Generating leads is important for every business, may it be a small business or a large enterprise. In this digital age, there are already a variety of ways to engage customers and increase sales. However, given the tendency for online platforms to get crowded, a lot of customers easily get distracted and move from one website to another, making the competition tighter. Before we get deeper into this article, let’s first have a quick rundown of what lead generation is about.
What is a lead?
A lead is basically the potential customers who showed particular interest in the products and services that your business offers. They are the ones you are aiming to show your content to, follow you on different social media platforms, or even sign up for newsletters and more. To say the least, they are the right customers who will drive sales for your business.
What is lead generation?
As defined by Hubspot, lead generation is the process of attracting and converting strangers and prospects into someone who has indicated an interest in your company’s product or service.
Attracting the right or qualified leads have higher chances of increasing sales and faster ROI for your business. On the other hand, if you end up with unqualified leads, this wouldn’t be beneficial for your business both money and time-wise. That’s why it is necessary for you to know how to generate leads that are qualified, so you don’t have to arrive at losses.
Without further ado, here are the 9 effective ways to generate leads for your business online:
1. Remarketing
As mentioned above, it wouldn’t be beneficial to your business if you spend time and money on unqualified leads. And one of the ways to avoid that is to invest in a sure way to promote your business. Remarketing allows you to reach your customers using targeted ads or emails. Your ads are primarily shown to customers who have already previously taken interest in your products and services, but did not push through with a purchase. Remarketing serves as a way to remind your customers of a purchase they forgot to make or they did push through with because it wasn’t necessary at that time. It helps avoid cart abandonment and increases the chances of qualified leads returning to your ad posts to perform an action.
2. Email Marketing
While some may think that email is not really a good place to market your business, it is not true. Email is not outdated. Many people have email addresses and it is basically almost always required for many online transactions, sign-ups, memberships, etc. That’s why email marketing is one of the effective ways to generate leads because you are able to reach your customers in a place where they are most likely to check every day, which is their emails.
But how does it help your business generate leads? Remember the contact list on the business’ email? They are the customers who took action and signed up to your email list to become email subscribers, giving them permission to receive commercial emails, such as newsletters, new product updates, etc from your business. Email marketing lets you inform your target customers about recent updates in your products and services. Since you will be sending emails to people who have already shown interest in your product, you won’t have to waste time, effort, and money on unqualified leads — you will be marketing your products and services directly to qualified leads.
3. Social Media Marketing
Social media is one of the most evident marketing tools being used, especially since the pandemic started. Different businesses from different industries are using social media in order to reach their market. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter help establish a voice for your brand, which makes your business relevant to your target market.
The number of hours spent by people on social media can be used as an edge for your business to generate leads through social media marketing. According to DataReportal, a total of 4 hours and 15 minutes is being spent on social media by Filipinos — and that’s just the Philippines alone. So imagine, with the right social media marketing strategies, you can target not just any customer, but the right customers both locally and globally, resulting in qualified leads
Through social media, you can better relate to your customers, go with the trends, and build a strong following community. You can easily promote your products and services using creative social posts or social media campaigns that are relevant to your customers’ needs and interests. You can also include a call-to-action (CTA) in the form of a simple “buy now” or “message us for your orders” in your caption, an image, or even a button that is linked to your website. This CTA serves to prompt your leads to the next specific action.
4. Content Marketing
Unique and interesting content is always a good strategy to get your customers’ attention. This content may come in the form of a blog, podcast, video, infographics, visual content, and more. All of these contents are aimed to reach your customers through peaking their interests to generate leads. Content marketing or inbound marketing doesn’t use the usual outbound tactics of generating leads through continued promotions and advertisements. On the other hand, it is a subtle way of generating qualified leads by merely allowing your target customers to get to know your brand better through the creation of relevant content.
The more relevant content you produce, the higher your online presence and relevance in the market will be. Although of course, since it is not like the outbound type of marketing, it may take some time, with consistent content marketing, it will surely increase your conversion rate in the long run.
5. Maintain Consistent Online Presence
Of course, you shouldn’t miss maintaining a consistent online presence to generate leads for your business online. It may seem trivial, but it is actually very necessary, which some may take for granted given the various ways to promote your business online. But consistency in building your online presence actually increases brand awareness, causing your customers to remember you.
You can simply boost your online presence by being active on social media. Building a functional and responsive website for your business is also a great way to further boost your online presence. Doing these will help improve customer engagement and increase website traffic, generating leads for your business.
6. Establish Strong Relationships with Leads
To better generate leads and secure a strong customer base, you need to establish a strong relationship with them. Doing this helps build trust on their part. Now, establishing a strong relationship with your target customers can be done through simply engaging with them in different ways, such as responding to their inquiries and taking into account their feedback, making sure that their requests are heard and their needs are met with solutions.
7. Referral Marketing
Referral marketing, or as they say, “word of mouth,” is still surely powerful even up to this digital age. It especially works for start-ups or small businesses that are in the process of building brand awareness and trust with their customers. This tactic makes use of recommendations from people who have already tried and experienced your products or services as a way to generate leads, boost brand awareness, and expand sales. You can also partner with other businesses to help widen your reach and generate leads.
8. Utilize Website Landing Page
A landing page is where your customers or website visitors land after clicking the link you included in your social media post or in one of the paid ads you posted on Google. This could be the website’s home page, contact page, or any page in the website that will prompt your leads to take action. Using your website’s landing page is an effective way to generate leads because it enables you to present the details of your business to your target customers, which helps them get a fuller grasp of what they are about to purchase or avail of.
9. PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising
PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising is a form of online advertising tool that marketers or advertisers use to run ads on platforms such as Microsoft Advertising and Google Ads. It is cost-effective because you will only need to pay for each click that a customer makes on your ads, and those customers are potential ones who took an interest in your products and services. Meaning you will only pay for relevant clicks that have high chances of generating leads and expanding your sales. On top of that, PPC helps boost your brand awareness and drive website traffic. Ranking on top of the results of Google search may take some time, so it is also a good marketing tool for businesses who want to improve their lead generation and at the same time have the budget for online ads.
Each digital marketing strategy listed here may be different in terms of how they are being executed, but they all have one thing in common, and that is generating sure leads for your business. Upon reading this article, which way or strategy do you think works best for your business? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
If you’re looking for someone to help you with the digital marketing of your business, contact us today, and we’ll be glad to help you!
