Lead Generation Tactics and Strategies for Online Success

Hi everyone. This is Ranmay on your show E-Coffee with Experts.Today we have Matthew Clark from DMG Online Marketing. Welcome Matthew, to our show tonight.

Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me. And I’m looking forward to talking to you a little bit more and thanks for sharing the time with me.

Lovely. Matthew, before we move forward and talk about digital marketing strategies, we request you to introduce yourself and DMG online marketing to our audiences.

Sure. My name’s Matt Clark and I’m from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. DMG online marketing is based out of there. And we service, everywhere again, being a business that can work in several different Segments and areas. So we offer a service in Canada, the United States, the UK, Australia, and those areas as well.

I’m also a full-time firefighter and a big believer and being involved in the community and stuff, DMG online marketing is fit and followed that same path. We help small to medium businesses expand their digital presence and their footprint on the internet, social media, and those types of things.

Great, Matt you wear multiple hats I think for this podcast you also have a standing session there how do you manage all of this?

That’s a great question. I think a lot of it is just trying to understand what it is you’re hoping to accomplish and I have a success criteria that I model my business and my life by. And those items in there are always questions that I ask myself. Am I gonna take this project on? How can I help this client more? And they direct me in making the right decisions to move forward, which also helps manage my time. Because you can now prioritize with a set of criteria that says, is this something I’m gonna do or is this something I’m gonna have to pass on? And that’s how I’m able to run DMG online marketing work as a full-time firefighter. I also run a strength and conditioning company as well. So it just gives me the ability to move in between those three work-life things that I do and control my time.

Now coming to the part of DMG Online Marketing, as a founder of the agency, what strategies have you found to be the most effective ones in helping businesses grow and succeed online?

That’s a great question. If you would’ve asked me that a couple of years ago, I would’ve had a different answer. Okay. Post-pandemic, it’s been a real learning process and it’s been quite fun. Because I think me personally and the clients I work with, we’ve moved back to get a little more one-on-one, a client and customer connection.

So we’re focusing on helping clients connect with potential customers and get back to a little more old school kind of sales, I would say in the sense where people are talking to each other they’re having really deep conversations about what each person’s looking for again. So developing a good relationship before even moving into a client, customer relationship. And I think that’s really helped businesses accelerate and also identify themselves coming out of the pandemic. There’s been a lot of sort of, scrambling and I think it’s been a great strategy to help businesses find good, solid new clients grow their business and then also focus on retention because of that relationship, they’re building with their clients. We’re in the past, it’s a little more of a treadmill-type thing, put a client on, do the service, the client falls off, get another client on. Now they’re focusing a little more on it. Put a client on and bring that client on board and create a long-term relationship where they can have years of service to that client as opposed to, one sale and done sort of thing.

Sales have always been about retention, right? So you cannot have a leaking bucket in the business,Yeah. An agency or any business for that matter. A very nice slipper that way, in terms of that trade example there, Matt, talking about DMG online marketing you people do a lot of SMB segment marketing campaigns, right?

So how do you approach creating effective online marketing campaigns for small, and medium businesses and what strategies do you find are more relevant to the SMB segment versus let’s say enterprise or any other segment for that matter?

Yeah, the first thing is always creating a relationship with the business. So with my clients, I’m pretty proud of one of our stats, we have about a 98% retention rate. I’ve got I would say half my client base, they’ve been with me for over 20 years. So it’s really about learning and living what that business is so that you can understand what it is that they are looking for their ideal customer, and then putting that into the process of digital marketing. Okay, this is their ideal customer. Now, how do they best fit? What sort of segments, as you mentioned, are they gonna fit in to get those ideal customers? Where are those ideal customers coming from? The strategy is learning the business, learning the principles of the business and who they are, and what they stand for, and then connecting those people with like-minded customers so that their relationships grow as their business together grows.

And so the strategy of course, really comes down to once you know who that customer is, now figuring out where is that customer, right? Are they on social media? Are they reading blog posts? Are they searching on the Internet? Are they, or do they wanna just an email introduction? Do they want a phone call? And that’s how we then build the campaigns based on how to find those ideal customers.

Absolutely. Matt, you played it so subtly when I was boasting about my 93% retention and you got 98. Yeah, that’s not fair, man.Talking about lead generation while we can have a lot of online marketing digital presence, it all falls flat if people are not noticing, you’re not coming onto your website, right? What effective tactics do you use or your team uses at DMG online, to ensure that you know the footfall is happening for your end client staff?

Again, that’s a great question. Because it’s so adaptable to every different client, right? So depending on what it is they are trying to accomplish and what the number of leads is that they need, right? So we always look at lead acquisition cost and then what their conversion ratios are when they do get leads. Because you might have some clients that, they need, 20, 30 leads a day.

Yeah, just be by function of the type of business they are. Yeah. And then you have other clients where they only need one or two leads a day, or one or two leads a week, right? So again, the lead generation where is it coming from? Is it social media driven? Is it pay-per-click driven? Is it website driven? That all ties back to that original thing is, where’s that ideal customer coming and then creating those funnels, that allows those customers to come in a very safe and casual way to say, Hey, I’m interested in learning more about your business. And that’s how the leads are generated there.

So strategies are always evolving. We do tests and everything, so as I said before, it’s the pay-per-click, the social media. The content marketing, writing relevant articles and information so that customers can say, Hey, this is what I’m looking for. And then, having the lead generation process there for the company. I think one of the biggest things we’ve found in the past is a lot of companies, if you start generating leads for them and they’re not used to, How that comes in, they can miss the leads. They can not follow up properly. They don’t get in touch with them soon enough, or they’re not getting in touch with them through the right channel. Do these people want a phone call back? Do they want an email back? Do they want you to message them through, Instagram or Facebook or things like that? So lead generation is an adaptable process. It’s several different tactics. And then of course it’s always try something. Test see what the analytics say, and then adapt and adjust as you go. Hopefully, that answers the question, but I think it’s a really broad very complicated process to make sure that everything is working.

And then once you find that sort of magic sort of solution, you just kinda keep that lever on until things start to change and then adapt as you go. Yeah, absolutely.

Every segment has its way of looking at lead generation. In fact, in the same segment, every business has its way of, doing lead generation, and exactly like you mentioned, a very valid point. Leads coming in is one thing, handling those leads is another. If you’re not able to, handle those leads in the manner it should have been, then there is no point in having those leads in the first place because that’s if you’re doing, for example, PPC, then it is costing you a bomb to that to land that leads onto your page as well, right? Yeah, exactly. It’s very important to kind of understand the way they want to be handled and you take the initiative to reach out to them through those mediums and then pick it head-on. So a very valid point there, Matt.

Yeah. Yeah, social media we get a lot of leads from social media and it’s focused on social media.The capabilities of social media are growing day by day, right? At DMG online, how do you leverage social media or, multiple digital channels for lead generation, and what do you feel are the common mistakes that many businesses would do while devising their social media strategy?

Yeah. That’s a great question because there’s been a bit of a change for us internally with social media. So we’re pulling back from social media because we’re finding that I’m trying to think the best way to explain this. Our, social media is still a channel that we will, encourage clients to use and stuff like that, but we’re trying to move clients to other channels as a primary way.

So social media, we’re trying to lean into it more as a brand recognition as opposed to a lead, lead generation process. Just because of us personally, specifically, I find social media has turned the corner to maybe not the most positive influence on people’s time, on people’s productivity, and relatively Positive messaging if that makes sense.

So we are existing clients we do social media for, but we’re not taking on any new social media management clients. If they just want social media, then we just refer them out. Because it’s just it’s becoming for us and me specifically a bit of an ethical dilemma.

And so at this point, we’re pausing on how aggressive we’re getting on social media and looking at other channels where we can produce positive messages get people to understand who we are as a company or understand who our clients are as a company and that they’re authentic in their communication as opposed to posting something to grab somebody’s eyeballs for those 20 seconds or 30 seconds. So that’s, so I know that doesn’t answer the question, but that’s where our direction’s going. We’re doing less and less social media and I’m hoping that will change. I’m hoping we’ll be able to come back to social media when we can get these platforms to be a little more responsible in how content is shared, how content is produced, and how it’s monitored.

There is just too much ambiguity in the process right now. And I think more damage was done than good currently so that’s our take on social media. Probably not the most positive message around it. And some people will probably argue I know a lot of people argue with me about it, but it’s, that’s where I’m at with it. Yeah. It’s fine.

Everyone has their way of looking at strategy, something working for you might not work for me, and vice versa so it’s fine because, talking to multiple people, understanding their vision, helps you understand multiple sides, multiple facets of that particular, strategy. So it’s absolutely fine, Matt. Yeah, fine. Yeah and then Matt, before we let you go one final question. Can you please share some tips for creating, website designs that build trust with visitors and, how you ensure that your client’s websites? Perceived as trustworthy and reliable at the same time.

Again I lean back to clients being authentic, right?

And sharing who they are. It’s not about so much about who you think everybody wants you to be. It’s about who you are and what you wanna be. And I think it’s important that we move back to that strategy of being the Mom pa shop where everybody knew your name and people could call you and ask questions and that kinda stuff.

We’re at this place where people want touchpoints again. People wanna connect with people and you can see a lot of big corporations making these changes rapidly now because as they come out of the pandemic, especially in the travel industry and things like that yeah, very much they’ve realized how much disconnect they’ve had from their customers, and then now how frustrated customers are. And so they’re scrambling to try to get back to being able to communicate with customers directly and authentically and answer questions quickly. And I think coming back to a website, it’s portraying that, portraying the fact that, hey, we are open for business.This is who we are. If you wanna do business with us, we would be happy to do business with you. And so that comes back to. Learning who the owners are, learning what the business is, learning who that ideal client is, and meshing all those things together. And then I think you can build an authentic presence so that people will get a sense of who you are and trust that process.

So Matt we would like to thank you for taking our time for this podcast. It has been a real pleasure picking your brains on digital marketing strategies at large. And before we wrap it up, I would like to, help our audiences understand how to reach out to you or DMG online.

Great. And, thanks again for reaching out and having me online. It’s, this has been great and it’s, I’m easy to find. You can find us DMG online marketing.com. We do have a social media presence. It’s around there, but I’m not gonna share that cuz you’re probably not gonna find much activity on it currently.

But I am on LinkedIn. That’s one platform that I still believed in. And you can find me there, just do a search for Matt Clark or DMG Online Marketing on LinkedIn, and you’ll find me there as well.

Superb. Matt, thank you so much for sharing insights, valuable insights about marketing strategies, and an interest in time. I’ll not hold you back and we would love to have another detailed session with you sometime down the line, as and when you have time. Yeah. So thank you so much, Matt. It has been a real pleasure.

You bet. I appreciate being here. Thank you. Yeah.