At a recent industry event we heard a speaker explain how cold calling was a primary solution to gain new customers, and it baffled us. Those archaic tactics are still being used, even with so much technology, analytics and data — not to mention the fact that analytics and data can be measured and are affordable.

Now, some may have luck with cold calling for prospects without researching them and/or marketing to them; however, if you’re relying on your sales staff to simply purchase a list and cross their fingers in hopes that one out of 10 will not hang up on them before they get to their pitch, then we have some magic beans we’d like to sell you too.

The point to our madness is that there are much more intelligent, smarter and modern ways to approach generating new business; one of them is generating inbound leads for your sales staff.

Sounds great you say, but how? Well, we always give away the kitchen sink in our column, simply because we feel the better educated you are the better decisions you’ll make. So if it were our security company and we had a sales team, we’d first throw a couple hundred dollars in a pay-per-click campaign…. Yes, we said a pay-per-click campaign.

But it costs a lot!

Yes it does, but we’ve generated leads for our clients by focusing on manufacturing keywords that potential customers search within Google to find authorized businesses of their desired manufacturing search. It’s nothing to retire off of right away, but it gets the phones ringing and those forms filled out on your website.

After you start generating some inbound traffic from SEO efforts or your pay-per-click campaign, make sure to set up your retargeting campaigns; most leads that come in will be from your retargeting ads. And on the average it’ll be around $0.45 to $1.05 to bring that customer back to your site and keep you top of mind. If you really want to get spunky, create retargeting ads with special offers for a limited time, which could even include a countdown timer.

Also, another marketing service we would throw into the mix would definitely be Facebook ads. Facebook is not only for generating customers from residential end users; we get plenty of leads coming in from commercial end users as well. It’s super easy to set up, generate an ad and to find the perfect demographic. If your service area is 50 miles from your office’s zip code and you primarily focus on Fantastic Sams hair salons, you can specifically target that precise demographic on a CPM basis as low as $3 to $12. What that means is literally 1,000 people will see your ad for that price. Where could you get that kind of visibility for that price? We’re talking about a real prospect that has the propensity to buy.

Still not a believer? Still want to purchase lists and have your sales team cold call all day long? Well if we can’t convince you that there are better ways to generate leads for them and you’re adamant about purchasing lists, then at least take that list you just purchased and import them into Facebook. If the user registered the phone number or email address from the list you have on file you can create ads that will appear on their wall all day long. Yes, all day long, and do you know how many people look at Facebook first thing in the morning? Rough estimates put it at approximately a gazillion. And do you know how many times they check back throughout the day? Another gazillion.

We believe here at Security Dealer Marketing that the vehicle of choice does not matter; as long as the targeted person, chief security officer, manager or owner sees an ad that is of interest to them, they will pay attention. And our results will back that statement up. So when your sales team starts to dial for dollars, at the very least the person you are calling should have some type of recollection of your company simply because your ads have been plastered all over their social media.

This method also helps with door knocking for you summer camp companies. Blast your ads on social media like Facebook and Instagram two weeks before your staff goes knocking for dollars, and chances are they’ll know who your knockers are when they come to the door.

Until next time, make that cold call a little smarter and a little bit warmer.