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Lead Generation Strategies for 2025
4 Plays11 months ago
In this conversation, Ashley Monk discusses the evolving landscape of lead generation for 2025, emphasizing the importance of understanding your audience and refining messaging. She highlights that while traditional tactics remain effective, the approach and personalization of content are crucial for success. The discussion covers the need for a balanced lead generation mix across different stages of the customer journey and encourages marketers to evaluate their current strategies and measure success effectively. Takeaways
- A successful lead gen mix is essential for all stages of the funnel.
- Traditional tactics are still effective, but messaging must evolve.
- Understanding your audience's pain points is crucial.
- Personalization in messaging is key to standing out.
- Consistency in marketing efforts leads to better results.
- Evaluate your current lead generation tactics regularly.
- Focus on one industry or persona at a time for better targeting.
- Utilize customer stories to enhance engagement.
- Measure success based on existing marketing efforts.
- Be cautious of overwhelming your team with new initiatives.
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Transcript
Introduction to Anya Mike Podcast
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Welcome to the Anya Mike podcast, a podcast where we discuss the ins and outs of marketing, running a business and tips and tricks the industry may just not be telling you, but we will.
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If you're looking for inspiration on exactly how to grow your business with ambition, innovation and confidence while creating maximum impact to influence your clients like never before, you're in the right place.
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Grab your AirPods, pen, paper, or laptop, and let's get on your mic.
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Get set and grow.
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And now, here's your host on the mic, CEO Ashley Monk.
Lead Generation Tactics for 2025
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All right, Ani Mike community.
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Well, we are talking about your lead gen mix in 2025.
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What is working?
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What is not working?
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What should you try?
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And maybe what has failed and maybe what you shouldn't try.
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So I am going to be spilling the tea on how do we create our lead gen mix?
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What is a successful lead gen mix look like right now for all stages of the funnel?
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How do you know when to try something new and when not to try?
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And how do you put those ingredients together?
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So let's talk about it.
Adapting Content Creation Post-Pandemic
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Here's something that most people may disagree with or may push back on, but a lot of the same tactics that have worked in years past are still working in 2025.
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The nuance and the piece that maybe has gotten diluted or contaminated year after year is
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is that the way that you create content for each tactic and the messaging is what has needed to shift.
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And so oftentimes tactics like running Facebook ads, running certain types of ads, sending emails, doing drip sequences, those tactics are still effective.
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What you are seeing happen is since we were five years post-pandemic, which is crazy to say, this whole marketing game has matured quite a bit.
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We are seeing companies that never went to market, that have started to go to market online, that have hired and invested more resources into marketing, and despite an economic downturn, are still doing quite well.
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And so I think it's safe to say that it's not the tactic, but it's the way that we approach the market and we go about our messaging.
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Because what is happening now, as you know, and as I know,
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We are bombarded with so many messages that are just annoying.
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You can see and sniff out the same Canva template over and over a mile away.
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We can read rinse and repeat AI even before AI was a thing when we were using tools like Jasper, other copy AI services that are all great.
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But what you're finding is that because so many people are using these tools at mass scale, they haven't been personalized yet.
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And so oftentimes we're very quick to blame the tactic and to blame lead generation on not working.
Understanding Audience Pain Points
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When in reality, our messaging just needs to be better.
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So what do we do about that?
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How do we stand out?
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How do we actually attract leads?
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How do we get attention?
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How do we keep attention and get people wanting to come back and know more about us time and time again to build a standout brand?
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Well, it starts with your lead gen mix, but that really is...
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contingent on knowing your audience, knowing your audience, like the back of your hand, knowing their pain points.
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And I think what we will see in 2025 is instead of going mass market is really focusing on one industry or one persona at a time.
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This is very basic.
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This is very marketing one-on-one.
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but your ideal client profile, your ideal customer avatar, whatever name that you want to put here, knowing who that decision maker is and creating content exclusively for them is going to be the way that we need to approach this to win.
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And not just the same templates either, knowing their pain points, knowing their interests, knowing their desires.
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And I think for so long, a lot of tactics and there's just been less competition and saturation in the market that we haven't had to be as precise.
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But really, I think the messaging...
Updating Strategies Based on Feedback
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And being intentional with the way that we go after people is what stands out.
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So how are you using their photos?
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How are you using customer stories or client stories to retell it in their own words?
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How has messaging changed for your clients or customers, visitors, or your patients, or your students over the years?
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I think that's really important.
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One thing that I know that we do internally when we look at
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Our sales cycle is the way that our clients communicate and serving this podcast is an exception.
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But for the most part, we put out case studies, we put out resources for one vertical.
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So sometimes that's, and a lot of times that's schools.
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So it's something that higher ed would want to read about enrollment growth or enrollment marketing.
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When we've done work with tourism and destination, that's how do we attract new visitors?
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But what are those pain points?
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Because the pain points that you are experiencing today and with your clients may not be the same language that they've used.
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We're coming, we're still in some,
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emotional periods of time with so many Americans, um, and where, regardless of what country you're listening from, it's been a post pandemic has been exhausting.
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And even though we're kind of in a little bit more, um, I don't know, depends on who you ask, right.
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About the state of the climate.
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Um, I think it could be safe to assume that a lot of us are in more stable places than we were in 2020 of not knowing what was next for the global economy.
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There's still uncertainty there and there's still tension, um,
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But I would say maybe less heightened than a national emergency, people being in the hospital, people dying every single day.
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So the emotions and the words and the pain points from a marketing perspective and how we go to market are going to be different.
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And so if you haven't updated those in the last year or two, that's probably the best way to start is with customer research and customer surveys of how are our customers communicating with us?
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How are we being perceived in the market and using those to really affect and direct the way that we
Evaluating Audience Engagement
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message?
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So that's number one.
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Who is your audience?
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How are they talking about you?
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And looking there before we look at our lead generation tactics, because honestly, if your engagement is low within your creative, that might be the first place to look.
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Are you still communicating in ways that resonate with your audience?
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Number two is your lead gen mix.
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What I recommend in this area,
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So often I see marketing directors, VPs,
Consistency in Funnel Tactics
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owners that are ready.
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They are ready to do the next thing.
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They are ready to see growth and they are so quick.
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A lot of these trailblazers, we are innovators.
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We are excited to create change.
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We want to stir things up.
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We want to test new things.
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It's why we got into marketing or creative industries.
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And yet so often it's the same things and consistency over and over again of seeing those results that's going to be the most effective.
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And so what I really recommend is having...
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a predominant top, middle, and bottom of funnel tactic.
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So your top of funnel, it might be social media advertising.
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It might be content creation.
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It might be blogging.
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It might be search engine optimization, although generative search is starting to change the game of what that looks like.
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You've got your top of funnel, then you've got your middle of funnel, which might be more of Google AdWords.
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It might be more inbound or email marketing because you've assumed those people are already on your list.
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Then you've got your bottom of funnel retargeting, social media engagement, reaching out to existing customers.
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What I recommend is knowing what is working and your double funnel too, by the way, it might not be digital.
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It could be going to trade shows.
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It could be going to events, could be hosting webinars.
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It could be a lot of different things.
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I recommend though, having for each stage of the customer journey, a marketing medium that really reinforces that effort and then continuing to refine it and only really testing one new initiative at a time.
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So often I think as marketers, we are spread so thin.
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We are trying to be too many things to too many different people.
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And it's exhausting to keep up, especially in a realm where there are so many trends.
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I know we are guilty of this too.
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This podcast is a great example of something that we saw be really effective.
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We didn't have the bandwidth to be able to manage it.
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And so we relaunched it once we did and we got those things in place and we got very clear on where it would sit.
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in the customer journey for us.
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So I think that is step one.
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When you're looking at your lead generation mix, what has worked in the past?
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Is your messaging still relevant?
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And how can you refine and test that?
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Then from there, based on the stage of the customer journey and looking at data, where are you weakest?
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Do you just not have enough top of funnel leads?
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So if you're a college, are you just not seeing enough RFI forms?
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So request information forms for students come in.
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If you're a hospital, is it just, Hey, we rebranded, but we need people to know our new name and to understand what we do and we don't do.
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Like we don't have doctors for these certain things that people are coming in that these patients won't be served here.
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Um, if you are, um, a restaurant or in the restaurant business, maybe it's like menu or things that you used to be known for and you're not like, and you just don't have those leads.
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You're going to want to look at a top of funnel tactic.
Reviewing and Refining Marketing Tactics
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And then vice versa, if you maybe are losing people, it's like, gosh, we're losing customers.
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Actually, like we have people coming in all the time, but we're not keeping them.
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And we all know that it's cheaper to keep an existing patient client customer happy than it is to really go to market and find new ones.
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Maybe it's your retargeting.
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Maybe it's your content.
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Maybe you're not keeping people engaged.
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Maybe it's part of the customer experience that you need to elevate and just remind them to come back.
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That is usually the best place to look when it comes for refining your marketing mix.
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So
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If there is anything you are learning or taking away from this episode, it's hopefully not that, hopefully you aren't too disappointed because oftentimes we're looking for a shiny new tactic like influencer marketing, a new advertising platform like Programmatic that maybe is going after placements that you haven't been able to get in the past.
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But really there's not really a secret here and there are some great new tactics that you could try.
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But before you do that,
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even though you may want to test it, even though you may be tempted to be creative like I am, look under the hood.
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What is currently working for you?
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Because it's going to take time, resources, bandwidth, new processes and systems, which may sound cost ineffective at first, but like I think of a website project.
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Yes, your site might be costing you, but how much is it going to cost?
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How many people are going to have to be involved to rebrand?
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It might be the best option for you.
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But could you redesign your existing site?
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Is it just your landing page that really needs attention?
Focusing on Successful Initiatives
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Really, my encouragement to you is to figure out, okay, what are we measuring in 2025?
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What is success?
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What is failure?
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And within our existing marketing efforts, clearly, if you're listening to this, you're in business, you have momentum going.
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What is working?
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Can we reinforce that?
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And then maybe what are the gaps and how can we fill them?
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So that is my encouragement to you.
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As you are looking at 2025, as you are looking at your lead gen mix, you might need something for each stage of the funnel, but I recommend
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No, keeping and maintaining at least three to four initiatives that you do extremely well and maybe adding one or two in based on the size, scale and bandwidth of your team.
00:10:31
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If you're a huge firm, you're a huge company and you're at the enterprise level listening to this great, you can be testing on a lot of different channels, maybe 10 to 15.
00:10:39
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But I would say the majority of your listening are in mid-market companies that are trying to figure out, okay, how do we get to the next level?
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And trying to overwhelm your teams when you've got a team of three to seven people internally.
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Maybe there's just one of you that's listening.
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I don't know.
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That can be a lot to have each new initiative going.
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So I hope this helps you.
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I hope this encourages you.
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And I would love to know, what are you currently doing for lead generation where you are seeing the most success?
00:11:03
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We'd love to hear from you and we'll see you next time.
00:11:07
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Thanks for joining us this week on the Anya Mike podcast.
00:11:10
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We'd love to hear from you.
Listener Engagement and Podcast Promotion
00:11:12
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Make sure to visit our website, anyamark.com, where you can subscribe and never miss a show.
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While you're at it, if you found value in this episode, be sure to drop us a five-star review on iTunes and share the show with a friend to help us to continue to influence more people to create maximum impact.
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Tune in for next week's episode, and we'll see you then.