When you start a business, you want to make sure that it can stay in the black. Earning enough revenue to cover expenses and turn a profit is what every entrepreneur and shareholder wants.
Even so, you cannot exist in the blind faith that your product or service will do the trick. Consumers need to know who you are. You can find them by generating leads or finding specific people who may like your product.
Why Do You Need Leads?
You want people to buy your products. Sometimes, you cannot wait for them to come to you. Larger brands and corporations already practice regular lead generation, and they have established practices.
You need to find out what competitive advantage you can offer. What is your specialty? How can you make your offerings different from those in the same industry? Once you answer these questions, then you can figure out your strategy.
Obstacles That Small Business Face
Globalization has shrunk the world for businesses. You can sell products digitally to people in Indonesia, even if you are based in Marseille, France. Or you can ship to Australia if you can afford the postage.
The rub with this smaller world is that, while you can reach more consumers, you also have to deal with a smaller market share. Contradictory? You might say so. But consider your competitors: corporations with pockets internationally. They want oligopolies and monopolies.
You have a size issue. Amazon, Walmart and other giants can use their vast capital and resources to sell more cheaply and reach more consumers across the world. They can change storefronts to accommodate varying values, and that may not be in your budget.
Lead Generation Strategies
So, how do you grab that attention span? There are several strategies that you can implement for that express purpose. Below, I have outlined some of what I’ve found to be the best ones:
1. Assess that you deliver high-quality content.
People will know when the items you deliver digitally only contain hot air. Hot air is only good for when you are selling balls or toy dirigibles. You would rather that people deliver on substance, which has meaning imbued in every item that you put out in the world.
Incorporating “meaning” can translate into many concrete concepts. When you are writing a blog, you want to make sure the topics are relevant to your business and consumers.
2. Avoid spamming when sending emails.
Email campaigns can perform gloriously. You often see them from larger corporations that send coupons or product recommendations. There’s a reason why Amazon constantly advertises Prime Day, Cyber Monday and lightning deals.
By “spam,” I’m referring to messages that filters perceive as lacking value. We know traditional spam as blatant ads sent to our mailboxes with inappropriate messages, spyware and even viruses. Your messages aren’t that, but with the wrong words in your message or subject line, they can be flagged as such. In the worst-case scenario, it may violate the CAN-SPAM act.
Make sure that your email addresses used for sending out messages aren’t flagged as spam. Don’t purchase email lists because that is illegal, and they may be garbage emails in any case.
3. Perfect your landing pages.
Do you want to track website visitors over a certain length of time? Google Analytics can help, but you can do more to craft a well-designed marketing campaign. Landing pages are one such facet for a campaign.
Landing pages assist in helping you track who visits your site when. You can set counters on them to measure who visits and who doesn’t.
4. Master your SEO.
Search engine optimization is one of the organic tools in your toolbox. It refers to refining your advertising copy so it contains certain keywords that people seek online. Google ranks pages based on those keywords when people type them into the search engine.
SEO, unlike paid ads, is organic growth. Google algorithms will rank your websites in search engines. It will identify potential spammers, however, so don’t stuff your websites with keywords specifically to rank. Always add value.
Best Tools For Lead Generation
Strategies may not simply cut it, however. You also want to amass all of the tools that you can to increase your leads. These can be free, or for a cost.
I have a few recommendations for what tools are the best for this sort of work. Some we have discussed above, such as SEO and landing tools, but there are also websites and programs that can assist.
1. Quora
Quora is a public Q&A forum where you can assist people with their questions. When you answer questions related to your specialty or business, you establish yourself as a reliable authority figure. People always have questions, and the algorithm will deliver them to the email address you assign to the account.
Another benefit of Quora is that you increase your social media presence in a specialized, international level. You only have to pay with time and words and to provide value to people. The compressed space means that potential customers are more likely to read your answers and make decisions accordingly.
2. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is another free tool that comes in handy for tracking visitors. You merely need to register for an account, which is best with a Gmail address, and install a tracking code within your website’s HTML.
While the analytics is general, you can use it to pinpoint locations of website visitors, how many visited directly or used referral sites and what search terms are used to find your site. The raw data is valuable. You can analyze trends over hours, days and even months.
Preparing Your Strategy
Diving into the world of business is not easy. But you can even the odds by proactively seeking out potential customers without hammering them with ads. You can adopt these strategies and deliver value.
Our world has gotten smaller. You can still find people to support your business. Go out and find them and start to grow.