It’s happening! Slowly but surely, each day we’re moving out of lockdown. We’ve made it through the winter months, and with the arrival of Spring, it’s time to look at either starting up your business again or continuing with pushing it forward and growing post-lockdown. In light of the changes ahead, and what this means for businesses, this month’s topic of discussion is all about generating leads for your business.
Have a think about how you have found customers in the past. Was it mainly through word of mouth referrals? That’s often the case for many SMEs. There’s nothing wrong with this form of lead generation – social proof is a powerful tool in client acquisition. However, it’s never wise to use only one strategy for gaining new clients, especially if that approach relies heavily on the involvement of others. By being more proactive in lead generation, you can create a steady stream of leads for your business to convert into customers.
Put simply, lead generation is how you initially attract customers to your business and turn them into someone that’s interested in what you offer. It can be an instrumental tactic for converting a consumer into a customer. Lead Generation is an ice-breaker of sorts – it allows you to create a relationship with an engaged group of people that have a genuine interest in your brand and its products or services.
By embedding proactive lead generation tactics within your PR and Marketing strategy, you can attract consumers, convert them into leads, and ultimately turn them into a paying customer. Lead generation gives you the means to engage directly with an interested audience and build a relationship with them that supports the growth of your business on many different levels, from increasing brand awareness to improving sales and customer retention.
Lead Generation is all about leading a prospect to your brand, someone that would genuinely benefit from your business. It’s a great way to entice people to engage with your brand and beats outbound marketing tactics, like cold-calling and traditional forms of advertising, hands down.
There are two main types of lead magnets that you can use. One is based on incentivising people by giving them an offer, whether that’s a discount, a giveaway or free trial. The other is when you are giving knowledge through a form of content. Creating a ‘content-based’ lead magnet could be a helpful guide, handy checklist, a bunch of templates. Basically, anything that would be of value to your ideal customer.
Both forms of lead magnet work on the basis of reciprocity. Whereby you are giving something to a person in return for their contact details.
Once you have chosen the form of lead magnet that best fits your business and its audience, you’ll need to build your lead generation magnet, as well as the process for exchanging the lead magnet for lead information, such as contact details. A great way to do all of this is to create a landing page, whether on your existing site or via third party software. This landing page will sell the benefits of your offer, as well as provide a way for you to capture the information you require from your lead.
You can then use your website and social media channels to promote your lead magnet to attract your ideal clients, and turn them into a lead for your business. After you gift your lead magnet – in exchange for contact details, of course – you can start to build a relationship with your leads and work on turning them into a fully fledged customer.
This article was first published in the Suffolk Free Press, Thursday 8 April 2021.
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