All of us dream of opening our own business someday. Nothing would be better than being your own boss and deciding your own working hours. But did you factor in the sleepless nights and extra hours of work just to get your business sorted? There are a ton of things that a business owner needs to look at. You have to see customer service, taxes, rent, electricity, suppliers, an online presence, and much more.
This leaves you with barely any room for trying to generate more leads and future clients for your business. Lead generation is as important as the daily runnings of your business. This is the thing that will ensure that your business keeps growing and running. Any customer that is interested in your services or products can be called a lead.
According to data obtained from the SBA (Small Business Association), more than ⅓ of the businesses fail within a period of two years because they are unable to generate more work and more leads. Continuous lead generation is a feature of all successful businesses. There are actually quite a few ways to generate leads for your work, but we have talked to some leading experts in the field to find out which ones are the most effective.
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Direct engagement
The most common way of generating leads for your business is directly engaging with your existing customers. If you have a product or a service that is billed for people on a monthly basis, direct engagement is the best option for you for generating new business. If you tend to focus on high-volume sales with a low-value product, you can move on to the next point of this article.
This is great for people who run local businesses such as lawn care companies or cleaning services. You can try to engage with your customers on multiple platforms, such as email, telephone, and social media. You can even do this in person if you think that they are a good fit for your business. For example, leaving flyers in your vicinity for every house can be considered direct engagement as well.
You can also aim for new projects coming up in the neighbourhood. For example, if there is a housing project being built near you, you can call the property owners and try to tie up with them so that they use your cleaning service for the entire building.
Use Pinterest to get leads
Unlike other social media platforms, Pinterest is a visual search engine that works quite differently from Instagram or even Twitter. People type in things that they want to search for, just like the Google Search Engine, and look at the ones that are considered most relevant for their search.
You do not need a high domain authority for this unlike Google, which means that if you give out fresh content that targets your audience, your business will be seen by a lot of people on this platform. If you want to know how to get leads from Pinterest, you will have to do a bit of research. After setting up your account, you will need to claim your social accounts and website that will help you in getting important analytics and attribution from your pins. For example, if a person uses your product in their pins, they can link it back to your website. SEO should also be considered when you optimise your profile.
The best way to get out new and fresh content here is to make your branded boards for certain things. For example, if you sell party decorations, you can make a board for “Planning your Best Friend’s Birthday” and then make a board that has your products on it.
Retarget and advertise
You might think that social media is the only way to advertise your brand. This is not true! You can use things such as targeted pay-per-click ads in order to help you get more leads. This can be done on search engines such as Bing or Google. You have to give them certain keywords and they will display your option at the top as an advertisement. You will need to pay them for every site visit that you get from these ads, hence the name pay-per-click. For example, if you sell women’s jewellery, you can create ads that will target phrases such as best jewellery, cheap jewellery, or sustainable jewellery. This sort of digital advertisement can take some time to set up but is a great way to generate some leads for your business.
Use referrals
Referrals are a great way of building some authenticity for your business and brand. This is one of the oldest lead generation marketing strategies that are out there. If your customers are really happy with your service or your products, you can ask them to share their experience with their friends or someone else. You can also ask them to leave reviews on your Google business or on your website. If your business quality is good enough, your customers might just do this for free, but otherwise, you can try to set up an incentive system for them. For example, for every person who uses their referrals to buy your service or product, you can give them 10% off on their next visit. This will require almost no work from your end and will get you a ton of leads.
Start writing guest blogs
Another great way of using content marketing to your advantage is to write guest blogs. This will not only generate business but will also help improve your SEO rankings. It will enable you to form new industry connections with other businesses as well. Try to find businesses that are in the same industry as you but can not be considered direct competition. For example, you can write a guest blog for a local dentist’s website if you sell oral hygiene products. Try to aim for local influencers when you want to increase your local lead generation. Just make sure that their industry is relevant to yours.
It is important to keep generating a continuous stream of leads so that your business keeps evolving. Use this list to help you connect with a larger audience.
