As I stumble through Spotify looking for the newest top-40’s playlist wondering how best to start this post, I glance over at our marketing team in hopes they will read my mind and provide me with an opening. Rather than mind reading, they are talking about the best way to generate sales from current leads, and how to grow our reach to gain new leads. I can hear snippets of their conversation; they’ve pushed our social media, content marketing, and used calls-to-action to generate leads. The goal is to grow our list of contacts.

Now the task shifts to how you can create sales from current leads and reach new ones. Let’s get into two valuable techniques: influencer marketing and customer emails. More importantly we’ll get into how they can help you create relationships with your leads.

Use the Power of Influencers

Take advantage of the resources around you, use key influencers to push your brand to a bigger market — this should be a crucial part of your marketing strategy. In the iDroid world we live in today, key influencers range from bloggers to clients and even current employees. Building a relationship with these influencers can be more valuable than money spent on traditional advertising funnels.

Another relevant, though sometimes overlooked, marketing tool is word-of-mouth. A statement from an industry influencer carries more weight than one from your everyday customer. While both are great, the power of influencers recommendation comes with a proven track record for success.

If You Build It, They Will Come

It’s safe to assume most brands today have a general grasp on the importance of content marketing. Going back to what we touched on earlier, blogging can help increase your brands’ influence. The question then becomes, once you’ve made the effort to create a blog or other marketing tool, how do you spread your reach to connect with others?

The key is to identify key target areas then focus on that audience as your niche market. Once they’ve been identified, find a way to best connect with them to build a successful campaign. An effective campaign includes:

• Setting goals and understanding what it is you want to accomplish will help you decide on not only whom you want to work with, but moreover how you will work with them.
• Create messages to be shared with the masses. Find a specific group and focus on the quality of the content rather than traffic analytics.
• Push for client involvement in the product review, capturing their attention will only push their experience to be hands-on.
• Get to know your competitors, spend time researching their success and see if you can learn from them. Don’t limit yourself, check outside of your industry for more possibilities.

Simply Make It Personal

Another efficient and longstanding strategy for creating relationships is connecting with your customers through email marketing. The beauty of email is it allows you pass along a message in a personalized format and simultaneously allow for leads to interact by clicking through the email.

Organize your email list and if you choose to track the analytics, you’ll already know where the leads are coming from. Whether it be through social media, an eBook, referral, or MQL — take notice. In doing so, you can tailor your emails based on the precise marketing tactic each lead responded to.

If you have other ways to segment your demographics, use them! The point of this all is to break down your massive list into smaller pieces; from there, you can connect with each group accordingly which translates to a better chance of generating response(s).

Getting to know your leads is the key in converting them into sales. Building a relationship with influencers and establishing communication through email marketing are both keys to your success.

So plug in to your Spotify, stop trying to read minds and start to get to know those leads!