than treating it as one big European market.
B2B marketing in Germany was also addressed, as it tends to be one of the trickier markets due to high advertising costs and strong GDPR rules. Strategies here could be a direct mail campaign (depending on your B2B tech industry) and the use of Zing for webinar promotion.
Create content that “cuts through the noise” to beat digital overload
The group ended the discussion by agreeing that with more and more businesses having to go digital, there is a level of ‘content’ overload’, and as we found in our research and agreed by the group, producing enough content can be a challenge, and an even bigger one is producing content that is able to cut through the noise.
