Judy Caroll — October 29, 2019 
The management software industry has become an overcrowded marketplace transforming it into a dog-eat-dog competition where everyone wants to have a bigger piece of the pie. Management software vendors surely do not run out of marketing ideas but the problem is these ideas/strategies seem to have a short life span. In other words, it suddenly stops after a strategy produces a reliable pipeline for a certain period of time.
There are three possible reasons why this keeps happening:
- The buying cycle is long, taking more time to make a proposal, close the deal, and fulfill new sales.
- New product development or service implementation takes precedence over lead generation.
- They want to diversify their sources so they focus on creating a new lead generation channel.
While product development and diversification are important aspects of your business, neglecting your lead generation can soon dry up your pipeline – and that’s bad news for your business.
You need to stop doing this “deadly” practice — it’s high time you need to give lead generation the love and attention it deserves if you want your business to thrive in this competitive industry.
Below are some actionable management software lead generation ideas you can start with:
Create Guides and Tutorials
This is the most common lead generation strategy of every B2B company in any industry because it never fails to bring results.
Software is dynamic and it needs to be updated regularly; thus, you need to keep your customers updated to ensure seamless and smooth operation using your software. More so, your potential customers want to stay competitive so they need to upgrade their systems.
Most of the time, they don’t know what to do or know the solution to their existing problem. This is where you come in by creating content that addresses their pain points. This strategy positions you as a thought leader so next time they are looking for a solution, they will go to you.
Offer Gated Content
Gated content can become an extension of your guides and tutorials. Your gated content could come in the form of white paper, infographic, case study, or a survey that addresses or relates to your potential customers’ challenges.
It is a good strategy to get your target customer’s information. It is also flexible because you can deploy it on different advertising platforms. You can further leverage it to generate organic traffic from social media and search engines by placing them on Facebook, LinkedIn, and AdWords.
To further use gated content to your advantage, the information you ask should be concurrent to the value of the content you are giving out. For example, you can request your target’s email and name in exchange for a simple infographic. If you are giving out a case study or white paper, then you could request more information like company size and their position in the company.
Give out freebies
Allowing your potential customers to download the trial or beta versions of your product presents a lot of lead generation opportunities. Be careful, though, because the number of downloads might not translate to quality sales. To prevent this from happening, you can request them to sign up for your newsletter or share your link to their social media network in exchange for the freebie.
Another strategy to leverage freebies is to reach out to the influencers and bloggers that cover your industry and give them a trial version of your software. In turn, they should promote your product writing a review on their blogs or creating a video review on their video channels.
Offer a demo presentation or virtual tour
Take your potential customer’s hand and walk them through your product’s various features. This strategy allows them to discover your product while having one of your experts guide them through each feature. The experience enables them to ask questions in real-time which can remove any apprehension they might have about your product.
Let them answer fun quizzes
Quizzes are popular these days. In fact, almost everyone spends a great deal of their time on Facebook answering quizzes that range from celebrity trivia to spirituality. If they can invest this much time into such questions, how much more in quizzes that allow them to discover their company’s strengths and weaknesses as well as how your software can complement their business.
You can pair the quizzes with your gated content — let them take the quiz first and after they get the results, you can suggest if they want to download exclusive content as a supplemental resource.
Put your product to a test
Remember those detergent brands where they test how tough their product is against stains? You can adapt the same strategy by putting your software to a test in solving several issues or problems. For this, you can collaborate with a third party company to conduct the test and publish the result together with a point by point review of your software’s performance.
Final Thoughts
There are more strategies management software vendors can use to generate more leads. Make sure to conduct an A/B testing for whatever strategy you choose so you know which fits your business. If you want an expert to help you create a lead generation strategy and walk you through it, you can give us a call. We have a team of experts with decades of combined experience to get you started with your lead generation campaign. Give us a call now to find out how.
This article originally posted at The Savvy Marketer.
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