Do you know where your leads have been?

For many organizations, I imagine your leads come from the usual suspects; through your website, direct mail, an email newsletter, a direct inquiry to your organization, or through the efforts of your sales team making direct contacts with your prospects.

As a marketer, especially in the current economic climate, are you doing enough?

To achieve maximum results of your marketing budget, it is key to have a strategy that not only is proactive, but also leverages multiple tactics to reach all of the potential touch-points with a prospect. A multi-faceted lead generation strategy increases the return on investment of your marketing dollars as it interacts with prospects as they progress through the various stages of the buying cycle - often before you as a seller are even aware they exist. Understanding how a prospect will engage at each stage, and how to apply a conversion step for each tactic, will ensure you know when a contact becomes engaged with your company and how active they have been before identifying themselves as a prospect.

I follow the blog, Start With A Lead, by Brian Carroll, who posted his views on the topic of multiple modes or facets of a lead generation in the blog post, A Multi-modal lead generation approach.  The objective of initiating multiple touch points with a prospect is that while they may be introduced to your company using a particular marketing program, the conversation with the prospect is then continued using a variety of additional tactics. It moves them through the buying cycle through email, webinars, events and tradeshows, with the goal of providing a qualified lead to the sales team at a time when the lead is most likely to purchase. The graphic below is a slightly modified version of the one Brian created that shows the types of programs and tactics you could employ in a multi-faceted lead generation campaign.

What marketing methods are you using today that are proving to be successful?
Have you created and executed campaigns that use a variety of tactics, moving a prospect through the sales lifecycle?