Why is lead generation important for small businesses?
Lead generation is quite simple – it is the strategies and actions carried out by small businesses to build interest around their product or service and ultimately generates potential customers.
With lead generation, your small business can attract new clients and grow your bottom line.
You have the potential to reach more clients than you ever thought possible online, but not all web searchers are going to be interested in your products or services.
There are various marketing strategies like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and social media marketing. These are all great ways to reach potential customers online, but customers may not be ready to make a decision and commit to your brand or service when they first come across your business.
To ensure that you’re spending your time and money on marketing strategies that attract qualified leads, lead generation helps to narrow down your potential clients and allow you to focus your efforts.
What exactly is Lead Generation?
Traffic x Conversion Rate = Leads
Let’s explore some lead generation strategies that can attract more customers to your business:
Identify your audience
The first step before starting any marketing strategy implementation is to identifying your target audience.
Here are a few important questions you need to ask yourself:
- What type of customers does my product/service serve?
- What are their demographics and interests?
- How much do they earn?
Create buyer personas which are basically representations of your ideal customer based on real data from your current customers along with market research. These personas are extremely powerful in understanding your customers’ motivations and you will get a firm idea of whom to target. It will also offer you insight into your audience’s mindset so you can target them better.
Offer premium, relevant and engaging content
Premium content can range from infographics to ebooks and downloads, as long as it provides value to potential customers as they search online.
Whatever content you create, whether it’s a blog post, an infographic, or a newsletter, make sure that it’s meaningful to your target audience and offers real value to them. Focus on your customer needs and requirements and create your content around that pain point. If you’re just pushing out material that’s full of keywords for clickability, you may see a traffic surge initially but this technique is hardly sustainable in generating future leads that are loyal.
You can use a call-to-action for your most valuable content, and require site visitors to enter their email addresses to receive useful content such as an ebook of valuable free information. It will also help you grow your email list and then create a lookalike audience based on that data.
There are two tones to take note of while creating content:
- Steer clear from the salesy or marketing tone. Customers aren’t stupid and can clearly differentiate between a product pitch and content that is designed to inform and help them.
- Be catchy and creative. If you publish a social media post that is highly relevant, there is little use for it if it’s message is bland or mediocre. You can use eye-catching designs and visuals to captivate prospects which will in turn give them a desire to make the action you are asking for.
Email marketing
Email is a good way to engage with your existing contacts and helps you build a reliable contact list.
Potential clients may not be ready to buy when they first come into contact with your business, but with email marketing, you can keep them in your sales funnel by providing them with targeted, useful content that answers their questions and encourages them to learn more.
Then, when they’re ready to buy, your business will be at the top of their list. By emailing tailored and relevant content regularly you can convert your leads into customers.
A good method structure would be:
- A potential customer subscribes to receiving your emails and newletters via your website
- You can then send them a welcome email with free downloadable such as a useful and informative ebook
- You send them periodic emails such as newsletters or links to useful posts on your blog
- Event invites or company updates can also be sent through your email list
- Once you see regular engagement where your audience are opening your emails and clicking on links, you can send them promotional offers
- The reward: Over time, you’ll see that some of your prospects have turned into customers!
Optimise your website
Do basic local SEO
- Claim your free Google My Business directory listing and optimise it.
- Perform basic search engine optimization (SEO) across your website’s pages with descriptive title tags.
- Optimize each page with a compelling meta description to inspire click-throughs from search engine results.
- Claim local business listings on online business directories and other local directories.
- Encourage customers to post reviews about your business on Google and specific platforms you concentrate on. When asked, the majority of satisfied customers do oblige.
While channels like emails or social media help you get prospects to sign up, your website is your best bet to generate leads. Ensure that your entire website is optimised to deliver an optimal experience to users.
A few key aspects to focus on:
- Speed – If your site isn’t fast, viewers are likely to leave
- Mobile Optimisation – About 80% of your audience use their smartphones to access websites
- SEO – For your landing pages and blog posts to rank on Google, you need to optimise your content for ranking on search engines.
- Navigability – Once people enter your site, they should be able to get from ‘Point A’ to ‘Point B’ easily so that they don’t have to waste time searching for what they want. They should be able to have a smooth and simple user experience on your website
If you want prospects to stay on your sight for longer, ensure that your content is inviting and stands out, include reviews and customer testimonials to build trust, and that there are clear call-to-actions on every page especially your landing page.
Track your leads
The most vital part of lead generation and the various methods you decide to use, to track the engagement and interation you’ve had. A Customer Relationship Management system is extremely useful whether you generate leads through newsletter subscriptions, signup forms or even cold calling.
The reason why tracking is so important is because it creates a solid relationship with your potential and existing customers from the beginning.
You can build on the relationship gradually while automatically updating your customer information. This will allow you to track how they’ve interacted with your content and what works best to target their communication in future.
Please contact us if you would like us to assist you optimise lead generation on your website:
