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By Kim Albee

 Your new business needs customers to grow. Generating awareness and interest can be done using online tools as well as more traditional direct mail strategies.

According to the 2011 Demandbase National Marketing and Sales Study, 23 percent of businesses cite their websites as their top online source of leads, followed by email (14 percent), online ads (7 percent) and social media (3 percent).

As a new business, you want to give yourself every way to win the battle for new customers and business growth, so you make it beyond the startup phase. That means dedicating resources to your sales and marketing efforts, and making sure you are as effective and efficient as possible.

You need an approach that can start where you are and grow to include the best next step, will help you move forward and increase momentum in ways tailored specifically to your business.

Here’s some more food for thought: Studies show that 70 percent of leads are never followed up on. Here are the stats:

• 2 percent of sales close on the first contact.
• 10 percent close on the fourth contact.
• 81 percent of sales that close, close on or after the fifth contact!

But only 10 percent of businesses actually follow through to the fifth contact point and beyond. Leaving 81 percent of their potential sales behind!

The key is to tie your marketing channels and efforts together, so you consistently generate demand for your product or service in a way that builds momentum.

Here’s an example:

1) Starting with a direct mail sales letter to a targeted list in your market, with an engaging call to action that points to a landing page on your website that entices them to give you their name and email address (perhaps in exchange for valuable information or a prize you’ve assembled).

2) That person’s information goes into a comprehensive lead database that automatically triggers personalized emails specific to that lead’s interest, starting the follow-up process.

3) As this continues, you can run reports that tell you who is most responsive to your follow-ups, and you focus on those for your sales efforts, while creating your next campaign.

4) POSSIBLE NEXT STEP: use social media channels to drive traffic to another landing page with a similar call-to-action.

This may sound out of reach for a startup new business – but the integrated tools exist and are affordable. The question to ask yourself is this: How much business will you be losing because you fail to implement a comprehensive lead management process?