If your business has a website, then you are going to need to drive traffic to your website, or generate leads, in order to boost sales. This process is called lead generation.
And, whether you recognize it or not, it is a critical component in running your business as successfully as possible.
This guide will help you generate leads like the best businesses out there!
1. Know Your Audience to Generate Leads
This is a step that is easily overlooked. Many people and businesses assume they already know who their target audience is and run with it.
However, knowing your audience is going to determine how you generate leads, so you need to think through who your business is targeting but also who else might be a 2nd connection with your intended audience.
For example, if your business sells tools and hardware, then you will want to target people who use or need tools and hardware. Typically, this will be men, but to ignore the female portion of your target audience would be foolish.
This means you will need to imagine your dream buyer. This is the individual who will take advantage of your product or service each and every time you offer because it checks off all the boxes they are looking for.
Once you have identified the dream buyer you can then begin to think about ways your product or service might interact with friends and family or other “2nd level” connections with your dream buyer.
Working through this process will create defined segments and demographics that best match your product or service. From there, it becomes a much easier process to work through your current client base, potential clients, and begin to optimize your entire lead generation process!
2. Improve Lead Generation by Leveraging Your Communication Tools
Nearly every business will benefit from having an online presence on social media and an email newsletter for lead generation. However, having a newsletter or a social profile just to have one is not good enough.
These are opportunities to build rapport with your potential and current customers. They might already know your business exists to provide a certain service or product, but they also want to know about the people and personalities behind those services or products.
Take initiative and create a newsletter that is professional but personal and converts warm leads into delighted customers. Use your social profiles to celebrate wins and successes of your business as well as other businesses and individuals.
Don’t stop at newsletters, though. Create emails that stay in touch with your potential customers and clients. Drive traffic to your website by staying in touch to help solve their problems. This will help them to know you care about them and not just closing a sale.
Then, learn to use those communication tools to generate leads for your business. Learn the algorithms each social media platform uses. Follow what people are saying about your industry. Become a thought leader in your industry.
Improving your lead generation by leveraging your communication tools is fairly all encompassing to your business and brand so it warrants standing alone as its own point. However, there are a lot of ways to accomplish this goal which we will go into specifics about in the next section.
3. Optimize Your Website to Generate Leads
Your #1 communication tool will always and forever be your website! For the majority of your clients and/or customers, your website will serve as your business card and your first impression. In the following paragraphs, we will walk through a variety of areas to optimize your website to make it a lead generation machine that works for you instead of you working on your website.
Streamline Your Homepage
Everything we discuss will be about traffic on your website. The first place we can improve traffic is by focusing on your homepage. This will be the first experience potential visitors have with your website.
You can take advantage of the ability to improve SEO on your homepage. Improve the navigation so visitors can quickly find and click on your offer if you have one or showcase some of your best blog posts or offers right on the homepage.
Use Links in Your Content
Whether you offer free downloads or low-cost opportunities or webinars these should all be easily linked to across your website.
As an example, a webinar can be a great way to generate leads, especially if you are diligent about clearly offering links throughout your website and homepage. The webinar drives traffic to your premium content, services, or products and your website will drive traffic to your webinar. Utilizing them in tandem will drastically increase your lead generation.
Keep It Simple: Use Google as Your Login
This optimization is easy to set up and implement and will have a positive impact on your lead generation. People like to take the fewest steps possible to access online content, whether that is your webinar, purchasing a product, setting up a discovery call, etc.
Almost every single person has access to a Google account, whether they know it or not. So taking advantage of the information already available on their Google account and allowing users to set up and login to accounts with this information will increase your ability to generate leads in no time.
Specialize Your Lead Generation Teams
This may not apply to you or your business right now, but if your business grows (and we hope it does) then this will be something to plan for.
While it may seem like having a sales team also take care of lead generation makes the most sense it can actually be detrimental to your overall success. Your sales team needs to focus on the actual transaction of goods and services for money. They will have their hands full doing that and doing it well. Having a dedicated lead generation team will allow them to focus on driving traffic to your website and business and do it well.
This may seem nuanced but it is imperative to allow your teams to do what they are best at and do it to the best of their ability.
Use Strong Verbs to Write Powerful Headlines
This optimization may mean using best SEO practices, but it also means thinking like your dream buyer.
What type of headline would your dream buyer be interested in clicking on? They won’t be clicking on headlines like, “Tips for Gardening,” but they will click on this, “7 Tips to Grow a Robust Raised Garden.” Keep your headlines powerful, specific, and focused. Even headlines on product and service descriptions can be boosted from, “Ways We Help,” to something with more performative value, “Our 3-Pronged Approach to Grow Your Business.”
Create an Irresistible Offer and Talk About It
The best way to drive traffic to your website, like your dream buyer, is to create an offer they can’t refuse.
Take your dream buyer, for instance, and create additional features or benefits around your product or service that adds meaning to their experience with your business.
Take the Casper brand as an example. They offered a great mattress, which their dream buyer was already interested in, and slapped on the ability to have it delivered right to their house alongside a 120-day trial to decide if they wanted to keep it or not. They created a great feature, the Casper mattress, some amazing benefits, the delivery and guarantee, and administered a shot of additional meaning and value to the dream buyer by doing so, thereby creating an offer that thousands and millions of people couldn’t resist.
You can create an irresistible offer by improving benefits, adjusting the features for a reduced cost or at zero cost, or you can take advantage of industry-defining guarantees.
Casper is a great example of these types of guarantees, but there are plenty of others as well. Costco offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee or you can get the item or even your entire membership refunded. Cutco offers a forever guarantee where you can have the item refunded or replaced for as long as the company is in business, no time limits at all.
Coupling an industry-defining guarantee with an already irresistible offer will drive traffic to your website and business over and over again creating a lead generation vehicle that can’t be stopped!
Work the Lead Generation Process
One last thought about optimizing your website to generate leads: work the process. If you diligently and intelligently work this process you will find dream buyers who are desperate to purchase your product or service and drive traffic to your website in a never-ending loop.
Identify Your Dream Buyer
Know your audience and create everything with them in mind
Create the Perfect Product or Service to Draw Buyers In
Build free or low-cost offers to attract potential buyers
Capture Leads
Deliver those free or low-cost offers in exchange for contact information
Make an Offer They Can’t Refuse
Feel free to fill out this form exactly to build your irresistible offer!
What are you selling? _______
How much does it cost? _______
Who will take immediate action on this offer? ________
How do you claim/buy it? _______
Some examples of an irresistible offer:
“We’ll build your new home in just 30 weeks or give you $5,000 in cash”
“Guaranteed Google rankings in 90 days or we work for free”
Once you get into the habit of working this lead generation process regularly and updating it as needed, then you will be driving traffic to your website in droves daily.
4. Play With Different Lead Generation Strategies
One last thing to keep in mind when working on lead generation: don’t be afraid to keep testing with what works. You never know what might work for your industry or not, what could work for your industry with some creative tweaking, and what will end up being an absolute flop for your industry. To help get you started, we have put down some lead generation strategies to try for yourself!
Use Interactive Content
Whether you decide to use quizzes or polls or interactive slides is up to you, but they are a critical part of my lead generation strategies. People are drawn to participating in the content you are publishing, even if it is something as small as a yes/no question poll.
Utilize Videos
Studies have shown that having a video for your product or service increases sales and conversions, even if people don’t watch the video! So take advantage of this lead generation strategy and make simple, easy, clean videos to showcase your product or service. Have multiple videos your audience will appreciate and work well with your communication tools.
Keep an Updated Blog
It is common nowadays for businesses to have blogs. What is not common, though, is that these blogs are kept up-to-date and have consistent posts. A blog is a great way to bring in organic search traffic while building rapport with customers and clients by helping them with a pain problem. For this lead generation strategy to work effectively, though, you really need to be posting consistently with quality content.
Create Premium Content
There are two ways to go about creating premium content for lead generation: create high quality content that you give away in exchange for their email address or for setting up a discovery call OR putting the high quality content behind a minimal paywall so they have some investment in your business before committing to anything more. Done correctly, either can be a great way to generate leads.
Try a Giveaway or Contest
Depending on your audience and communication tools, these can be great successes or total flops. So take into consideration that this lead generation strategy can bring in a lot of possible leads, but it has to be worth it or it will decay trust with your business.
Looking For Some Help to Grow Your Business?
What was your favorite piece of advice from this article? We would love to hear your thoughts! At Catalyst Brand Group we focus on implementing proven growth strategies in brand, platform, and growth that will help your business grow by 2x-3x per year. If you are looking to implement some of these lead generation strategies or for some help in other areas of your business, then Contact Us to start a conversation about how we can help!