A company thrives by having customers who can buy its products or services. But before these customers are acquired, they were leads at some point and the company was trying to convince them to turn into prospective customers. Attaining leads as part of your sales strategy is the first step and probably the step that needs much of your time to make sure you search for those people with an interest in your products or services.
A marketing lead is a person or company that shows an interest in a brand’s products or services and later becomes a potential customer. The company should make sure that it attains as many leads as possible so that it can be able to sieve out potential customers. You can use both online and offline channels to acquire leads depending on the nature of your business. Having the channels for lead generation is not the main point of discussion today but it’s how the channels are used to acquire the leads. Below are some of the points you can take home and build on your lead numbers.
Create valuable content
Creating valuable content is one of the best advertising tools you can ever use to gain leads for your business. The popular term that’s given for it is content marketing. You need to create as much content as possible that can be of interest to the people you’re trying to convert into leads. There are various content types you can use such as blogs, videos, PDFs, webinars, infographics, and the list goes on and you need to make sure you publish this valuable content at the best time possible when the people you’re trying to target are also online.
Advertise your content
When posting your content online more so on social media, your organic content can’t take you so far if you want to target a wider audience. That’s the time you need to engage in online advertising by boosting your posts so that your content reaches as many people as possible. The content that you promote online needs to have a clear exciting message and realistic Call-To-Action buttons that can capture people’s attention who might be able to reach out to you later. For traditional advertising, tv adverts and billboards can be a sure win for you if you want to acquire leads.
Engage online consistently
Posting online and engaging with people online are two different things. You can post every day but when people engage with your content and you don’t reply, they will hesitate to engage next time. People engaging with your content shows that they’re interested in what you’re offering and some of these people are potential leads. Therefore, you need to make sure that you’re always available to make sure that you reply to people’s queries and provide immediate solutions. You can also share, like, and comment on other people’s content and that can widen your online presence and possibly connect you to potential leads in the process.
Know who your ideal customer is
This should probably have been the first point. A lead is a person you’re trying to turn into a prospect and if you don’t have a clear picture of this person, you’re wasting your valuable time. You need to know the person you want as a lead when you front your product or service because not everyone has an interest in what you’re trying to offer. Take time to make research about the people you would want as leads and later potential customers.
Create irresistible offers
As part of your sales promotion strategy, create offers that can be so difficult to be ignored by potential leads. The truth is people want free things but your offer doesn’t have to be entirely free otherwise you will be making a loss. You can have discounts for your products or services for a particular period so that people can buy them at a reduced price than the actual price for which they cost. However, don’t over-rely on offers as a strategy for acquiring leads because people will get comfortable with the low prices they’re paying for the offers and if you place the products back to their original price, they will be hesitant to pay.
Create an emailing list
This is one of the oldest and most effective ways of generating leads for your business. When you have an emailing list, you’re able to send content about your products or services to multiple recipients who become your subscribers. You can receive emails from various people by placing lead generators on your website that people can only access after submitting their emails. Lead generators can include PDFs, sales offers, newsletters, videos, tutorials, etc. and for people to access this content, they need to submit their emails so that the content can be sent to their emails directly. In this way, you’re able to collect the email addresses of various people to whom you can always send content that might be of interest to them.
Approach people and market yourself
Approaching people directly is one of those bold moves you have to make if you badly want to generate leads. You need to use every opportunity that you have to make sure that whenever you’re with people that are ideal customers, you need to build rapport with them and talk about your business. It’s at this moment that you need to carry business cards with you that you can always give out to whichever person you get a chance to talk to. The cards need to have your contact details and location just in case a person wants to reach out to you.
To sum things up, generating marketing leads may be a hurdle but it’s the first step if you want to acquire more customers that can bring in more money to your business.