How to Generate Qualified Leads for Your Small Business
By Gaurav Sharma
Lead generation is fundamental for the success of every small business.
Are you focused on generating qualified leads for your small business too?
Well, you are not alone. Hubspot reports that 50% of small business owners confirm that lead generation is their primary digital marketing goal in 2021.
The good news is that there are multiple ways to generate leads for your small business and convert them into customers. The use of the latest technology such as Artificial intelligence is emerging technology that is transforming the business with its comprehensive role in accurate qualified leads generations. AI plays a major role in customer support with 24*7 response with live chat, website chatbots, etc.
A customer journey map can help you assess what is the best way to turn leads into customers. In this process, you can use customer support tools to provide support to your customers and boost your brand awareness among your customers.
For example, if you are running an online fundraising camping then you should follow the right fundraising strategies that google allow to get maximum ROI for your campaign.
Qualified leads are the best resources to boost your small business sales and ultimately increase your revenue for better growth.
It also helps you in your You can find qualified B2B Prospecting process. Once you master this process, you will find yourself a step ahead of your competition.
Now, do we have your complete attention?
If you are eager to learn, we have just the right ideas to generate sales leads for small businesses.
Here you go.
Ways to Generate Leads for Your Small Business
Lead generation is an essential part of digital marketing, which refers to converting your audience into qualified leads. These leads will further convert into customers. You need to design fostering loyalty campaign to retain and make them loyal to your brand.
Small businesses may find lead generation to be particularly challenging because they are still establishing their presence in the market.
With the intent to get you started in the right direction, I have put together some of the must-try expert tips to generate leads for your small business.
Suppose you're running a small business related to food or catering. In that case, you might also consider exploring different strategies, such as offering recipes for vegetarians, to attract a niche audience and boost your lead generation efforts.
Go ahead and explore.
1. Build an Incredible Website
Really? Don't all small businesses have one?
That's right, most small businesses may have a website, but is it well optimized?
That's the big question. If not, you are missing out on a big opportunity of turning your site visitors into customers.
A well-designed, SEO-friendly website should have adequate valuable information about your brand and offerings. When you invest in high converting landing page design, you will convert visitors into customers with ease.
You can add CTAs for inviting visitors to subscribe for newsletters, promotions, or events to generate leads for your small business.
For better customer support and conversion, you can add conversation AI-enabled bots. Your customers can speak with a bot while they visit your website. It boosts your website conversion in terms of qualified leads for your business.
Create opportunities where your visitors willingly share their contact details to demonstrate their interest in your business.
2. Consider Sales Pipeline
The sales pipeline is a crucial indicator for your small business revenue generation in the upcoming time. You can gauge how many leads will potentially convert to sales.
For example, A subscription-based small business can predict their future subscription numbers by analyzing their past subscription data. Past records can help them predict the subscription rate of existing customers for their service.
You can leverage the best business phone services and other business communication tools to talk with your customers and convert the potential leads to your customers.
They can use various analytical tools and prepare their lead generation strategy for the near future to get assured leads for future sales. It provides a piece of qualified information for forecasting subscription revenue.
You need to keep in mind below suggestions:
- Use the right analytical tool
- Avoid false assumptions
- Maintain a qualified past record
3. Do Local SEO
The influence of local SEO on lead generation should not be underestimated.
There are many free and paid options to choose from the best SEO tools to assist you with optimizing your website.
Local SEO can be done in several ways to build brand awareness and skyrocket sales for the savvy small businesswoman or businessman from the potential leads.
. Here are a few suggestions:
- Claim your business on the Google My Business directory.
- Optimize each page on your website.
- Claim business listings in local online directories.
- Encourage customer reviews and ratings on Google.
Here’s an example of how Google My Business listings appear on SERP.
Image Source - Google
Also, create your business profiles on local business directory websites such as Yelp, Yahoo! Local, City-Data, Better Business Bureau, Manta, Citylocal 101, Yellowbook, MerchantCircle, etc.
Apart from this, you also need to manage your online reviews effectively and increase reviews for your business using different techniques that boost your reach, and Google will notice and boost your ranking. Service providers such as divorce mediators and others who heavily rely on referrals can get a huge boost in local SEO by encouraging customers to leave positive ratings and reviews on Google.
Similarly, if you're a mortgage broker or real estate agent, optimizing for local searches related to FHA loans can help attract potential homebuyers in your area looking for affordable financing options.
4. Start a Blog and Contribute to Guest Posts on High Ranking Websites
What kind of content would your ideal clients want to read?
You can launch a blog by putting together relevant information related to your niche. When you provide your audience with high-quality, unique content, they trust you for your authenticity. You can use visual content in your guest posts like infographics, charts, and add videos to make them more interactive and visually appealing.
Post your content on authoritative websites in your niche and add backlinks to direct readers to your website and thus generate leads for your small business. If you want to build high authority speedy backlinks then you can design infographics on viral topics and republish them to good authority websites. In this process, you have to optimize images for Better SEO results. Optimize Images, infographics,s and other types of visuals essential before uploading them to your website.
The same strategy can be applied to PR content on digital media, which can be used to direct readers to your website.
5. Stay Active on Social Media
Who can undermine the power of social media when 57% of the world population is active on social media. Surely you can imagine its potential to generate leads for your small business.
Sadly though, many businesses get it wrong.
Putting up some posts once in a while on social media does not drive engagement.
Curating relevant content is the best way to stay active on social media and provide useful content to your audience. You should find innovative ways to promote your offerings and drive traffic to your website.
You can also use influencer marketing to promote your brand, just like Abel & Cole did in the example below.
Image Source - Instagram
Also, check out how TSB used the power of social media to generate leads for their small business.
Image Source - Instagram
Going a step further, small businesses can run paid ad campaigns to reach out to specific target audiences, who have a greater potential of turning into qualified leads. You can use tools like Visme for making flyers, social media ads with premade templates for all social media networks Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.
6. Leverage the Benefits of Lead Generation Software
Do you wish you had some help with the entire lead generation and conversion process?
There are several top-notch tools to generate leads that you can use to generate leads for your small business.
With such tools in hand, you will save time on lead generation and focus more on converting them into customers. You can choose a tool based on its features or the specific use case.
Apart from this, you can use Kanban techniques to manage your organizational tasks. Kanban boards work as a powerful management tool that helps to manage your lead generation tasks in a good manner for better results.
Unbounce is an example of a lead generation tool designed to help business owners win more customers and improve conversion rates phenomenally.
Image Source - Unbounce
If your small business is on a tight budget, you can consider getting started with a free tool and switching to more efficient paid software later.
7. Host and Participate in Industry Events
As a business owner, you should consider investing in a multichannel marketing strategy to grow your business. Participating in industry-related events can contribute well to achieving your goal. Events, both offline and online, are essential to generating leads for your small business. The expertise that you possess should be showcased to your audience.
You can start a podcast, hosting webinars, plan a virtual event, tutorials, and live Q&A sessions positions you as an authority on a specific subject matter. People would want to follow you to keep themselves constantly updated.
Take Hubspot, for example, which hosts regular webinars for the benefit of its readers. They ask the audience to save a seat by providing some basic information about themselves.
Image Source - Hubspot
You can go a step further and speak at local events and conferences related to your niche. Participating in expos is also a great opportunity to engage with your potential audience.
8. Invest in Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are exactly what they mean, ways to attract leads for your small business. Lead magnets offer value to the customers at a minimal cost and seek to get their information.
When you present your audience with a lead magnet, you don’t always want them to make a purchase. All you ask of the visitors is to share information about themselves.
Look at how Ascend2 uses industry reports and research-based guides as lead magnets to get information from their visitors.
Image Source - Ascend2
Lead magnets can be anything that brings value to the users, like ebooks, industry reports, social media ad templates, video guides, infographics, free page audits, and much more.
Here is another example of a good lead magnet where customer information is collected through the use of a questionnaire-style form. Site visitors are asked to complete the form to receive more information on a potential career in travel nursing.
Image Source - BetterNurse.org
That being said, not all lead magnets work for every business. You should test and identify which one of these can best generate leads for your small business.
9. Utilize Email Marketing
When visitors provide you with their email address, how do you take it further?
You plan an email marketing campaign to introduce them to your business, products, and services. Emails are a proven means to build a rapport with potential customers. It is a best practice to generate leads via email for your small business.
An email is a fluid marketing tool that can be customized using an email template building tool to your advantage.
You can utilize email marketing to either inform your audience about an upcoming sale, invite them to a webinar or a virtual product launch or even introduce a new product line.
Remember, a small personalized touch to your email, like addressing the recipient by their name, can go a long way in generating qualified leads. Once you begin an email campaign, track its performance and measure how well it can generate leads for your small business. In addition, make sure to use an SPF checker to avoid getting into the spam folder or encountering any other security issues.
When you implement CRM software with email automation features for your lead generation campaigns and send out personalized, high-converting email campaigns becomes simple and you'll be able to get a full-funnel view of all the metrics you need to constantly optimize your campaigns even further.
You need to check your email address spamming issues and for this, you need to set up DMARC for your email server to get DMARC reports regularly. It helps you to deliver the maximum number of emails to the receiver's email inbox.
Additionally, you also need to track your expenses accruing on the campaigns. Leverage an expense management tool that provides you real expenditure reports including all resources such as workforce, tools, and others.
Conclusion
Every small business needs to drive leads to grow. With a plethora of opportunities to generate leads for your small business, it should be a fun and productive journey for you.
Remember, if you want your prospects to respond to you, you need to provide value and make it easier for them. Once they are convinced of this, converting leads into customers should be a smooth process.
Go ahead and give these measures to generate leads for your small business a try. Happy prospecting!
Learn more about Social Hire
The team at Social Hire never just do social media marketing.
Our specialists are a company that assists our customers further their presence online by giving online marketing on a regular basis.
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