How Can Your Business Generate More Leads?
If you run a business, you’ll need leads - that’s just a fact, and it’s a fact you’ll need to work hard on if you want to become successful. Basically, without leads, you’re just not going to be able to sell what you need to sell to keep going, let alone grow, and it’s a bit like yelling about your business and just hoping someone hears and is intrigued enough to want to know more. In other words, it’s unlikely to work for you.
The problem is that generating quality leads - the kind that actually end up converting into loyal customers - takes a lot of hard work, and you can’t just create a website and hope that’s enough (it generally isn’t). So with that in mind, here are some ways your business can generate more leads that you can put into place right now and start making the most of the results; read on to find out more.
Know Your Audience
There’s really no way you can even think about starting to find new leads if you don’t know who you’re trying to attract to your business because who are you going to talk to? How will you talk to them? And, crucially, where are you going to find them? You’ll need to take time to investigate just who your audience really is, and discover who your ideal customer is, along with their pain points, goals, and the challenges they have to come up against every day (that they want to get rid of). The more you understand your audience, the more you can send them a message that works for them and that makes them want to buy from you.
One good way to start is by creating what’s known in marketing as buyer personas, which are fictional representations of your target customers. Include details like their age, profession, interests, and the specific problems they need solved, and this information is sure to help guide every decision you make, from your website design to your marketing campaigns. It makes everything instantly easier if you’re always thinking about how to impress a particular (albeit at least partially made up) person.
Use Your Website
You probably already know this, but it’s worth repeating - your website is usually the first impression people will get of your business, so it’s vital to make it count if you want to generate more leads. A good website doesn’t just look attractive (although that’s always going to help); it should help to guide visitors towards taking some kind of action, whether that’s to buy from you, to get in touch, or to research who you are, for example.
There are a number of different things you’ll need on your site to make it do its job that little bit better, and it’s not a question of picking and choosing - you should add all of them for the best results. And what things are we talking about? Well, to start with you’ve got to have a clear call to action (CTA) - and ideally more than one - on your site. That could be as simple as saying ‘sign up for a free trial’ or ‘download our guide’ and so on, and the more you have, the more likely it is visitors are going to follow the instructions. You’ll also want to make sure you’ve got fast load times because slow websites lose leads very quickly. Then there’s the mobile-friendly design - with so many people browsing on their phones, that’s non-negotiable. Finally, don’t forget your lead magnets, which might sound strange, but they’re essential. Lead magnets are basically when you offer something valuable (in the customer’s eyes, at least) in exchange for contact information that you can then follow up on. As for the valuable item, that could be an eBook, discount code, and so on. That’s your choice.
Use SEO Well
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a truly powerful weapon when it comes to marketing in all forms, and that means it’s a truly powerful weapon when it comes to generating new leads as well, so it’s wise to put it in place and use it in the right way to make the most of what it can do. When you optimize your website and content so that search engines can easily find it and, on top of that, approve of it so it gets shown to potential customers, you’ll be able to attract a lot more people than ever before, and all without too much effort on your part (especially if you hire people to do your SEO for you!).
To start with, you’ll need to work on keyword research so you know what people are looking for - once you know, you can incorporate those terms into your content, so when they search, your blogs, social media, and website will come up in the results. But that content has to be high-quality and it can’t just be stuffed with keywords and left alone, otherwise you’ll not only get penalized by Google, but the people reading it won’t benefit from it, and they’ll quickly find what they need elsewhere, so be careful and sparing when it comes to keywords.
For something extra, it’s a good idea to look into LLM SEO (large language model SEO), which is quite a new idea, but one that can really make a difference. You’ll know that AI tools like ChatGPT are starting to become more and more popular, and this kind of SEO uses that to make your content even more relevant for what people are searching for. Since it’s a new idea, this is an area where it’s definitely worth outsourcing the work and just enjoying the positive results.
Use Email Marketing
Email marketing? Really? Isn’t that a bit… old-fashioned? Well, it’s true that email marketing has been around for a long time - as long as email itself, really - but that doesn’t mean it can’t be of use to you when it comes to generating leads (as they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and email marketing really doesn’t need to be fixed).
Email marketing is still effective because it’s a way to communicate directly with your audience on a one-to-one basis, and that’s not something you can do in many other ways. And because of that, you’ll need to make sure you tailor the content of the email to the individuals you’re sending it to. Of course, in reality that would take far too long and be a lot of hard work, which is why your best bet is to segment your audience into groups, which could be linked to age, location, buying behavior, and so on, and send one email to each different group. It’ll feel personal to the recipient, but you’ll only have to write one email for each group, saving you a lot of extra work.
On top of making the email as personal as possible, it should also offer plenty of value - provide tips, exclusive offers, and helpful insights in every email, and people will soon be looking forward to it arriving in their inbox (or at least they won’t delete it without reading it!). And finally, always follow up to keep your business in potential customers’ minds for longer (you can actually automate this so it’s not a big job and you don’t have to specifically remember to do it).
Create Fantastic Content
We’ve mentioned content already, and we’ve said how vital it is to use SEO and to make it interesting - but let’s look at content in more detail because it will absolutely make the biggest difference. The fact is that good content marketing is one of the best ways to generate leads, and by giving people valuable, engaging content, you’re not just showing off your expertise - you’re giving them more and more reasons to trust you and proving that your business and brand is the right place for them to buy whatever it is you sell (over and above your competitors, in other words).
One great idea is to make sure you have a blog on your site as that’s an easy way to keep adding fresh, useful content on a regular basis (which both your customers and search engines love). Ideally, your blog should answer your visitors’ burning questions, and the answers you give need to be well-written, SEO-optimized, and interesting.
Videos are also an excellent idea, and they’re also a form of content, so don’t forget about them. You can make videos about tutorials, behind the scenes footage, or even just some quick tips about how to use your products (or more generally) - the key is that it needs to catch people’s attention and it needs to be sharable, so if you can make that happen, you’ll automatically find more leads.
In the end, if you make sure every piece of content has a reason for being on your site, it’s going to do something positive for you, whether that’s getting more traffic, educating people, or collecting data, for example.
