Acquiring new clients is the lifeblood of any successful business.
Without a steady flow of high-quality leads, it becomes extremely difficult to grow your client base and achieve your revenue goals.
The good news is that there are numerous effective tactics you can use to generate more leads and fill your sales pipeline.
Here are 7 of the best ways to generate leads for client acquisition:
Content Marketing:
Producing valuable, informative content like blog posts, videos, podcasts, and whitepapers can position your business as an industry authority and attract prospective clients to your website.
Make sure to optimize your content for search engines (SEO) and promote the content across your digital channels.
Email Marketing:
Building an email list of interested prospects and sending them relevant, engaging messages is a direct line to generating new leads.
Offer lead magnets like e-books or free consultations to entice people to sign up for your email list.
Networking and Referrals:
Attending industry events, joining professional associations, and leveraging your personal and professional connections can lead to valuable referrals and introductions to potential clients.
Provide value as much as possible and early in the relationship building.
Social Media Outreach:
Be active on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
It allows you to connect with your target audience, share your expertise, and nurture relationships that can turn into new business opportunities.
Online Advertising:
Strategically placing ads on search engines, social media, or industry websites can drive qualified traffic to your website and capture the contact information of interested leads.
YouTube Ads are a great lead generation opportunity when used as an educational tool. Your audience visits YouTube to learn and be entertained. Script a 2-3 minute video and test different versions and length.
Webinars and Virtual Events:
Hosting educational webinars or virtual events positions you as a thought leader and gives you the chance to engage with potential clients in a personal way.
Set up a 3-step webinar funnel (landing, room and calendar) and drive targeted traffic into it.
Offer valuable insights and include a clear call-to-action to convert attendees into leads.
Strategic Partnerships:
Collaborating with complementary businesses, influencers, or industry experts to cross-promote your services can introduce you to new audiences and generate high-quality referrals.
IN CONCLUSION:
Implementing a combination of these tactics will help you build a robust pipeline of leads that you can nurture and convert into loyal, long-term clients.
Remember, consistency and a data-driven approach are key to maximizing the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts.
The secret to copywriting for marketing funnels that convert?
It is to create compelling and persuasive copy that speaks to the customer‘s needs. The copy should grab the reader‘s attention, explain the benefits of the product or service, and clearly explain the call to action. This content captures the attention of the reader and encourages them to take action.
When you build this type of content and approach into your funnels, the results and outcomes will increase.
Additionally, the copy should be optimized for search engines and include relevant keywords. Finally, it‘s important to test different versions of the copy to see what works best.
Filling your marketing and sales funnel of prospects that fit your business profile will add a significant boost to your company.
Leads and lead generation project work (funnel building strategies) is the lifeblood of any business.
There’s an opportunity for growth, but it must continually be developed and nurtured.
Lead generation is one part of the formula. Closing to sales is the final step.
Closing the lead is the end goal. But, you knew that.
Whether you are a startup or have an established business, a system for the “perfect” profile client attraction must be created and communicated.
It must be continually tested and added into your existing networking and referral process. It must evolve from change and validated for positive returns every step of the way.
Did you know you could lose at least half of your customers if you don’t respond to their questions quickly?
According to Forrester research, more than 50 percent of customers said they would likely abandon an online purchase if they can’t get answers to product questions.
If you don’t have a plan in place to address your customers’ needs, consider implementing live chat into your website.
Here’s the why and how:
Let’s Talk A-Bot It
In the past, the decision process for implementing live chat was deciding who would be responsible.
The support team?
Sales reps?
Outsourcing?
A new option has emerged and growing fast: chatbots or virtual (non-human) assistants.
A chatbot is designed for providing a quote or appropriate phone number, while virtual assistants (think Siri) are built around machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI).
Early stage companies will often want the control of having team members operate live chat, as one sales rep can handle four to six chats or more depending on level of detail needed, and the entire experience can be controlled and monitored.
However, as your company grows, if you’re not considering chatbots or virtual assistants in at least some capacity, you’re ignoring a growing trend. There are powerful chatbot solutions in many market segments, for example finance and automobile sales.
Live Chat Implementation Checklist
Live chat is not a turnkey solution.
The process requires not only choosing a live chat vendor, but training team members and deciding how and when live chat will be available for site visitors.
Here’s everything to consider:
Purpose: What is the main goal of the live chat service?
Reactive Lead Generation: The most traditional form of live chat. Sales reps chat with visitors and treat them as inbound leads.
Technical Support:SaaS products (web-hosted applications like Salesforce and Zendesk) that require backend installations open up live chat as a developer resource. These leads will be CTO-types looking to estimate the required resources for setup.
Product Support A support rep or customer success team answers questions and provides product education for visitors. The conversation is transferred to a salesperson when required.
Format: Where live chat will display and for whom?
Homepage/entire website: Create rules around when users will be notified about the chat option and when the chat should be hidden, such as on a specific “Request a demo” landing page.
Pricing page: If you’d like to get started by testing the service, implement on the pricing page and have sales reps experiment with coupons and discount offers.
Trial environment: Live chat becomes increasingly important for trials. Users will have questions as they consider long-term applications. This is where quality live chat support can be the tool that wins a new customer.
Guidelines: Standards for success and optimization
Response time: Pick a number and stick to it. Visitors may leave your site if they don’t see the average response time posted. This can also be used as an internal metric for evaluating sales teams.
Follow-ups/Nurturing: Fortunately for sales reps, quitting a chat mid-conversation is not like hanging up a phone call. Their information can be collected and sent to integrated customer relationship management software. Sales reps can then create follow-up campaigns for these leads. Make sure this process is ironed out before implementation.
Channel management: Make sure prospects get the same information through live chat, social media and on the phone. Canned responses and FAQs can be used so the whole company stays on message. Some vendors combine live chat services with call center software so teams can keep things centralized.
This post is about how to generate leads using LinkedIn in a non-paid manner.
LinkedIn’s self service paid ads can seem like an easier way to generated traffic and leads, but most that go down this path lose their investment.
At least in the short term.
It is simply not feasible to tread down this path without being willing to lose money. Sure, that’s ‘business as usual’, but do you really have to start there?
Does this mean there are not other organic methods to create traffic through the LinkedIn platform?
This is a question many business owners and B2B marketers tend to have.
There are multiple methods one can employ to garner traffic as long as there is a commitment towards being meticulous and persistent.
Let’s take a look at six unique ways to generate traffic on LinkedIn, Naturally.
#1 Maximize Use Of Integrated Media On Your Profile
Let’s begin with the first unusual method which is not going to cost you a dime and will create more visibility, authority and opportunity for leads. I’ll call them “mini-apps”.
There are a number of apps from which you can choose the ones you want. On LinkedIn, you will have to go to the ‘Applications’ area in order to sift through the options on offer and pick the apps that are best suited for you and your needs. There are some fascinating apps included in the area such as being able to create simple polls, lists, and even optimizing your blog posts. There are so many things to do with these apps alone and the leads they will create are going to be astonishing at first.
There are far too many people who don’t take advantage of these apps and that is what holds them back. It is one of the easiest long-term methods to continually generate leads and make your profile exciting to read as well.
#2 Implement LinkedIn Answers Alternatives
As my social associate Donna Serdula said in this blog post, LinkedIn Answers is removed from the feature set. She recommends other tools to use now:
These are similar to the idea of ‘Yahoo Answers’, and great to get insights to questions people ask, and that you can help answer. There are a significant amount of examples with regards to people who were able to build a lot of leads in a short period of time because of their answers alone.
You can write posts on LinkedIn to answer people’s questions, or highlight a problem area that you and your firm have expertise in.
#3 Maximize Second Connections Via Target Company
Searching for people is something most users are going to do at one point or another on LinkedIn.
This is easy to do, but there are many people who don’t realize how they can maximize first connections in order to develop secondary connections.
LinkedIn has made it easy to spot the kind of connections a person has with specific companies or people.
Let’s say you are looking to generate leads in the world of accounting and are targeting specific firms in the area. You will click on their company name after putting it in the search bar. On the right-hand side, you are going to see all of the direct connections you have to the business. These are great and most people notice these. However, you want to go to the “second connections” link as that is where the real value is.
When you click on these people, you will begin to see ‘shared connections’ near the bottom of their profile.
Shared Connections – LinkedIn Profile
These are the individuals who you have to contact and provide value to. You will be surprised as to how many leads can be created when you are using this method alone.
#4 Join Outside Your ‘Circle’ Using LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn Groups are great and hold wonderful value as long as you are using them properly.
What is the first thing most people do with regards to these groups?
They will join the ones that are present in their niche and call it a day. Does this sound like a good plan?
It might have worked in the past, but in most cases the leads are going to be saturated. Everyone and their dog will be going after these groups as they are the common sense ones to consider. What you need to do is go outside the circle, but still within your market (“shoulder-niches”).
Go outside of the niche in order to find leads. How is this possible? Let’s take a look.
Let’s say you are in the world of finance. You will want to join all finance-based groups, but you can start to move outwards as well such as “small business owners” or “investors” and other related groups. These are people who will be related to the world of finance, but not directly.
You will be able to find some of the finest leads in these groups because they will have likely have been less targeted in the past. This is where the magic lies for those who are tired of being shut down on their regular groups.
But, with all outreach and connections, “high value, no spam” is essential.
#5 Build Your Network With LinkedIn Mobile App
This next way would be one of those options that are going to yield great value in the long-term.
This is based on a more personal encounter. Imagine going to a great trade show and speaking to wonderful people only to realize you don’t have their contact information.
Sure, they might give you a business card, but is that enough? No.
You want to get and link to their LinkedIn profile as soon as you can.
With the new mobile app that has been set up by LinkedIn, you are able to download it and connect with a simple tap of two smartphones. Just put their backs together and immediately you will have the other person’s information.
Yes, it is that easy!
Getting this app downloaded is going to take a few seconds and those who are not paying attention will be the ones who are missing out. Always make sure you are paying attention to this method.
It will do the trick and you will be able to reap the rewards of the connections you had built. This is when networking is going to be worthwhile.
#6 Understand SEO On LinkedIn
SEO is not only reserved for search engines such as Google or Bing.
It can be seen with any platform that has a search bar. Yes, it is essential to maximize the search algorithm on LinkedIn in order to reap the rewards of one’s profile. There are numerous people who are missing out on this and that is the reason they are not able to generate new leads.
How can one maximize SEO to generate leads?
The sole purpose of SEO is to find keywords people are searching for on the platform and then using them on your profile. It is simple and will push your profile up the search results when the keyword is typed in.
Do your research in this regard.
What are people searching for in your niche all the time? How can you incorporate this in your profile?
An example would be changing the titles of your blog posts to include keywords. Don’t spam, but try to place essential keywords in your profile and expanded meta fields within that profile.
For example, if you were working as a social media marketing firm, you would want to have “social media marketing” in your profile at the very least.
To get your LinkedIn profile listed high in search engines, keep it fresh and include references to your profile across other platforms and websites. Content and links still rule the day in SEO.
It is all about building a platform which is going to yield results in the long-term. The fact this is still an untapped method is what makes it beautiful to incorporate. You will generally be the only person in the niche who is maximizing the use of SEO.
URLs matter in SEO and that’s the same on LinkedIn. See what the awesome Viveka Von Rosen says about that here:
CONCLUSION:
These are some of the finest methods any marketer or business owner is going to come across when aiming to generate leads in their niche on the LinkedIn platform.
Does this mean it is going to be straightforward? No, marketing requires hard work and a desire to excel which comes along with a positive mindset.
Those who have it will be able to utilize these methods written in this post and employ them with great success. Those who don’t are the ones who will generally resort back to paid ads and lose half of their budget immediately.
Don’t be one of those people and give these methods a real chance.
Social media is a treasure trove of lead generation, and many marketers are catching on to the possibilities. According to an infographic by Wishpond, 77 percent of business-to-customer marketers say they have used Facebook to acquire a customer, while 34 percent say the same thing for Twitter. Meanwhile, LinkedIn has proven to be 277 percent more effective than either Facebook or Twitter, according to the infographic. Despite these strong returns, many marketers and business professionals are unsure of the best methods for extracting this value from their social presence. If you’re wanting to turn your social platforms into a wellspring of leads, here are five essential tips.
Start a Conversation
The primary value of social media is communication. For businesses looking to generate leads, this often entails starting and encouraging conversations with prospective consumers. Interactions with online users and their engagement with your social properties can be part of the process of producing a qualified lead. Even one-on-one conversations can have value because of their highly visible nature — on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms, conversations between a business and a potential lead can be seen by other users and increase your company’s exposure, according to Social Media Examiner. And if you’re engaging customers in a positive manner, your superior customer service will continue to bring in leads.
Invest in Social Advertising
For many businesses, lead generation involves paying other companies to produce qualified leads on customers. But many businesses don’t have the financial resources to make this type of investment. An insurance company, for example, might have a limited advertising and lead generation budget, but the success of that business still depends on gathering the best insurance leads available.
Fortunately, social media makes some of this lead generation both easier and more affordable. Social advertising on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms has been developed to provide cost-effective advertising options even for small businesses, according to SteamFeed. And because the targeting metrics of these social platforms can be used to refine your ad exposure, the ads can help businesses generate leads among their most likely consumers. Invest in social ad campaigns scaled to fit your budget, and strong leads should come your way.
Use Prominent Link Placement to Bring Social Users to Your Website
Social properties can generate their own trickle of leads for businesses if they drive traffic from those profiles to your website. Most businesses geared toward generating online leads have websites that feature landing pages, fillable forms and other features designed to appeal to consumers and take in information. SteamFeed recommends building social profiles and pages that prominently feature links back to your website, whether you’re trying to drive traffic to landing pages or other properties. Effective link placement will be easy for consumers to find and use, resulting in greater website referrals and an organic stream of leads.
Streamline Your Web Presence for Mobile Device-Convenience
It can never be overstated that social media and business networking is becoming increasingly more of a mobile experience. Having your website optimized for mobile devices is of utmost importance. And with significant differences in usability between devices — both smartphones and tablets — understanding how your audience connects to your site and social properties is a critical first step. Keeping your site’s technology current is also key as cellular providers are making it easier and easier for users to upgrade. For example, T-Mobile’s JUMP program gives smartphone users the ability to switch devices, and stay current, at any time for an added $10 a month. With each smartphone model offering a slightly different user experience, business owners must pay attention to the target audience and the platforms they’re using to connect.
Activate Your Followers
As Business2Community notes, social media users are typically focused on other interests than making purchases. But this isn’t as big of an obstacle as it may seem for lead generators, because lead generation doesn’t require a purchase. In that sense, businesses can craft content that offers a call-to-action because the immediate goal isn’t transactional — it’s all about opening up a greater line of communication, which social networking is ideal for. When you post and share content — or even put it on your website — include a call-to-action that appeals to your social followers. This simple addition to your social posts can encourage greater engagement and organic leads for your business.
