Lead generation is a very important part of business operations.
As a business owner, you need interested buyers to visit your site and learn about your services. The goal of that is a soft lead or a sale. But without an effective and successful lead generation process that attracts the right traffic to your website, soft leads and sales won’t happen.
Exercise:
- Read through our tip on Is Your Website Giving You A ROI?.
- Analyze your website using the information from that tip. Write down the answer(s) to the question using the information from your website.
Generating leads for your website isn’t complicated, but you need to invest some time and resources into the process for you to get results.
Here are seven ways to get leads to your site.
1. Boost the Organic Search Results
Consumers depend on search engines for literally anything they need to do online, from finding quick information about a brand all the way to purchasing items online.
For this reason, it is important to make sure your business ranks high in the search results for your key search terms. Our web tips The Basics Of How Search Engines Work and Integrating Keywords Into Your Marketing Plan will guide you on how to optimize your web content to give it its own set of wings.
When boosting your organic search results, you should anticipate, understand and know the goals and intent of your ideal visitor. Who are they? What are they looking for? Think about the words they are likely to use. What questions might they ask? These questions are a good starting point to find the best keywords.
Tip: You can use Google’s Keyword Planner to carry out your keyword research. It will suggest new phrases that match your services and also narrow down your list of keywords to those that will serve you best.
2. Advertise on Social Media
When you are trying to increase leads, any visibility that drives leads to your site and increases brand awareness is great. Unfortunately, most small businesses operate on tight budgets and, many times, are reluctant to spend money on things that do not have a guaranteed result, including advertising.
But, for growth to happen for your business, if you’re not already doing so, you should consider advertising on at least one of the various social media platforms. Why? There are so many reasons why every industry and business can benefit from a more robust social media presence, including:
- The majority of customers are online – over 70% of the US population has at least one social media profile. You just have to identify which platform is most commonly used by your unique audience and then focus your social media advertising there.
- Consumers often look for recommendations on social media. If you’re not where your customers are looking, you’re not seen either by your existing audience or by potential customers you didn’t even know existed.
- Consumers follow and interact with their favorite brands on social media.
- It allows you to target and retarget your ideal customers.
- Marketing through social media builds brand recognition and brand authority. Ultimately, these can increase traffic to your site.
Tip: For advertising best practices, you can look through the tip How do I advertise my small business on social media? to get started.
3. Develop Partner Campaigns
Partnerships work very well, especially in growing small businesses. Co-marketing with partners will allow you to tap into their resources and audience. These can give more visibility to your brand and influence people to not only check out your site but also want to sample your product offering. Remember to collect visitors’ email addresses in the process to help push your content and brand later.
4. Welcome Your Website Visitors
Your home page is your visitor’s first contact with your brand and usually is your site’s most visited page. First impressions matter, and it is very easy to lose your visitors’ attention if they can’t easily find what they’re looking for or if your design is off.
Remember, when they leave, there is no guarantee that your website visitors will come back. It’s essential that you make their initial experience inspiring and engaging so, if they don’t take action today, they’ll want to come back.
Make sure your page is user-friendly, easy to navigate, and has a gateway to all other important pages.
You can take things further by asking a leading question and, as you provide the answer/solution to your audience, give them something of value that they can receive in exchange for their email addresses.
You could create a simple welcome video that shares your WHY, i.e. ‘What is the biggest problem you solve for them?’
If you have a singularly specific product, service, or offer, you can drive visitors from a marketing or advertising campaign to a standalone landing page as a strategy to increase your conversion rates. Unlike a website that usually has many goals and encourages exploration, a landing page is super focused with a single call to action that you want your visitor to take (to buy, to sign-up, to call, etc.).
However, you choose to welcome and engage them, make sure you have a clear call to action that builds connections or generates leads for you right away.
5. Clarify Your Messaging
Do you offer more than one product or service as a business? Perhaps you offer just one product or service but it’s a multi-faceted solution? You need your audience to know this!
Having an interactive static banner working for your website is one way to present all this information to your website visitors. You can have several banners made so it is easy to change them out on a regular basis, to keep the information fresh and different. This keeps the experience refreshing every time for your audience, and will make them want to come back, or want to know more about your brand.
6. Send Creative Emails
As you partner with other companies and advertise on social media, remember to collect the email addresses of your site visitors. These are gold! Email marketing – is one of the most priceless, yet often neglected, gems of small business advertising strategies.
Some ingenious ways of collecting email addresses could be by:
- Prompting visitors to your website to give their email addresses in exchange for something of value to them, such as a discount on your products, or free delivery, or a helpful tip sheet or white paper related to your services and problems you solve.
- Encouraging your social media followers to sign up for your periodical newsletter.
Once you have all these email addresses, create great content for your audience to entice your leads to click and learn more about your service offering. Your email/newsletter could provide a teaser for what you have on your website and thereafter encourage them to go on to your website to learn more.
Tip: Remember to sell solutions, not products or services!
7. Participate in Online Communities
Both Facebook and LinkedIn have groups/communities that bring people together that have shared interests. As you work to boost your lead generation, join these groups, provide helpful information and expose your brand to the right people. Remember, it is not a great lead if it will not translate to a sale, so focus on groups that have a direct and genuine interest in your product offering. Actively participate in groups that get a lot of traffic, views, and discussions to showcase and build your authority and credibility.
Positioning your website the right way and coupling it with appropriate content will greatly increase your chances of return on investment based on the leads generated.
Your Online Partner… for Success
Now more than ever you need a website that is more than a pretty business card. You need one that has its sleeves rolled up and working for you. We’re here to make sure your website is working just as hard as you are. Take advantage of a free 30-minute session with Christy to explore ways to take your site to the next level.