Lead Generation Strategies for Small Business

Lead generation is the most vital metric to measure the success of a marketing campaign. A business without any leads is as good as a business that doesn’t exist.

The primary purpose of establishing a business is to generate revenue by selling your products and services, which is impossible if no one is interested in your brand. Hence, drafting perfect lead generation strategies for your business is necessary.

So, What is Lead Generation?

Lead generation is a marketing process to reach out to people interested in your products and services or similar products and services to convert their interest into sales. 

In this article, we will discuss some of the most effective lead generation strategies for your business.

1. Local SEO

Local SEO is a part of the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy that focuses on ranking a business or website in the local search results of Google. Businesses with a physical store in a particular location or at different locations and those with e-commerce stores that serve across the globe mostly use this strategy. 

Here are a few tips for doing Local SEO for your brand. 

• List your business or brand on Google My Business to let people find your store on search results and Google Map. 
• Optimise your website and all web pages with meta titles, meta descriptions, tags, keywords, etc. 
• List your business on other online listing directories such as Yelp, Foursquare, Yellow Pages, City Search, etc. 
• Create social media accounts for your business. 

2. Content Marketing

According to Content Marketing Institute (CMI), 91 percent of B2B businesses and 86 percent of B2C businesses consider content marketing the most effective lead generation strategy. Today, inbound marketing is more effective and cost-efficient as it tends to interact more closely with the targeted audiences.

So, how to do content marketing for your business?

• First, understand your audiences and the type of content they like to consume.
• Analyse your competitors to check what kind of content they are creating for generating leads.
• Do keyword research to know the trending topics in your niche.
• Create blogs, videos, social media posts, podcasts etc., based on the researched keywords.
• Apply SEO techniques to all your blog posts.
• Write guest posts for top publishers in your niche for creating backlinks.

3. Social Media Marketing

According to the latest study conducted in 2020, the number of social media users in India is 518 million. On average, an internet user spends 2 hours and 24 minutes per day on social media. So, by now, it must be clear that your targeted audiences are on social media, and therefore your brand needs to have a social media presence. 

A few tips to generate lead through social media,

• Identify the social media platforms your potential customers are mainly present in, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
• Post relevant content about your brand consistently. Remember, consistency is the key in social media marketing.
• Post different kinds of engaging content, which can be images, videos, reels, podcasts, carousels etc.
• Interact with your followers through comments, DMs, or live sessions.
• Try to connect with social media influencers for influencer marketing of your products and services.
• Conduct giveaways, online contests, and polls to drag users to your page.

4. Paid Ad Campaigns

Generating leads through the above-mentioned organic strategies might take some time. And therefore, if you want to get instant results, you can always opt for paid ad campaigns. 

You can create Google Ads or social media ads like Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Youtube Ads or Twitter Ads to promote your brand and get qualified leads. 

Let’s discuss some of the strategies you must adopt before running an ad campaign. 

• Research which social media platform is perfect for your products and services. For example, if you deal in apparel, you must consider Instagram and Google Ads. But, if you deal in medicines, you might find Facebook Ads more valuable.
• Plan out a monthly budget for campaigns to avoid overspending. 
• Define your audiences based on age, gender, location, language, etc., to reach out to the right people.
• Track your ad campaigns regularly and update the strategy or pause the campaign if it’s not generating the expected results.

5. Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the earliest marketing strategies that still works great today. Around 65 percent of the small businesses send emails to their prospects to promote their brands or offer exclusive discounts.

You can use any email marketing tool to track whether the recipients are interacting with your emails or not. If they do, you can always send a follow-up email. But remember not to spam your prospects’ mailbox anytime.

Some email marketing tips that may help you,

• Always send personalised emails to your potential customers.
• Make sure your subject line represents the context of your email.
• Only send emails when you have something valuable to share.
• Create a calendar to know when to send the next email. Don’t send emails too frequently.
• Give the recipients an option to unsubscribe. 

The above-mentioned are some of the most used lead generation strategies by small businesses. However, lead generation is a continuous process that has no fixed methods, and you need to keep updating your techniques to generate more qualified leads with time.