The following is an excerpt from my new book, The Automatic Marketing Machine.
There are basically two “types” of lead generation campaigns. Think of them as two different types of pipelines designed to bring a steady flow of leads into your business.
Pipeline number one is known as a “Call Me Now” campaign. These are campaigns that are intended to immediately generate a new customer for your business. These types of campaigns are typically deployed when your business is marketing urgent or at least time-sensitive products or services.
If someone just had their car break down, for example, they don’t have time to mess around. They’re looking for an auto mechanic IMMEDIATELY, and a Call Me Now campaign is intended to make sure they call you instead of the competition.
If someone has just been arrested… they need a criminal defense lawyer and they need them right away.
Or if you’re selling something that your customers that’s not necessarily “urgent,” but your customers are still often buying “spur of the moment” – maybe you own a restaurant or a shoe store or a sporting goods store – this type of campaign is designed to reach them in their moment of decision and get them into your store quickly.
Pipeline number two is known as a “funnel” or a “lead nurture” campaign. While a “Call Me Now” campaign is intended to attract customers who need your products and services NOW, a funnel campaign is meant to attract prospects who aren’t facing urgent pressure to make a decision.
These prospects are typically starting to think about hiring an accountant or a lawyer or a psychiatrist or a chiropractor.
They’re perhaps conducting some research, doing their due diligence, but not quite ready to pick up the phone and schedule an appointment.
A business owner who’s growing fast and ready to hire an accountant to help with taxes. An unhappy spouse starting to think about divorce. Parents who have a child starting to show signs of possible depression. A middle-aged man who is starting to experience back pain. Basically, situations where the prospect is going to take some time and do some research before choosing a service provider, rather than picking up the phone and making an appointment right away.
These are the type of situations where a lead nurture campaign can be very valuable.
Neither of these campaigns is “wrong” or “right” – neither is inherently better than the other. Rather, these are two distinct tools with very different use cases. If you try to use a lead nurture campaign with a prospect who needs help immediately, you’re going to lose them because they need fast action and they don’t have time to mess around.
On the other hand, if you try to use a “Call Me Now” campaign with a prospect who is not in a rush and who is not ready to make a buying decision, you’re going to lose them because they’re not ready to commit.
These are two different tools in your toolkit. In this chapter, we’re going to take a deep-dive into “Call Me Now” campaigns, and next chapter we’ll do the same with “Lead Nurture” campaigns.
