How Your Competitors Generate Leads

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4 years ago

8 Effective Ways to Generate Leads

Generating leads online is one of the most effective and affordable ways for small businesses to attract new customers. Some of the most common ways include using social media, having a great website, launching a referral program, and more. Generating leads online creates an audience of interested prospects that ultimately turn into customers. Consumers spend more time than ever online in our digital age. Finding potential customers online is one of the most effective ways to increase revenue and build your business since that’s where your customers are already spending time. Here are the best ways to generate leads online for small businesses:

1.A Website

Whether you choose to build your own website or have someone design it for you, it’s important to have a modern-looking company website that’s easy to navigate and matches your brand as part of your lead generation. Be sure to clearly showcase the products and services your business offers and highlight any current promotions. You should also include information about your company’s story, your mission and values to drive engagement with your products and services.

Since your website is often the first place a potential customer engages with your company, another tool that can help you generate leads is to include chatbots that allow you to live chat with prospects who have questions about your services. This gives your prospects the opportunity to learn about your products and services and engage with you. Also, it is now crucial that your website must be optimised for mobile and cater to all users no matter what device they use.

2. Social Media Lead Generation

Social media lead generation is an important tactic for small businesses because of the amount of time people spend on various platforms. In fact, the average American spends over two hours on social media every day. At a minimum, every business should set up an Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn profile to engage with leads where they already spend time.

Once you set up your social media pages, make sure you post content regularly to keep leads engaged and draw in more people. If you have a budget for it, you can boost posts on Facebook Business and Instagram to increase their reach to more people. However, organic (unpaid) posts can also do quite well—especially if you post regular, unique content.

It’s also a great idea to run contests on your social media platforms. For example, if you’re opening a new restaurant, you might make a post—including a great visual image—about a dinner giveaway drawing. The requirements could be to tag four people in the comments who must like your page and, also share the post each of their social media pages. Then, you can randomly select a winner and create a post about who won.

Don’t forget to use the live video and story features on Instagram and Twitter. In the restaurant scenario, take a quick video of your ribbon-cutting ceremony or the crowd on opening night and post it to your stories. People love quick video content that is easy to consume, and it will encourage them to follow your page, increasing the chance they will visit your restaurant.

3. Unique Content Essential

Offer unique content like blog posts, and e-books to establish your business as an expert in your industry. Potential leads can download these in exchange for providing their information, which allows you to manage them in a CRM. For example, if you run a coaching business you could create an e-book, or a book to on how to create a business coaching manual that potential clients could download from your site.

In order to download the content, the potential lead would have to fill out a web form that gives you their contact information, allowing you to follow up with them, include them in email campaigns, and add them to your CRM so you can track conversations with them and see how they interact with your content.

Another great way to engage leads with unique content is to use industry thought leaders who write social media posts, blogs, or e-books for your business. For example, if a restaurant business could have a connection to an expert in the industry, ask them if they will help promote your business by creating content you can use on your website and social media channels. Educate your audience and help them overcome the challenges they face daily.

4.Host Webinars

Webinars help generate leads online because they offer exclusive content to industry-relevant information. They give leads information about your products and services and gives your business a great way to interact with leads in real time.

Choose a topic that resonates with your audience and create a sign-up form. For example, if your business offers social media strategy services, host a webinar that covers how to use software to schedule posts and what types of posts get the most engagement. Advertise your webinar on your social media pages and website.

Once someone signs up, collect their contact information and put it into your CRM so you can keep track of leads. One of the great things is that you now have a lead even if they don’t end up attending the webinar.

Make sure you send a registration email that allows them to add the webinar to their calendar automatically and send at least one reminder email before the event. Record the webinar and send it out to everyone who attended and those who missed it so they can watch on their own. It’s also a great idea to encourage them to share the recording with interested colleagues.

5.Email Campaigns

Email campaigns are an effective tool for generating leads because as you collect email addresses, you can reach out with targeted offers and relevant offers. Every time you have a promotion or special, send out an email campaign advertising to your current leads. Include a share button so they can send it to friends and family who aren’t already on your list.

Next, promote the email campaign on social media to get more people to sign up for your email list. You can use an email marketing tool such as Constant Contact to automatically schedule when campaigns are sent, track open and click-through rates, use pre-made templates, and conduct a/b testing of subject lines.

Start a weekly or monthly e-newsletter that helps prospects get to know more about your company, products and services so they identify with your brand, not just your products. Include things like stories about team members, volunteer activities your company participates in together, and how your business gives back to the community.

6.Purchase Qualified Leads Related to Your Industry

You can certainly generate leads online organically, but sometimes you need to buy targeted leads relevant to your industry. Fortunately, there are plenty of services that can help you find the right leads for your business.

For example, the selectabase, database that helps you drive growth with targeted sales leads. You can build targeted prospect lists with access to millions of business contacts worldwide. Search by title, job function, management level, industry, location, company size, technologies used and more.

7. Reach Out to Leads

Small businesses focus a lot of effort on reaching out to leads, but once a potential customer is ready to learn more, they will often seek out ways to connect with you directly. Make it easy for them to schedule a quick meeting with you without the back and forth of email, by using an appointment scheduling app.

Tools like Calendly connect to your calendar and gives leads the option to schedule an appointment when you’re available to meet. You can choose from different types of meetings and meeting lengths, and include your personal Calendly link on your website, on social media, and in your email signature.

8. Online Surveys to Qualify Leads

When you’re generating leads online, it’s important to figure out how much time to spend on them by knowing how interested they are in your various products and services. Use surveys to gather information you can use to group them into categories and funnel them into your sales pipeline for follow-up.

You can also use surveys to help determine where they are in the decision-making process. For example, if your business helps brides with wedding planning, use a survey maker such as Typeform or Google Surveys to ask questions like these: