Best Ways for IDM Providers to Get Better Lead Generation Results

Where we are right now, there is so much competition for people’s attention. How does your identity management company get new leads?

The famous saying from the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come,” is not applicable anymore. You cannot just build something and hope people will come any longer. It does not work like that. Content is only half the battle. Distribution and promotion share the other half of the battle.

Say, for argument’s sake, you have a strict budget to fill these growth challenges. Half of your budget should go into content creation, and the other half should go into content promotion and distribution. Without equal distribution, it is like opening an awesome restaurant that’s in a deserted strip mall, and no one has ever heard about because you spent all of your money on an elegant buildout and hiring 5-star chefs.

The reality is, you never stopped to think about promoting your restaurant to patrons, and you should have spent less on the buildout and hiring to leave room for promotion, awareness, and advertising.

The same concept applies for IDM providers and their content. If you spend all of your budget on creation and promotion is an afterthought, you are not going to get the results you are looking for.

There are tons of resources, tactics, and platforms your IDM business can use to promote content. 

Paid Search

Search engines, search engine optimization (SEO) for organic search or getting found in the editorial results, and paid search are all tactics or resources you can use to help promote your content.

Search engines like Google and Bing have well-developed programs for paid search to help accelerate companies lacking inbound links or the authority to attract visitors on their own.

Paid Social

Social media is another great tactic to use but must be prioritized relative to what you find in your buyer persona research. For example, let’s say you are targeting CTOs and discover they have Facebook accounts. However, they primarily use Facebook for personal use and do not engage on there professionally. Maybe your time should not be spent trying to reach these CTOs on Facebook. Instead, consider where they actually do spend their time networking professionally.

It is important to let your buyer personas dictate your priorities and where you spend your efforts on social media. It may take some time to figure out which tactic is the most successful—just like with search engines, links, relevancy, and getting found—but you can accelerate things once you have great, remarkable content and helpful landing pages.

Paid social is another resource available to businesses. LinkedIn has a great sponsored social program. Facebook and Twitter also have well-developed promotional programs. YouTube—which is owned by Google—is the second most popular search engine (right after Google) and allows you to pay to boost your videos.

Email

It is important to make sure the email you are using to promote is relationship-based. The last thing in the world you want to do is put your company in the dog house by spamming people. So how do you build up email reach over time? 

As you get people who are converting on your website, you are building up your database. As you meet people at networking events (I would not necessarily subscribe them to your newsletter), you can certainly send an email saying, “Hey Bob! It was great to see you at the Association meeting last month. I know you mentioned some issues with HIPAA compliance at your hospital—we have a great eBook on that! Here’s a link, I think you will get much value out of it.” Once Bob downloads that eBook, he will be in your database and will get added to your lead nurturing specific to hospitals and HIPAA compliance.

Avoid Lists

There are different ways to build your database, but the last thing in the world you want to do is rent a list and spam the heck out of people. Why?

• It is terrible for reputation with the prospects you are trying to reach.
• It is terrible for your email sender scoring.

Most of the major email service providers and marketing automation platforms will cut you off very, very quickly. In fact, it is actually illegal in many places and can result in fines or litigation.

The Bottom Line

If you do any of this without thinking through the buyer’s journey and your buyer personas, or without remarkable content to share, you are simply putting out self-serving spam. Not only is this not helpful, but it can also harm your ability to do promotion the right way later on. 

How does your identity management business support its lead generation goals? Does your business use LinkedIn, Facebook, or YouTube to promote its content? Share your thoughts in the Comments below. 

If your identity management company is ready to accelerate its revenue growth and learn more initiatives to take you to the next level, check out our webinar “Identity Management Revenue Growth Acceleration Q&A Webinar.”