Constantly assessing and retargeting your marketing and contact methods to prospective customers should be a regular occurrence in every sales environment to ensure continued lead generation. Location targeting is just one aspect of this.
Although locations can be seen as restricting, particularly to smaller businesses, current deals should be mapped out and analysed. If you feel your market is saturated in certain areas, taking a step back can reveal uncovered ground.
Survey Your Landscape
Understanding where you are currently generating business is key to being able to see, not only where the demand lies for your product or service, but also which of your targeted marketing methods are working for you. Ask yourselves questions such as; are your larger clients within a certain distance of your offices? If so, maybe you need to invest more resources into exploring new opportunities.
The process of analysing your business objectively allows you to then attempt to replicate the formula to your success in other locations. A word of warning however, it may sound obvious but bear in mind your approach or campaign may need to be revamped for the new audiences, industries and locations you want to target.
Segregate the rest of the country, or even world if you’re an international organisation, into territories to help you re-focus your efforts on new areas. You will more than likely find each territory or sector responds to a completely different campaign message, which is why mapping your existing business and noting what has proven successful for your business is a worthwhile task.
Missing a Trick
It can be tempting to repeat successful campaigns, ideas and strategies in order to stay within your comfort zone both metaphorically and physically. However, this kind of behaviour is not hugely proactive or conducive to business growth and genuine lead generation.
If you have always targeted your local town or city then why not be ambitious and try to spread your net a little further. Look to other businesses and industries to identify prospective clients in a similar field to your existing ones. If their needs are similar to other businesses you work with, they will likely hold some interest in your product or service.
Lead Generation is a cyclical process. Once you have targeted a new location you should assess source quality and identify decision makers.
Advertising via media local to those prospects can be effective or look in to print and online publications for tender opportunities. Searching for leads does not need to be difficult; large corporations often advertise when they are looking for a new supplier for a service or product.
Looking for New Horizons
Expanding your geographic range doesn’t have to be a result of anything negative, but the likelihood is that by retargeting your sales to a new or modified location you are initiating fresh lead generation whilst continuing to manage and follow up the queries from already familiar areas.
By asking your sales team to utilise the following steps they will be able to prioritise areas you could currently be ignoring:
- Collate your office locations.
- Plot the whereabouts of current clients and prospects on the same map or software
- Identify the gaps and devise a strategy specific to those locations.
If this proves unsuccessful, it might be down to the industry or businesses you’ve targeted rather than the location. Keep experimenting with variations and you’ll know you’ve struck gold when you hit your targets consistently.
