The Most Effective Sales Lead Generation Methods for Storage and Enterprise Software

Here’s a 2011 update to a popular chart published by Marketingsage in 2008. The chart shows the most effective ways to generate B2B sales leads for data storage and enterprise software products. The principal change is to bring some social media closer to the center (the most effective place). We’ve also added some additional notes and animated the chart (the animation works on the Marketingsage website).

The methods towards the center of the chart work best. The original chart had blogging and other “social media” on the less effective edge. Much of it still belongs there. However like positive editorial coverage (PR), third-party blogs and tweets can be effective lead generation methods if they are about your product.

What’s changed? There is more information published on blogs, Twitter and YouTube. There’s better information as well, because unlike traditional revenue-driven publications, posts can be more specific to a single topic. Relevancy is the key to lead generation results. Additionally more people have Smart phones, RSS feeds and personal social media accounts that  give them more timely access to this information.

Key Takeaways from the Promotion Effectiveness Radar Chart:

• There are many effective ways to generate sales leads. Success is less about the type of promotion than it is about executing that promotion correctly.
• The most important success factor is relevance. If you deliver the right message to the right person at the right time you will be successful. The right message tells a prospect how your product solves a pressing problem.
• Smart businesses use most of the promotional methods listed. Different promotions deliver leads at various price and quality levels. A low cost-per-lead is not always a low-cost-per-sale. Additionally, different methods reach different prospects at different times with different volumes of information.

Updated Promotion Effectiveness Radar. Source: Marketingsage

Is there a “magic well” for sales leads?

No, but the closest thing to a “magic well” is an emailed sales letter to your house list. The people on your house list are already fans, prospects, or customers. Emails are highly targeted, very low-cost and very fast. They can be personalized and can deliver a lot of information (in the email or with a link). Of course, building this house list starts with other promotions.

There are some easy advertising opportunities as well. Highly productive online promotions usually come from relevant solution-orientated web sites. However, these highly focused niche sites typically generate only a few leads. Rarely enough to satisfy.

For many, data storage and enterprise software are narrow topics. But those of us in the industry know that each category can be narrowed down even further. The narrower you go, the better the leads.

About the Author

David X. Lamont is an accomplished marketer of IT products and a partner at Marketingsage, a PR and lead generation firm that specializes in marketing data storage, data management and enterprise software products. He can be reached by email at blog [at] marketingsage.net. Fellow marketers and IT professionals are invited to join his network on LinkedIn and to subscribe to this blog (see sidebar).