There’s many ways to generate more leads to your business. In this article I’m going to discuss some of the strategies I’ve found helpful. Whatever your business is, you can benefit from an online presence. So if you haven’t already got a website, you should get one straight away. But before you rush off and build your website, you can build a website around your main keywords. This can give you an edge straight away in some cases; especially if you have a locally based physical business.
I’ve used this strategy a few times and it works if you have little to no competition to the main keywords in your area. You can checkout this article on create free website and make money for a more detailed explanation to the strategy. But here’s the short version.
How To Generate More Leads – Keyword Targeted Domain Name
I started out online using all the cheap and free strategies. Building a keyword targeted website is a strategy I’ve found works again and again. This will of course depend on your particular business, but it works wonders for a local business. Target the main keywords in your area which are searched for about your business. Add your city name, and purchase a domain name which reflects this.
An example site I built was for a friend who has a photography business in Harrogate. He kicked off the competition on Google and got to first place in the search results for harrogate photography, or photographer harrogate. Anyway, it worked well and he got loads of business. So it’s a consideration. I’ve written a whole article on this here, like I said so check it out!
How To Generate More Leads – Blogging
This is another free strategy but it’s time consuming. Like I said, when I started out I used all the cheap and free strategies. This takes time and you can jump ahead to paid marketing instead if it’s not for you! But for me, it worked and I generated leads and sales through blogging!
I also used this strategy for clients too and got them sales. It’s basically the same strategy as the keyword targeted domain name but with a blog title. You can even build micro niche sites using this strategy for free leads and sales too. Here’s an article I wrote on the best micro niche for blogging.
This strategy involves using Google’s free keyword planner and finding long tail keywords within your niche. You go for the long tail keywords because most of the shorter (and more competitive) ones will be far too competitive. (Use paid marketing for those instead).
Once you’ve found a good long tail keyword you can write an article for it. Make sure you use a good SEO plugin and write a good quality article which will help prospective customers. Checkout my ebook for more on this strategy.
How To Generate more Leads – Opt-In Offer On Your Site
A website should be a good lead generating tool. But you’ll only generate leads from your site if there’s something worth signing up for on it! So you can create something useful for your prospective customers on your site which you can give away in exchange for your visitors email address. I have a number of things I give away from this website and a few options for people who land on the site. Ideally, test and measure different opt-in options over a thousand or so visitors. Over time, you’ll find out which ones work the best.
Make sure you can easily see your opt-in offer on every page of your site. Many sites have an opt-in “newsletter” buried down at the very bottom of their website. That’s no good because more visitors won’t even see it! Make sure you install a drop down opt-in form so that people will see your very best offers. Then you’ll get more sign ups on your site. Again you can test and measure your opt in forms to see which ones perform the best.
Customer Avatar – Get Your Targeting Right
Much of the traffic on my website doesn’t turn into an opt-in. People are aware that if they opt in to an offer, they’ll be inundated with emails! So they are selective when opting in to offers. If you get your opt in offer right through, you’ll get more opt-ins from the same amount of traffic. So it’s worth testing out different offers.
Getting your customer avatar right is pretty important as I’m currently learning! An avatar is basically what your “perfect” customer looks like. If you know your best likely customer down to the kind of shoes they wear (joke), you’ll have an easier time of creating the best content for them. This will mean more targeted articles and better (and more leads). See why target market is important.
Writing for the wrong audience is a mistake which can cost a lot of effort. When your content brings the right people in and they want what you have to offer, it all works much better!
CTA’s On All Content
Some bloggers also say to use call to actions on every piece of content they write. This means you offer a link which leads them to a landing page at the bottom (or somewhere) of your content.
People like to know what to do next! So it’s good practice to let your audience know what action you want them to take.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are far better at converting visitors into leads than websites. With a website you have many options to browse around. With a landing page you only have two: opt in or leave the site. Here’s an example of the landing page which my ebook leads you to:
If you want to learn how to generate more leads, get good at building landing pages and sending people to them. With lead pages you can cross test multiple landing pages against each other and see which works the best. This is a good strategy to learn how to generate more leads to your business. More about landing pages here.
How To Generate More Leads – PPC
PPC or pay per click is undoubtably the best way to generate leads. However, many will doubt this and give up before they see any results. The main reason is a misunderstanding of it and failure to understand their business. Ideally, you’ll use a marketing engine to drive targeted leads into your sales funnel through your landing page.
Initially you’ll probably spend money without getting a return. But once you start to understand which campaigns are working and which aren’t, you’ll be able to increase your budget on the best performing adverts and cut back on the ones which don’t work. Just don’t give up because this is a great strategy.
It’s expensive of course and this is why many people avoid it altogether. But if you have a profitable business, you should learn your numbers and know how much it’s worth paying to acquire customers through one of the many PPC advertising platforms.
Start out with a small budget to learn and once you get better you can increase your spend, knowing your be getting a greater return than you’re spending. Checkout the ebook below for more on this strategy:
Using Your Existing Content
You can generate leads too by leading people back to your content, once you’ve got a website set up with a good lead magnet on it. You can use multiple strategies to do this including:
- Link building
- Blog commenting
- Forum posting
- Social media posting
- Guest posting
- Quora and Q&A websites
- Paid marketing
If a particular piece of content has already created leads and sales for you, why not run a paid marketing campaign to it? Or use that article and post it throughout your social media platforms to generate more interest? Quora.com does allow some posting of links too, if you create some value and the link posts are relevant to the answer.
You can also write articles off-site on free article writing sites such as Ezinearticles.com and Hubpages.com for example. Creating back links can be tough and time consuming, but if you do a little at a time, eventually you’ll have a load of free content out there bringing you leads for free every day. So it’s worth doing as a part of a larger lead generation strategy.
YouTube – Lead Generation
YouTube can be a great too for lead generation too and if you’re not using it it’s worth doing. Posting daily videos which appeal to your customer avatar is a great long term strategy. Or you can post a single video and pay to target specific customers with it; sending them to your website or a landing page.
Tracking Leads
If you’re not tracking where your leads are coming from, you’re leaving money on the table. If you know which strategies and ideas are working, and which are not, you’re in a much better position to streamline your activities.
Don’t get too focused on one strategy if it’s very time consuming. Blogging, for example can go on forever! Better to set up a low cost paid marketing strategy too, and focus on free stuff while the paid advertising is already working away in the background. If you’ve found this article helpful, please share it! Also, if you can think of other lead generation strategies I haven’t thought of here, comment with them below!
Facebook Free Strategy
Here’s another free strategy you can use to get more leads. There’s loads of social media platforms out there too, and Facebook is just one of them. With Facebook you can join and interact with people in various groups. Although you need to be careful doing this, and make sure you’re not spamming. This will get you kicked out of most groups.
But to do this properly takes time and effort. Simply join groups which are suitable for your target avatar. Leave comments and interact with people in these groups. Over time they will visit your profile. Set up your profile with an image which leads people to a landing page offering them something of value. Here’s the image I use in my Facebook profile. It leads people to a link to a landing page.
Get Help!
If you’re wanting more help and support with your business and lead generation activities access a training resource and find others who can help you grow your online businesses.