A steady stream of sales leads (or lack thereof) is what makes or breaks your business. Regardless of how excellent your products or services are, if no one knows about them, it’s rather impossible to maintain your competitive edge.
But how can you identify new prospects when it feels like “no one really wants to talk to you”? Surely, you can jazz up your website to turn traffic into sales leads or you can try the cold email outreach method for your lead generation process, but you should do more than that if you want to spark up new sales opportunities.
So here are some effective methods for getting those new prospects to “hear you out” and, ultimately, become your customers.
1. Direct Engagement
The most effective way to spread the word and get more leads is by directly engaging with your customers. You can achieve this by connecting with your prospects through live chats, forums, and help centers. This will not only generate more leads, but it will also help you build a community and promote brand loyalty.
2. Inbound & Outbound Marketing
Although outbound marketing seems to be getting all the credit, inbound marketing can be just as effective. But your best bet for generating leads is a combination of both. While you can use outbound marketing to reach audiences through regular display ads, cold calling, and pop-ups, you can do much more with inbound marketing by personalizing email communication and creating content that your audience actually wants to see and read.
3. Mobile Marketing
As more and more people browse websites and access their e-mails through their mobile devices, your marketing efforts should become compatible with said devices. So invest in the tools and technology you need in order to create and optimize a solid mobile marketing strategy that enables you to reach a broader audience.
4. Twitter
This social networking platform can become an excellent source of potential leads. Not only can you use it to make your content easily accessible, but you can also a Twitter analytics app in order to gain insights into who your followers are, where they are located, what they tweet about, and more. This will also help you spot the influencers among them that can become your brand ambassadors.
5. Quora
This Question & Answer based social networking platform is the best place to create a reputation for your brand. Millions of people from different demographics use this site to post questions daily. By answering their questions with expert and professional insights, not only will you expose your brand to millions of prospects, but you will also prove that your brand is considerate, relevant, and helpful.
6. Value for Free
Atlantech Online was able to increase qualified lead generation by 355% by offering a lead magnet via exit popup and dynamic CTAs. This is an effective method to generate leads because it is based on a simple psychological principle that relies on people’s desire to return favors. So make them “return the favor” by offering them free valuable items such as eBooks, webinars, checklists, infographics, trials, quizzes, and more.
7. Marketing Automation
When it comes down to business, you should spend time on things that can’t be automated and focus on tasks that can only be done manually. So automate your A/B testing, email marketing, data analysis, and other such tasks. You will not only save time, but you will also become more productive while collecting valuable data about your prospective customers that will help you convert them into genuine leads.
8. Guest Posting
It’s easy to convert prospects once they visit your website, but you have to convince them to get there first. You can achieve this by finding blogs in your niche that can help you make your presence known. Once you establish a connection with the blog owners or authors, follow their guidelines and either write your own guest post or outsource the work. Make sure to include a couple of links to your website so that the audience can click to find you.
9. Email Marketing Sequences
Partner up with an email marketing software provider to set up email marketing sequences that target different parts of your conversion funnel. This way you can educate the leads at the top of the funnel about your brand and have them journey all the way down to the bottom of the funnel. Once they get there, you can send them incentives to buy from you, such as coupon codes, webinar invites, and more.
10. Lead Magnets
To attract leads and convert them, you need to offer them significant value for a small price. Most often, lead magnets come in the forms of eBooks or white papers. But these obvious choices are not always the best choices. To find out what works, poll your audience by giving them the opportunity to choose between four or five different assets that are free to download. Not only will you find the right lead magnet this way, but you will also gain insights into what your prospects prefer. Additionally, you can use A/B testing to fine-tune not only this process but your entire website.
Conclusion
More leads mean more profit. This should be motivating enough for you to create unique and personalized content, be mindful of your Tweets, and offer significant value. But you should focus on building healthy relationships with your prospects if you want them to come over, stay, and return. Interact with them on social media, forums, and answer their questions. And finally, don’t forget to constantly revise and optimize your lead-gen strategy. As your prospects evolve, so should your strategy, especially in a world where what works today doesn’t necessarily work tomorrow.
