Traditional VS Digital — Lead Generation
Lead generation is a crucial part of any business. It’s interesting to look at different ways businesses do it because they have to be clever in their approach to prospects. The transformation that the industry has seen with the appearance of social media advertising has been quite substantial, and it requires a deeper look. So, we’ll be breaking down traditional and digital lead generation ways, and discussing which is best!
Traditional Lead Generation
The biggest advantage that traditional lead generation offers is the ability to sit down with your prospect and give them all the time, and all the details they require. Networking events, putting out print, TV ads, and cold calling prospects are some ways of traditional lead generation. Face-to-face connections and real world-impressions are the main focus of this approach.
A lot of times, the traditional way can give you the chance to go in-depth and really convince them that your company is the right choice. It’s not as easy to ignore, either. Even if the prospects are not interested right away, you’ll intrigue them, and they’re sure to remember at least one aspect of your story.
For example, a lot of the prospects greatly value the TV presence of companies, because they believe that the investment that you made to the promotion sort of proves you as successful enough to justify the money spent.
Exactly money is one of the main reasons to step away from traditional ways of lead generation. The cost of travel, pay for staff, as well as the time needed to approach a prospect in person, make it a lot more inefficient. Also, you have to be on your game all of the time or you won’t succeed.
Digital Lead Generation
Then steps digital lead generation. We’re all familiar with the benefits of online promotion. The ability to reach prospects from all over the world, target them with great accuracy and be present 24/7 all sound really great. Almost everyone has a device at their fingertips. It excels at drawing in young people, as they are regularly present online.
A great value that the digital approach gives is the automation that it brings, as well. Scheduling the content, setting it up in advance pretty much means that the campaign will run itself. All you have to do is check in every now and then and react to the information you gathered from your analytics. We don’t even have to mention the fact that it’s all a lot less costly since you don’t have to do it personally, it all happens online. Automation of information gathering is one great aspect of it, as well. It’s also quite convenient to track your prospects with tools such as HubSpot, which can greatly increase the information you have on your prospect's interest!
However, most people, when confronted with any form of promotion, mute or ignore it instantly. Most of the time it ends up in the spam inbox. Skipping ads is something we’ve all evolved to do seamlessly. And in the other hand, everyone is present online nowadays. And if your lead generation efforts stop there, you might come off as uninterested.
What to incorporate?
Seeing that both approaches have their ups and downs, we can conclude that a perfect mix of both worlds would be the most successful. Connecting the ability to approach so many prospects through the digital world, along with the ability to develop a personal connection with them, the traditional way, would seem like the logical option. So, think of digital lead generation as an extension of your traditional lead generation, complementing each other.
