Top Most Effective Public Sector Lead Generation Strategies: A Comprehensive Guide
Table of Contents
Introduction
My name is Dimitry. I’m the founder of publicsectorleadgeneration.com. And, if you’re looking to get more public sector leads, and customers and close more deals, I can help.
If you have a pipeline shortage, I’m sure you know what your numbers are and I don’t know what your buying cycles are, or if you have another quarter to deliver those leads or convert them. Typically what you would see is public sector customers do not convert as they do in the commercial sector. Let me show you what I mean.
Challenges in Lead Generation for the Public Sector
Why would you even listen to me? I was a senior marketing manager within the AWS public sector marketing team for the last four years. And we’ve launched hundreds, if not thousands of different campaigns with other people’s money. And sometimes we see people spend $100,000 on a campaign and get zero sales. Yes, they’re getting leads, but they’re getting zero sales. And, the public sector market is a little different. Federal, state, and local government, healthcare, education, and different companies have different segmentations. But if it’s somehow relevant to what you’re selling, if you’re looking to get more deals, here’s what I’m going to show you.
If you’re marketing in the public sector and you’re looking for leads in the healthcare space, in the education space, and federal government or state or local government, this video is going to be helpful. If you’re wondering what other ways of actually getting leads, is there a grid or a system that I can understand and see? Oh, I could start here and then I can do this, and then I can do this? Yes, let’s dive in.
The Pros and Cons of the Most Effective Lead Generation Strategies
So what are the most effective public sector marketing lead generation strategies that work right now? I’ve rated these in terms of cost, in terms of pros and cons, and the types of activities. You could see the whole playing field and then decide which ones would work in 2023. I don’t know if you’re running something in Q4 right now or if you’re planning on 2024 for your new pipeline.
Live Events and Sponsorship
These are arguably probably the most expensive ones. Yes, you could spend on paid advertising, $100,000. But in general, live events are in the highest sponsorship category. They could be from a few thousand dollars to 50 or even $100,000 per event.
Pros: Now, what’s the benefit of this event? It’s fast feedback from the live audience. You get to see people face to face. You get to shake some hands. It’s introductions. They actually put a name to a face. They could ask you questions. So, these are warm leads and it leads to sales, right? Faster, because you cut down seven emails to one meeting, for example, to a quick demo maybe.
Cons: Now the cons of this are, first of all, it’s expensive. Again, unless you have a cheap event, but still it’s a heavy lift in terms of logistics. So coordinating travel booth swag, if you need any marketing materials, follow up any badges there. So, it’s not really scalable. Do companies do this? Yes, they do. Events are great, but those are typically spread out throughout the year. And yes, you go visit them, but it’s not really something scalable that you can build your entire lead generation and pipeline generation strategy around.
Joint venture or partnership or collaboration
Now, that means finding somebody who already has your audience. Meaning that it’s a complementary fit. If it’s software you’re selling, find somebody who maybe has your customers who may benefit from the software. Maybe it’s an agency that can get you leads. So, anybody who can get you more customers faster. That’s considered a joint venture or a partnership.
Pros: The benefit here is its trusted audience. You’re not building your audience from scratch, you’re tapping into somebody else’s audience. So, you’re getting the benefits of them trusting that person. And now, you’re introduced to the circle. So again, you just shortcut the circuit.
Cons: And this is a quick way to get in, but it takes a long time to execute the thing. You need to build trust with the person who you want to collaborate with. The joint venture person or that YouTube influencer or whoever you think has your audience, needs to build trust with them and see that there’s an overlap. That you’re not just selling, selling, selling, you’re actually bringing value. You may be educating or there’s something like a specific giveaway for this specific audience, right? Make it unique for them and you have a lot more chances to get in and get the business this way.
Paid advertising or pay per click
The third option. You could do paid advertising in a magazine, for example. It’s an ad. The problem with that is most of those are hard to track. So, how can you see how many people clicked on the ad, right? It’s low engagement, it’s kind of old school. Does it work? Yes, it does. Again, let’s not talk about the magazines in this issue, but we’ll talk about the pay-per-click. So in general, you want to start with the fastest way to get a response, and that’s somebody who is looking for you, right? You’re not just sitting there like “Okay, so everybody’s a customer.” No. Let’s say you identify your customer segment and out of that segment, three to 5% usually are seeking a solution. The others are just maybe aware of it, or maybe they’re not aware of it, they have the problem and they’re just living day-to-day thinking. But a certain percentage, three to 5%, again, they say, “Okay, let me do something about it.” That means the pain level has reached a certain threshold where they need to migrate, they need to change software, they need to go into the cloud, they need to optimize, they need to get insights. You get the idea.
And so with Google, it’s pay-per-click, meaning people are searching specific key phrases, obviously that are probably, most likely to solve their problem. With Google, for example, that would be the first option to try, because you get to see it immediately on the same day. If you spend $50 on Google Ad, you put some paid traffic and you get to see “Okay, I have ten people or 100 people”, however, many clicked on it. And then you can see, “Oh, so the cost per click is relatively expensive here.” Let’s say it’s $7 or it’s $25 in some industries, or it’s a dollar in others. So you have to check it out. If it’s expensive you’re getting like $5 or above, meaning you need 100 clicks, and that’s going to be $500. So depending on how good your product is, if it’s a good landing page, if you have the flow figured out, out of 100 people, how many of them take action and what is the action? Do you have a definition, is that a call book, or a demo? Is that a download? Is it to jump on a sales call right away? So, depending on that process, a certain percentage will take action. And then you get to decide, is Google worth it? If you got two, or three emails for $500, maybe it is worth it. Then do it again. If not, then it’s a quick test.
So, LinkedIn is a bit cheaper than Google and it’s more business audience. Google is more B2B and B2C, but LinkedIn is more B2B. Now again, same concept. You get to deploy a small budget and then test your messaging to see if there’s a conversion. There are best practices and best best-in-class stats. But we’ll have another video on how we are getting five and six X on the best in class from LinkedIn, for example. With paid advertising, it’s not free. It’s a fast start and you’re getting fast results immediately. Within a day, within a week, you can run ten tests and just validate your hypothesis. A lot of it is going to be a wake-up call because you’ll probably think “Okay, this ad is definitely going to work. This picture is definitely going to work.” And then when you test it, it doesn’t. And in marketing, eight out of ten things do not work, right? And that’s the game. And it’s good because when you find the 20% that does work, you get to do more and more on that. And then, it’s definitely validated now. And in paid advertising, you need strong messaging and conversion flow. Something we’ve already discussed. If that message doesn’t attract clicks, and then through the landing page, and then through the content let’s say, and then to the appointment, or to whatever the call to action is, you’re just going to be burning money. And I’ve literally seen people burning 50,000, $70,000 on paid ads on testing. But, I think it’s very hard. It’s a very expensive way to test. You can do tests on a few thousand dollars and quickly see “Oh, out of ten tests, this is actually the one that’s getting traction. Let’s do more of that.” Instead of just burning all the money on things you think are right, ask your customers. They’ll tell you what they want to buy.
Direct Outreach
The next option is direct outreach. So again, this is lower and lower on the price scale. And direct outreach is via email, LinkedIn, or phone. All of these still work. If somebody tells you email marketing doesn’t work, or calling doesn’t work, or any of those don’t work, they all do work. The problem is that 90% of people don’t do it the right way, right? They start being pushy. They’re sales. They’re saying, “Hey, buy this, or let’s connect, or let’s get on the sales meeting.” It’s about them. In the beginning, I had this product. How about you promote it, right? Instead, you should reverse it, right? Focus on them. And there’s a good formula. Give, ask, give, ask. It’s the right balance because you give more than you ask. And that’s how you start a relationship.
So, with direct outreach, again, depending on your flow and your copy, it’s a very effective method. You get in direct contact with the leads. Because you get to engage with them, they still open emails, they respond on LinkedIn and they do pick up the phones. But what do you say on the phone? You have to be ready. You have to know it’s not just, “Oh, would you like to buy this product?” Probably not. You want to be investigative and use the spin model of the situation. Problem implications and need payoff, right? What’s the situation? What’s the problem? If you don’t solve it, what happens then? So now, if I understand it correctly, that’s the situation. That’s the problem. If you don’t solve it, it’s going to cost you a lot of money usually. Okay?
I have a solution that will solve this problem, and you get to save money. See, it’s very simple. You just reverse what they tell you. You don’t have to make things up. Now, the con here is you cannot predict it, right? It’s manual work. It’s direct contact. It requires setup. It requires understanding the messaging and the audience. It’s not just clicking a button and it goes to 100,000 people. And because of that, again, it’s not predictable, but it’s relatively cheap to do. And you get a lot of feedback right away. It is a very effective method.
Getting Leads from Referrals of Friends and Customers
And the final one is the free method of getting leads from referrals of friends and customers. So, it takes five times more money to sell to a new customer because you need to attract them again. You need to go through marketing and explain and educate versus selling to the existing customer.
If somebody bought from you already, selling them again and again and again is going to be five times cheaper. So your goal is to have retention, right? It’s not a one-time sale, but how do you build a relationship? How do you make it last for a while? And if you did a good job, then one of those customers will refer somebody else to you. And that’s just its shortcuts. Again, you bypass 90% of the objections of the problems. “Oh, this is social proof right away. Oh, you’ve done business with them, you got the result you want. It’s great. Okay, hook me up.
Let me talk to them, let me engage.” So a warm introduction works exceptionally well. The problem is it’s not scalable, it’s not predictable. Can you ask for referrals? Yes, you can. Can you control it? No, you cannot. So if you need 100 leads by next quarter and you say, all right, I’m going to go ask for referrals. You can guarantee you get 100 leads, but if you do paid advertising, or if you do direct outreach, you can’t guarantee results.
Identifying What Strategy Works Best For Your Goals
So I would rate this as a go-to-button, and this as an easy button. Those two would be the start. If you’re just starting out or if you’re testing, if it’s a new product or if you’re not sure, maybe something is not working. You had a bad campaign, you burned a lot of money and now you need to recover, right? So this is a quick way to immediately get a response. You get to engage with customers. They get to tell you that they want to buy it or why they don’t want to buy it. And the faster you dive into this, the faster you get the wake up call, the better it is for you, the more money you’re going to save, and the faster you’re going to get the customers you want.
Conclusion
Now, the joint venture is very high leverage because if you get this, this can be 10 times your business overnight. But it’s a long process. So do pay attention to this one. But it’s something, again, that’s not scalable. It’s not something you can count on right away. Now, live events, are excellent for meeting the customers, to shaking hands, but they get expensive, and a lot of travel and referrals are just not scalable and it’s good to have. So let’s delete this. So to summarize, those would be the two methods. You can start relatively cheaply on the budget, you can predict your spending.
If you understand who your customer is and if you have a good product that solves their problem, then just go ahead and reach out and start getting more deals right now. Thank you for tuning in. Hopefully, this is helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to engage. Talk to you in the next one. Bye.
