How Do I Generate New Leads?
No matter what you sell or what service you provide, you won’t be selling much or providing service unless you can introduce potential customers to your offering. How will anyone find your website, let alone stick around to buy your product?
There are many ways to get visitors to you, see our list below for our top 5 methods:
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SEO
Many people have heard of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This is a process that involves optimizing your website to be easily found via search engines. This is a simple solution that all websites should be embracing. We like this list from SEMRush.com which offers a checklist of 13 quick wins to improve your SEO.
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PPC
Another acronym used in shorthand for “pay-per-click” advertising. Utilizing this method, customers are shown your ads, but you only pay when they actually click the ad. This can be quite effective especially when selling a product or service to “cold traffic”. Here’s a list of the most common and relevant PPC platforms out there:
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Content Marketing
All of your advertising does not need to be a direct sale or sales offer of any kind. Many of the world’s biggest brands advertise via content marketing. For example Red Bull and GoPro are companies who share lifestyle photos and video content to build their brand as the authority in their field. Check out Red Bull’s Instagram feed for some great examples of lifestyle content marketing.
Some businesses will want to look to more product-driven content, like our very own client North Shore Commercial Door. Their YouTube channel is filled with helpful product reviews, how-to videos and explores their vendor’s brand history. This content marketing establishes them as the expert while keeping the focus on the products.
Another way to share helpful content is to utilize customer reviews in your social media marketing. Cooksmarts shares recipes, photos and customer reviews on it’s Instagram channel which brings important social proof and allows their content to easily be shared.
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Marketing Automation
Once a customer reaches your site, how do you keep them coming back? And how do you know if your website marketing is having the desired results? Luckily there are many tools available to automate the process of keeping communication open with customers and staff.
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Lead Magnets
How can lead magnets help your business? If you’re not sure what a Lead Magnet is, we’ll explain. A lead magnet is a deal so good that customers cannot resist providing you with their email address to get it. We list 6 ways to use this method:
- Offer a Guide or Report (Keep it Specific and Short)
- Cheat Sheet (Checklists, Blueprints, Glossaries)
- Video Training (Demo Video, How-To Video, etc.)
- Software Download / Free Trial (Either your Main Product or something Relevant and useful)
- Discount or Free Shipping (A simple discount or free shipping offer is enough to gather leads)
- Quiz or Survey (This will help you gather leads, but also perform valuable research into your customers)
SurvivalLife.com offers a “FREE Hunting Checklist” in exchange for your email address, this is a classic lead magnet.
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Referral Program
Even in today’s modern world of marketing, word of mouth is still one of the best ways to find new customers. That’s great news for you because you can offer referral incentives to those customers via a referral program. Even better, offer a “double-sided” referral to give back to your existing customers while gaining a new customer. There are many different variants of this idea, but just make sure you take care of your brand ambassadors, your existing customers! That way they will refer your business to a friend with or without a referral program.
Whether you’re using one or all of these methods, they’re sure to bring in more leads to your business and as a result, more revenue!
