An essential part of any business is getting new customers. Churning through old contacts in your address book until you run out and then beefing up with paid advertising won’t keep your business growing. Understanding how to generate leads for your business is a much better way to make sure you have the income needed to support yourself and the growth of your business.

What is business lead generation?

Business lead generation is sometimes referred to as customer acquisition. It is the process businesses use to gain potential customers. This includes both first-time customers and returning customers who have previously bought products or services from your company. Without business lead generation, a business cannot succeed. Lead generation is, therefore, an essential part of any successful business. This is probably why some companies spend millions of dollars each year on buying leads.

Strategies to generate leads for your business

Engage Directly.

Direct engagement is the kind of marketing where you speak to people directly and persuade them to buy something now rather than later.

When you directly engage someone in conversation, there is an opportunity for mutual benefit. You get a chance to deliver your pitch, and they get a chance to show you if they can make a valuable contribution. And because they are actively involved, instead of just passively reading your newsletter, they are more likely to remember your pitch when the time is right. 

Do not hesitate to reach out to prospects directly through social media, email, phone, or even in person.

Use LinkedIn to generate leads.

LinkedIn is free, which means that it is the most powerful lead generation tool that you can begin to use today. Last year, Adweek media called LinkedIn ‘the world’s biggest marketing platform,’ with 400 million users and over $3.3 billion in revenue. One of the most powerful features of LinkedIn is lead generation, something that most people never even consider when they are using it.

The critical difference between LinkedIn and every other site on the web is that average users on LinkedIn have twice the buying power of regular web users. Moreover, people on LinkedIn are always looking and making buying decisions. They are more senior and more engaged than the web population at large. This makes LinkedIn a powerful social-professional networking platform.

Advertise on social media.

Social media has created an entirely new world. It has changed the way we communicate with people, and it has made a whole new way to market and deliver your products or services. In all essence, social media revolves around sharing content, which brings in leads and sales.

Advertising on social media generates leads for a business by simply directing its target audience to a site that will continue to move down the buying funnel. However, digital advertising is not as simple as setting up an account and watching the leads roll in. It takes a lot of time to get a good feel for the audience and determine what ads work best.

Ask a happy customer for a referral.

The tragedy of every entrepreneur is they are surrounded by people who do not see the importance and value of the entrepreneur’s creative ideas and offerings. What is worse, they can’t be bothered to pass the word around. How sad would it be if you continue to fail in getting the news about your business going viral? That is why as an entrepreneur, you need to get more referrals. 

Referrals are a significant source of new customers for most businesses. They are easy to generate since they come from pleased customers. Referrals also allow you to focus on your target audience rather than casting a wide net with advertising. In addition, they are inexpensive and almost 100% effective at turning browsers into buyers.

Write a guest blog for another website of your niche.

Guest blogging is the process of publishing posts on someone else’s blog. Many people do this to drive traffic to their blogs. Guest blogs can also directly generate sales leads if they are written in a certain way.

When you write a blog for the other website, your business gets views. Moreover, and more importantly, you get inbound links from that site. Guest blogging for other sites is also another way to expand the reach of your writing and promote yourself as an expert in your field.

Improve your rankings in search engines.

When people find products or services similar to yours online, they will never find yours if it is not searchable. That is why it is vital to improving your rankings in search engines for your page to become more visible to potential customers.

Spend some time on keyword research to determine your target audience’s phrases when searching for products or services like yours. You can use third-party tools to find search data, such as SEMrush and Google Ads Keyword.

Once you have identified a large number of keywords that your audience is searching for, create a page full of content that’s optimised for those keywords.

If this process is tedious and out of your expertise, you can work with an SEO company to help improve your rankings in search engines. 

Partake in forum discussions.

Visit online forums and start a discussion thread related to your business. By beginning or contributing to threads in relevant forums, your site will appear in the “related links” section, which will help drive sales.

Moreover, partaking in forum discussions – especially on the more prominent forums like GrowthHackers, HackerNews, etc. – can help you find someone from the community who needs what you are selling or doing and might be interested in buying. This means there will be less work on your end to generate leads.

Provide a free tool that people will value and use.

Lead generation can be thought of as the process of turning a target market into leads. You generate leads by targeting your business to people who need a particular solution and then giving them a tool to solve their problem.

Providing a free tool that people will value and use is also a way of building up confidence with your prospects. The prospects work with you for free until an outcome where he pays you for the service or product is reached.

Collaborate with influencers.

The first thing you need to know is what ‘influencer’ means. It’s not just some loosely affiliated group of extraordinary marketers and authors that you can quickly meet or connect with. Instead, an influencer is any person who can significantly sway a purchasing decision one way or another, be it a blogger, a journalist, a vlogger, a forum member, or a tweeter.

Influencer Marketing is currently one of the newer strategies businesses are implementing. It is an activity designed for creators. The idea is to work with internet celebrities and experts who already have a following to help market your company in exchange for goods or services.

Create an introductory email with a step-by-step process.

If you want to attract new customers, one of the best techniques you will ever find is creating a sequence of emails. A series of emails engage potential customers with your business and educates them about your products or services. This way, when the time comes for them to make a purchase, they already know what you do and understand why they need your product.

If you have already created a mailing list of potential customers, consider sending them a mail with a special offer. This is a great way to get more people in your sales to funnel.

Create Commenting Scripts.

If you own a business or are in charge of any online service, then think about this. You depend on people to come back and use your site or program because, without users, your business does not make money.

The actual lead generation process involves identifying websites that are typically visited by the prospects you are targeting. Then, you leave comments on these sites to engage your prospect in a conversation. In addition, you will usually be offering free information (e.g., an article, ebook, or report) in exchange for a visitor’s contact information – their email address.

Work with a social media marketing agency.

If you are a London-based business, a social media marketing agency is quick and easy to find. Working with a social media expert is like working with any other kind of specialist. You benefit from the presentation of your work in a way you would never be able to accomplish on your own. 

A social media marketing agency will make you forget about dealing with the hassles of setting up and keeping up your accounts. They will also help you target your audience better and ensure the visibility of your products.