Enter 2013 ' Is Your Lead Generation Strong Enough?

The year 2013 is fast approaching and many companies are doing their best to close some last minute sales, others are still keeping their lead generation campaigns strong in the hopes of bringing in some more sales leads before the 4^th quarter finally comes to a close. Others are already planning newer lead generation tactics while others are planning to stick to the same old tricks they've had up their sleeves to see how they fare in the new business year. So the question is' is yourlead generation strategy strong enough?

As the new year approaches fast, and a new business year coming as well, where should you take your business' lead generation strategy? Should you go with outbound marketing? Should you rely on killer content? Or should you go all-out with Internet marketing? You probably have a lot of questions as to where you should lean to in order to do lead generation. Let's try to answer that question then:

• Outbound marketing ' Some say that outbound marketing is dead. The answer: it isn't. If you use outbound marketing tactics as part of your lead generation strategy, learn which approaches get you the best results. Has direct mail marketing worked for you in the past? Has investing into radio and TV ads brought you any good business leads? Has telemarketing and cold calling given you a positive ROI? Ask yourself these types of questions to figure out which course of action to take in regards to marketing.

• Let content be king ' Marketers are seeing a rise in the use of high-quality content to improve conversion rates and results with lead generation. Should you do the same thing as well? Definitely yes. If you have some creative minds in your company, leverage your content marketing strategy with content from your own employees. If you lack the necessary capabilities to create killer content, you can also consider hiring a third party content marketing specialist. Let content be king and part of your lead generation strategy.
• Tackle the Internet ' Marketers can no longer ignore the power that the Internet has to contribute to any marketing strategy. Marketers are taking on social media, they're blogging and using landing pages to convert more site visitors into sales leads, they're using SEO to help rank better on search engines and get more traffic; simply put they are using the Internet to do business and attract potential customers.

• Do direct marketing ' Direct marketing approaches such as direct mail marketing, email marketing, telemarketing and cold calling should still be utilized in order to perform lead generation. Direct mail, although costly, still gets much visibility. On the other hand, email is now one the most favored communication tool. Telemarketing and cold calling can get you in contact with prospects in far-off locales, or when you do not have enough resources to dispatch your sales reps to meet with your prospects. Direct marketing is powerful and delivers your messages to your prospects.

Which among these marketing strategies will you use in sales lead generation? Will you use one, two, or all of them? Do you think these approaches will make your lead generation campaign stronger? One thing is for certain though ' all of these serve to help you ramp up your marketing campaign!