Strangers, visitors, leads, customers, promoters. These are the five stages of the lead generation cycle that will, if properly executed, not only generate leads for your business but ultimately produce paying customers and, most importantly, long-term brand promoters and ambassadors. Needless to say, this is oftentimes easier said than done, especially for small business owners competing in an oversaturated marketplace.
The real struggle is actually generating quality leads you can nurture and convert into loyal brand followers. In a competitive market, you need to employ the best practices and innovate your way to the hearts and minds of your potential customers. Let’s take a look at the most effective tips that will help you generate business leads the inbound way, and attract people to your brand.
It All Starts With On-Page and Back-End SEO
Search engine optimization is the driving force behind online brand visibility and recognition, and thus it is the driving force behind your long-term success. After all, the easier it is for people to find you, the likelier they are to become your followers and customers. To boost your ranking in the relevant SERPs, you will need to optimize your on-page content with the following:
- An appealing page title with relevant keywords
- An informative, optimized page URL
- Proper header tags
- In-depth, quality, and keyword-rich copy in the body of the text
- Proper image alt tags and descriptions
That said, back-end or off-page SEO also plays a major role in building your online visibility and generating leads. Primarily, this means you need to build a network of backlinks that lead back to your website or landing pages from various authority sites in your industry. Note that you should emphasize quality organic links, and refrain from black-hat link building if you are to avoid penalties from Google. However, if you manage to earn organic links from authority websites, you will invariably attract potential customers from across the digital realm.
Generate Leads With a Content Strategy
Content is one of the most powerful inbound marketing tools you have at your disposal, so all the more need to emphasize content creation in all of its forms, starting with in-depth articles. Your blog page is a gold mine just waiting to be exploited, so use this opportunity to create stellar content that will appeal to search engines and readers alike.
Use visual elements to make your content more engaging and striking at first glance, but focus on the storytelling and the quality of each and every piece. Google wants you to answer a certain question and deliver a solution to a certain problem, so make sure you always go deeper into the subject than your competitors, and scatter relevant keywords to improve visibility and tell the search engine crawlers what the piece is all about.
Develop Clear Lines of Brand-Consumer Communication
Regular communication with consumers is another prerequisite for successful lead generation in the modern business world, as the modern customer wants and needs to be able to get in touch with the brand at a moment’s notice. This means that you need to make yourself available to your audience across the online and offline world, ready and willing to answer any questions they might have.
Concretely, you need to emphasize direct messaging and phone communication. With the mobile demographic on the rise around the world, phone systems for small business ventures have become essential parts of the customer support puzzle, as customers are increasingly getting in touch with brands via mobile devices in order to obtain the necessary information fast. With that in mind, make yourself available on online chat platforms, but don’t forget about the importance of traditional phone communication either if you are to maximize your lead-generation potential.
Disseminate the Brand Across Social Media
Speaking of online platforms, it’s important to note that social media has a major part to play in the quest for more actionable leads. By posting regularly on all relevant social networks, you can easily improve brand awareness and gain the visibility necessary to generate leads at a steady pace.
You can start by discovering the networks that are most relevant to your brand and niche. Next, optimize your content for every network and devise a strict posting schedule – people love consistency. Be sure to weave your brand’s unique identity into every post to set yourself apart from the competition and build a recognizable image in the social media world.
Incentivize People to Join Your Email List
On a final note, don’t forget about the power and potential of email marketing. Email marketing can be used to convert leads, but its true potential lies in lead generation and how it can nurture them to become long-term brand advocates.
Use incentives on social media and your own website such as special perks and free educational material to motivate people to subscribe to your mailing list, and then use your amazing content to build a trustworthy relationship between you. Remember, email marketing is not about bombarding people with product catalogs. It’s about delivering informative, engaging content that will inspire them to visit your website and venture on to your product page all on their own – this is, after all, the essence of inbound marketing.
In closing
Generating leads is a delicate task and a nuanced process that requires plenty of planning and preparation. One wrong move, and you will scare the potential customer for good. Use these tips to generate business leads organically and nurture them to become your lifelong brand followers and ambassadors.
