8 lead-generation secrets for small businesses

Lead generation is one of the key elements responsible for the success of any company. It’s simple — to grow, a business needs new customers. However, before you can start building strategies for generating leads, you need to determine your target audience, which is the ideal customer you would like to attract to your product and/or service through various marketing efforts. This ideal customer, or buyer persona, is a semi-fictitious representation of your ideal client(s) based on data and research.

Buyer personas can help set the basis for your marketing strategies, which will ultimately allow you to drive sales, and hence, revenue. With properly-defined personas, you can figure out who your target customers are; what they want or need from you; which message will resonate best with their needs; how, when and where to reach them to build awareness and drive them to your business/website; what to write about in your content marketing efforts; how to talk to them on social media; and much more.

Once you have your ideal customer mapped out, you can use these eight tips to generate leads for your startup or new small business:

Leverage the power of social media.

According to a report by Ascend2 entitled “Building Relationships for Lead Conversion,” for which 263 marketers were asked about the most effective channel for building relationships that led to lead conversions. The majority of respondents (58%) cited social media at the top of the list.

Currently, there are 3.78 billion social media users in the world, and most social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, allow you to create an account for free. Therefore, building engagement on these platforms costs almost nothing. You can host contests, live sessions, polls and giveaways to build personal relationships with your connections to convey your company’s message.

Optimize your website and deploy CTAs.

In our digitally-focused world, even a brick-and-mortar store needs a compelling website, which combines effective design with speed and efficiency.

That said, your website should offer visitors a look into the who, where, what and why behind your business and drive them to take some sort of action. This is where the call to action feature comes in. A CTA drives visitors to a “contact us,” “chat with us” or “buy now” page.

Offer webinars.

A webinar, in simple terms, is a virtual event hosted by an organization and broadcast to a select group of individuals through their computers over the internet. According to several studies, people usually grasp information faster if it’s written down and is visually appealing. Therefore, hosting such virtual events as webinars can be great ways to create visibility, generate leads and boost revenue for any business.

To have success with webinars, ensure that you are using the right webinar software, which can make the ticket-selling process much smoother; and always deliver quality content — viewers should feel like they got more value out of the webinar than they paid for.

Utilize email marketing.

Email marketing’s return on investment is $42 for every dollar spent, according to research. Even then, 77% of small businesses claim their average email click-through rates are between 0% and 10%. This shows that businesses need to send the right emails to the right people, at the right time in order to generate viable leads.

Master SEO.

“The first page of Google captures 71% of search traffic clicks and has been reported to be as high as 92% in recent years. Second-page results are far from a close second coming in at below 6% of all website clicks,” according to an article on Forbes.

This makes search engine optimization one of the top lead generation strategies, especially for B2B, online and B2C businesses. On a basic level, you can start by ensuring that your website offers good information, provides answers to frequently asked questions and includes writing that is clear and concise. Then, it is also crucial to avoid SEO mistakes such as using the wrong keywords, not utilizing existing content and not optimizing the website for mobile devices.

Invest in paid ads.

Even though this may not be a feasible option for startups and small businesses due to budget constraints, a strategically run paid ad campaign can generate high-quality leads for small businesses. Using paid ads, you can create, schedule and run targeted ads.

Tap into influencer marketing.

In the world of social media, there are people known as influencers. These are individuals who have built a reputation for their specialized knowledge, authority or insight on a specific topic. They post regular content in that subject area on various social media channels and generate huge followings of enthusiastic, engaged users who pay close attention to their views. Their preexisting presence in an industry makes them a useful launching pad for companies looking to establish credibility.

Companies love to work with social media influencers because they can establish trends and encourage their followers to buy products they promote. In fact, research says that due to its effectiveness, nearly 39% of marketers increased their influencer marketing budgets in 2019 — 54% of marketers planned to spend more than $250,000 annually on influencer marketing, and 17% planned to spend more than $1 million.

Make the most of word of mouth publicity.

There is no better mascot for your company than your existing customers. In fact, according to research,“peer recommendation is the most trusted channel” for 9 out of 10 people.

Final words

It is important to remember that a lead generation strategy that works for one business may not work for another. Success of such techniques depend on the target audience, nature of business, demographics, geography and many other factors. Therefore, it is important you revisit and retest your marketing strategies from time to time.