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Generating leads is a constant need for any business. While different methods of finding potential customers abound, many popular techniques of the past are no longer used. Needless to say, today’s favored lead generation tactics may not be around forever.

To consistently find new leads for your business, you might need to start thinking outside the box and be open to evolving your strategy. Stepping away from standard practices to try new approaches can help you generate leads in unexpected ways.

What Is Leads Generation in Marketing?

Let’s start with defining a lead, and then we’ll cover what online lead generation is, why you need lead generation, how you qualify someone as a lead, how to label lead types — such as sales qualified leads, how you generate leads, and why inbound lead generation is much more effective than simply buying leads.

Lead generation in marketing is the act of gaining actionable customer interest for your business’s output. This typically involves a customer initiating a conversation or providing you with their contact information for follow-up regarding your business’s products or services.

Lead generation is the process of attracting prospects to your business and increasing their interest through nurturing, all with the end goal of converting them into a customer. Some ways to generate leads are through job applications, blog posts, coupons, live events, and online content.

Why do you need lead generation?

When a stranger initiates a relationship with you by showing an organic interest in your business, the transition from stranger to customer is much more natural.

Lead generation falls within the second stage of the inbound marketing methodology. It occurs after you’ve attracted an audience and are ready to convert those visitors into leads for your sales team (namely sales-qualified leads).

Lead Generation Process

Now that we understand how lead generation fits into the inbound marketing methodology, let’s walk through the steps of the lead generation process.

1.First, a visitor discovers your business through one of your marketing channels, such as your website, blog, or social media page.

2.That visitor then clicks on your call-to-action (CTA) — an image, button, or message that encourages website visitors to take some sort of action.

3.That CTA takes your visitor to a landing page, which is a web page that is designed to capture lead information in exchange for an offer.

4.Once on the landing page, your visitor fills out a form in exchange for the offer.

Many successful small business owners are continuously looking to expand their customer base and grow their businesses. Business growth can be a difficult and long-term process, though. One of the foundational elements of growing a business is having access to a steady stream of sales leads. A lead is a person, or business if you have a company that sells to other businesses (B2B), that has an interest in the products or services you are selling.

Here are some tips for creating a system that will help you identify sales leads in your small business, and with the right focus and effort turn them into customers.

1. Identify Your Target Audience

The first step of lead generation is identifying your target audience. You can’t successfully reach and sell to your ideal customer if you don’t know exactly who that is. So, it’s important to research your audience and come up with a clear picture of who they are, where they live, what they like to do, how much money they make, what their lifestyle and personality are like, etc.

If you don’t already have one, you should also create a comprehensive marketing plan as part of this step.

2. Pick Your Promotional Methods Wisely

In order to generate leads, you need a promotional plan that will get your products and services in front of members of your target audience. There are a number of ways you can promote your business, and again, you will want to use your marketing plan to identify the most effective methods for your business.

Some marketing ideas include an informational website, a blog, social media, speaking engagements, industry events, current customer referrals, pay per click (PPC) advertising, and traditional advertising.

3. Create a Sales Funnel

Once you know who you are targeting and have determined how best to reach them, you need to have a plan for collecting contact information. The first part of the process involves funnelling all prospects to a standard form or landing page that encourages them to share their contact information, generally in return for a free gift, a coupon, a sample or some other value-added incentive.

At this point, it is vital to have a customer relationship management (CRM) database that will help you keep track of potential customers through the process.

4. Use an Email Newsletter to Build Relationships

Now that you’re in contact with prospects, it’s time to cultivate those relationships so you can take them from the lead stage through a sale (and eventually a repeat sale!). One of the best ways to create consistent communication with your prospects is through an email newsletter.

While you are planning your email marketing plan, make sure you are aware of and follow regulations that are a part of the CAN-SPAM Act.

5. Leverage social media to Connect and Engage

Social media provides a number of opportunities for small businesses to create conversations with prospective customers and generate new leads. You can create a Facebook page, Twitter profile, LinkedIn company page, Pinterest account or a YouTube channel to attract and engage your audience, then funnel them through your process to become leads.

Plus, once you have leads in the system, you can use social media to talk to them and find out more about what they need and want. The more positive touchpoints a customer has with your business over time, the more likely he or she will be to trust your brand and eventually purchase from you.

Lead Generation Strategies

Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics, campaigns, and strategies depending on the platform on which you wish to capture leads. We talked about lead capture best practices once you have a visitor on your site … but how can you get them there in the first place?

Let’s dive into lead generation strategies for a few popular platforms.

Lead generation should be thought of as a long-term and continuous process. If you get an efficient system in place using the sales lead tips above, you can streamline the lead generation process and increase your opportunities for business growth.

Facebook Lead Generation

Facebook has been a method for lead generation since its inception. Originally, companies could use outbound links in their posts and information in their bios to attract strangers to their websites. However, when Facebook Ads was launched in 2007, and its algorithm began to favour accounts that used paid advertising, there was a major shift in how businesses used the platform to capture leads. Facebook created Lead Ads for this purpose. Facebook also has a feature that lets you put a simple call-to-action button at the top of your Facebook Page, helping you send Facebook followers directly to your website.

Twitter Lead Generation

 Twitter has Twitter Lead Gen Cards, which let you generate leads directly within a tweet without having to leave the site. A user’s name, email address, and Twitter username are automatically pulled into the card, and all they have to do is click “Submit” to become a lead.

LinkedIn Lead Generation

 LinkedIn has been increasing its stake in the advertising space since its early days. When it comes to lead generation, LinkedIn created Lead Gen Forms, which auto-populate with a user’s profile data when they click a CTA, making it easy to capture information.

B2B Lead Generation

B2B is a particular business model that requires a particular approach to lead generation. Smart Insights found that referrals are the top source for capturing business leads. Not to mention, effectiveness varies by channel.

Ask for Referrals from Current Customers

Customer referrals are one of the oldest lead generation marketing strategies out there. If your product or service has delighted a current customer, ask them to share their experience with their friends who also might benefit.

The quality of your business’s offerings may be good enough that customers do this for free, or you could set up an incentive system. For example, give your customers a certain percentage off their next monthly retainer fee for every client they refer.

Customer referrals are a great way to get more leads for your business because it’s profitable, and your current customers are doing most of the work.

Write Guest Blogs

Writing guest blogs is a great way to generate referral business through content marketing and improve your SEO at the same time.

Guest blogging provides all of the following marketing benefits:

Forms new industry connections

Improves your SEO by acquiring meaningful, industry-relevant backlinks

Generates referral traffic from a relevant audience

You can find leads for your business by guest blogging for sites that are relevant to your industry but don’t directly compete with you. For example, if you’re a marketing company, you can guest blog for sign companies in your area. You know that the sign makers audience is interested in marketing themselves, and your services act as a complement.

Guest blogging for local influencers aligns with local SEO best practices. For example, writing a guest blog and getting backlinks from a popular podcaster in your area will help your site rank more easily in that locality.

For optimal results, make sure the site you’re guest blogging for is relevant to both your industry and location.

Start Networking

Networking rarely leads to direct revenue but is great for nurturing professional opportunities. Try to select a networking event that is both local and related to your industry. This will help keep your travel costs low, and ensure that you are capitalizing on easy business wins.

What can you expect to gain from networking? If you walk in with ROI in mind, you’ll almost always be disappointed. Instead, look for oblique wins.

Maybe you’ll meet a complementary business that you can partner with to share leads, expanding your reach. Perhaps you meet an influencer that agrees to interview with you so that you can build a great piece of content and expand your marketing reach at the same time. Networking can even open up guest blogging opportunities for your company.

There are almost always multiple returns on your networking investment, making it one of the best ways to get leads for your business.

Optimize for long-tail keywords to get more qualified leads

A long-tail keyword is three or more words long and is very specific. And yes, it usually gets a very low search volume.

But target the right long-tail keyword, and you trade off search volume for extremely high purchase intent that increases sales with very little SEO effort.

Improve your website’s design

Another way to generate more leads for your website is to improve its design. Data shows that 42% of people will leave a poorly designed website. That’s a significant chunk of potential leads that may never interact with your company if they don’t enjoy being on your website.

So if you haven’t already, now is a great time to make sure that your website isn’t costing you leads. You can do that by partnering with a designer who can help you make targeted improvements where they’ll have the greatest impact.

Conduct regular customer care calls.

Don’t drop your customer after the sale. A happy customer who has a continued relationship with you and your company is likely to buy again.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that it’s cheaper to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new lead. Follow-up calls are a strategic way to nurture customer relations and a great time to ask for referrals. Sometimes the most quality leads you have are actually your current customers.

Be a trusted source of information.

Go the extra mile and become a product expert in your respective field. Develop into an advisor that customers can trust rather than just an ordinary salesperson. Customers have a vast amount of knowledge at their fingertips, they do most of their research before ever talking to a sales representative. A way to bridge this gap is by speaking at trade shows or conferences as a way to become a trusted source of information.

Remember, the customer holds the purchasing power. However, as a sales professional, you can empower customers with information that can help them make the best decision. (With luck, that decision is you.)

Create Helpful Blog Comments

As a warning, I did not save the best business lead generation strategy for last.

As a business owner or marketing executive at your company, make it a point to subscribe to industry publications and even competitor blogs. This can help you keep a finger on the pulse of your competition, and open up opportunities to be helpful.

If you notice that readers have left several blog comments on a post that haven’t been answered, offer your personal insights in response. It’s not a bad idea to include a call to action to some relevant information on your website that will further address the reader’s question.

Tread lightly when trying to generate business leads through blog comments. Comments on blogs are difficult to pull off genuinely because of their susceptibility to spam. Also, your competitors may not take kindly to you headhunting their audience.

Qualifying & prospecting high-quality leads

While interacting with leads, reps measure how likely leads are to buy. They’ll do this by gauging the stage leads are at during the buying process. These stages include:

1. Research & awareness: The customer is aware of a solution they need or problem they face, and they begin to learn more about it.

The awareness stage is where they’ll consume content like blogs, whitepapers, and case studies.

2. Consideration: The lead knows the exact service/product that’s needed. They’ll detail their specific needs before researching and “opening up” to vendors.

3. Decision: Filtering through vendors that best suit their needs, the buyer will have multiple meetings and check-in with other decision-makers to complete a purchase.

Depending on what stage a lead is at, reps will initiate nurturing campaigns or focus on getting the prospect to book a call or demo.

Don’t give up.

Successful companies know sales leads come from a variety of sources. Strategies for how to generate sales leads include asking for referrals, conducting customer care calls, and nurturing leads. Being a trusted source of information on the internet and social media, as well as through online networking, are also lead generation strategies. In-person networking works, too.

The most important lesson in lead generation strategies, however, is perseverance. Very few customers are mad on the first contact. Part of grasping how to generate leads is understanding and practicing lead nurturing.

By expanding your current strategies for generating leads and attending to those leads through the sales process, you’ll find greater accuracy and skill in hitting your sales targets.

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