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Sales Funnel

9 Ways To Generate More Leads For Your Business

9 Ways To Generate More Leads For Your Business

It is very important for your business to have an effective lead generation strategy. Without qualified leads, it's very difficult to keep a business afloat en even harder to make it grow.


How Does Lead Generation Work in the Sales Funnel?

In order to generate more leads, your business must follow the process of a sales funnel. A sales funnel is the process people take to go from lead to client. Your business will use this funnel to build and nurture an engaging relationship with people.

This funnel is visualized as a model that represents the entire buying journey of customers, from the moment they learn about your business and have brand awareness up until they become clients. It's very important that you get the top of the funnel just right and generate as many qualified leads as you can.

Daily, your prospects are served thousands of marketing pieces from different businesses. They are constantly filtering this information and are very selective with this.

There are a lot of ways to attract traffic, such as:

  • Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • Social media
  • Display Ads
  • Online and offline events


There are also many ways to get people's contact information, too. To achieve this, your business will need to offer something in return. This valuable content that you offer is called a Lead Magnet, and can be offered in several ways, such as:

  • eBooks or PDFs
  • Checklists
  • Templates
  • Workbooks
  • Webinars
  • Mini-courses
  • Coupons and/or discounts
  • Free trials


Offering valuable lead magnets will not only help you get more leads, but it will tell your business that these are people that are very interested in your products and/or services, but are not ready to buy yet. These leads are called a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL).


Strategies to Generate More Leads

Referrals and reviews are one of the most valuable sources for new lead generation, but here are other effective methods your business can use to generate even more qualified leads:


1. Social Media

People spend a lot of time in social media. Take advantage of these tools to engage with users and generate more leads. It's important that you identify very well which are the social networks that your ideal client uses and focus only on those.


LinkedIn

One of the most important channels for targeting and generating leads is LinkedIn. According to LinkedIn, 4 out of 5 users on the platform make business decisions at their company.

You can use their Lead Generation Forms tool to create attractive ads that will autofill the user's contact details. This will make the process more convenient for the people who get interested in your business.


Twitter Ads

Twitter offers a very wide reach and heavily customized targeting, specially if you're using Twitter Business.

This social media channel is a great place to generate leads, target decision-makers, and key industry figures.


Facebook Ads

Facebook is a very effective tool for Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business (B2B) lead generation.

Facebook’s Lead Ads can be used to get the user's contact information by offering a multitude of lead magnets with valuable content.

You can get great value from this tool, as you can customize your target audience, creative assets, and marketing budget as finely as you want, and take advantage of the 1.8 billion daily active users Facebook has.

YouTube Ads

YouTube is the most important video platform for video marketing. This platform has more than 2.6 billion active users per month.

Video is the preferred content format for people: it attracts people visually and achieves greater engagement with users.

Through the YouTube Ads tool, you can create attractive and interesting video ads for the user, define the format that best suits your audience and choose to insert your ads before, during or after the video that the user wants to see.

2. Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Google Search Ads can generate highly qualified leads, but there are many factors to consider for a successful Pay-Per-Click campaign:

  • The copy of your ads needs to be engaging, which can be achieved through testing and optimization.
  • You need to do a very thorough keyword research, to ensure you're appearing to the right users.
  • Your bid strategy needs to be effectively planned out, to avoid burning through your budget.
  • Your landing page needs to be engaging and transmit the value of what you’re offering.


3. SEO

SEO is the most reliable way to generate leads without paying for advertising. However, this strategy requires a lot of work and optimization on your part.

This strategy depends heavily on focusing on high-volume keywords and creating content that provides value to your customers.

Creating a blog for your business will be instrumental achieve your goals. A blog is the ideal space to create content that focuses on topics that highlight how your products and/or services help your customers with the problem they face.

Once your content is ranking, it can generate qualified leads at no ongoing cost to your business.


4. Local SEO

If your business has a local focus, there are a few methods you can use to generate more leads:

  • Seek exposure in local publications through sponsored content, paid advertising, or as an industry expert.
  • Get listed in relevant and local directories.
  • Create a Google My Business profile and keep it up to date.


5. Lead Magnets

Most people don’t buy on the first opportunity. This is why is important for your business to first offer a low-commitment resource to continue the relationship with a prospect.

Offering a lead magnet on your website will encourage visitors to give you their contact information (email address and/or phone number) and begin a relationship with your business.

Two of the most common types of lead magnets are:


eBooks or PDFs

eBooks are one of the most popular lead magnets used by business because their value is measured by the level of insight, knowledge, and authority in their content. For this reason, they are a very attractive way to generate leads.

While your other forms of content (like blog posts) are generally used for brand awareness and visibility, eBooks go a lot deeper and provide in-depth information that many potential customers are looking for.


Webinars

A webinar is an effective way to build trust and credibility and to establish yourself as an industry expert. The invitation of the webinar itself can be used as a lead magnet, and the event can be a great opportunity to build and nurture an interesting relationship with your potential customers.

When your business hosts a webinar, you can have the assurance that the people who attend are interested in the solutions (your products and/or services) that you offer.


6. Video Marketing

According to a recent study, 86% of businesses use video marketing as a marketing tool. Most of these businesses have assured that video marketing has helped them generate more leads.

The most effective platform to start a video marketing strategy is YouTube, with 1.7 billion monthly visitors your business could effectively benefit from creating a strategy for this platform.

Be sure that the videos you create spark emotion and speak directly to your customer's problems.


7. Business Blog

Content is the engine of your business. A blog with quality content helps your website generate more leads. Even small businesses can benefit from regularly adding new and interesting content to their website.

A business blog helps you convert visitors into new customers by providing information that helps them move down the sales funnel. Blogging works to give your prospects the right information at the right place at the right time.

A blog can be a space to write about your business, grow your brand and focus on topics that highlight how your products and/or services help your customers with the problems they face. Creating a blog can help you to:

  • Boost your business SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
  • Increase traffic to your website.
  • Establish brand authority in your industry.
  • Provide relevant social media content.
  • Drive long-term results.


Want to know more about how creating a blog can help grow your business? Read our blog post "Why does your business need to create a blog?"


8. Client Rewards

As mentioned before, referrals and reviews are one of the most effective methods for generating leads. Good reviews and personal testimonies act as social proof that help people make the decision to buy from you.

Satisfied customers love to share their experience, but sometimes they need a little encouragement to do so. Incentivize your current customers into referring you to more people and writing positive reviews of your business with the following methods:

  • Offer discounts and/or coupons.
  • Give free access to premium services.
  • Survey people through different channels (email, Google, social media).


9. Marketing Automation

You won't always have the time and resources to keep track of every action your potential customers take, so with the help of a specialized tool or platform, you will be able to save time and resources by automating your communication through different channels, such as:


Email

Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy that consists of sending emails to a database of potential and existing customers.

When you automate this process, you'll have the confidence that you will be sending timely and relevant messages that are triggered by a specific action.

Having an effective and automated email marketing campaign is an essential element that will help you create a relationship with your leads and motivate them to do business with you.


Chatbots

A chatbot is a system that's installed on your website that allows you to have conversations with your customers with automatic and immediate responses. With this automated system, your customers won't have to wait for an email response or an available operator.

An automated chatbot provides service 24/7 by immediately responding to your customers most common questions and getting their contact information in a friendly way.


Qualifying Your Leads

Before you put into action any of the lead generation methods listed beloved, you need a process to qualify all the leads you attract. This is very important as it allows your business to identify if a particular lead is worth to invest more time and resources.

By identifying your Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), you avoid missing out on viable customers and facilitate the sales process.

In order to qualify your leads, you must follow these steps:

  1. Define your ideal customer: You can achieve this by creating a buyer persona.
  2. Create a scoring system: Assign each lead a score, usually a defined numerical value in order to quantify how "effective" a lead can be. You can assign a score based on the channel they came from, how many times they've visited your website, if they've downloaded one or several lead magnets, etcetera.
  3. Start the nurturing process: Send the leads that have a greater lead score to your sales team so they can follow up with them and start nurturing an interesting relationship with them.


How To Create an Effective Lead Generation Campaign

Now that you have defined an effective way to qualify your leads and identified the best methods to generate leads for your business, it's time to start creating a lead generation campaign.

Below we share the 9 effective steps your business should follow in order to create an effective lead generation campaign:

  1. Determine your campaign goals and objectives.
  2. Define your target audience.
  3. Create a valuable lead magnet.
  4. Build an attractive landing page and sign-up form.
  5. Set an email with the requested lead magnet.
  6. Integrate the campaign into a lead generation/email marketing software.
  7. Test your campaign.
  8. Drive traffic to your website.
  9. Analyze and optimize your lead generation process.


How to Optimize Your Lead Generation Process

A lead generation campaign is an ongoing process that requires constant review and analysis to keep getting effective results.

Here we share some actions you can take to carry an effective analysis and optimization process of your current campaigns:


1. Continue to optimize your website: All the content of your website should:

  • Communicate your value proposition clearly and simply.
  • Provide genuine value to visitors.
  • Use attractive visuals such as images, infographics, charts, diagrams ,etcetera.
  • Contain bullet points and other text breakers that make it easier to read.
  • Display social proof such as reviews and testimonials.
  • Have a clear Call-To-Action (CTA).


2. Use relevant Call-To-Actions: If your website visitors don’t know how or where to take action, you’re losing out on leads.


3. Simplify your lead forms: If your form it's too complicated, has too many form fields or it's not clear about what happens to the contact's information, people may not be willing to fill in your form. Make sure that the form is easy and clear to fill in.


4. Run A/B tests of pages, forms, and Call-To-Actions: It's very important that you identify which elements of your website are working and which aren't. You can use split testing to track different way in which you can show your elements and track your results to use the most effective option.


Start generating more leads for your business

Now you have a step-by-step guide to generate more leads for your business in a simple and effective way. If you apply these concepts correctly, you will be able to attract more prospects and turn them into customers.

Schedule a call so we can learn more about your business and see how you how we can help you implement this marketing strategy faster and with less effort.