Whether you sell t-shirts or offer services, you need to generate leads. Lead generation should be a consistent, ongoing activity of every business - both online and offline.
Leads are essential because the more leads you have, the higher your likelihood to gain sales. That’s the ultimate goal of every business. Also, more leads can mean more referrals.
Another benefit is the opportunity to learn more about your prospects. This allows you to tailor your offer to meet their needs.
Today, I want to show you proven lead generation strategies that will help your business grow this year.
If you’re struggling to get not just leads, but also high-quality leads, this blog post is for you!
<<Bonus Content: 6 Ways to Double Your Email List Easily>>
Proven Lead Generation Strategies Your Business Should Use in 2021
1. Offer to solve a problem.
Do you put yourself in your audience’s shoes?
For your campaign to be effective, you need to see things from their perspective. Check whether your content clearly states that you’re offering a solution to a problem.
If someone comes across your content, will they be able to say, “This makes my life easier!”?
Here’s an example:
Hubspot promoted a free resource, An Introduction to Marketing Psychology. Their landing page copy effectively persuades people to sign-up. They were able to do this by communicating the benefits of the resource.
Furthermore, Hubspot anticipated their audience’s questions and addressed them in a FAQ section at the bottom of the landing page.
2. Get to know your audience better.
You won’t be able to solve problems if you don’t understand your audience in the first place.
Audience research should be a fundamental task in your business. It enables you to create laser-focused content.
One of the ways I get to know my audience at a deeper level is by hosting live webinars.
In my webinar, I ask people questions that reveal their desires and opinions. I also encourage them to ask me anything! Then I use that data to improve existing campaigns.
Yes, webinars already allow you to generate leads. But don’t ignore the opportunity to hold Q&A sessions throughout the webinar to gather more insights.
With Facebook Live, hosting webinars nowadays should be easy. You can also use platforms like WebinarJam and GoToWebinar.
3. Build trust.
Imagine that you’re a pet owner checking out a pet website for the first time. Like most people, you look around to see if the site is trustworthy. If it is, then you’ll be considering buying some treats and toys for Fido.
Trust matters to prospective customers. It makes people feel comfortable doing business with you.
Need ideas to establish trust? Check these out:
Show the human side of your business. Your About page is a great place to tell your story. Add pictures of yourself or a video that builds an emotional connection with your audience. This helps them see the people behind the business.
Add testimonials, certificates, and awards. These are trust signals that you ought to display on your website. If you don’t have positive reviews yet, you can show your membership in professional organizations or a money-back guarantee seal.
4. Create an irresistible lead magnet.
Every lead generation campaign should have a lead magnet - something you offer in exchange for people’s contact information.Most people are hesitant to give their information away, which is why lead magnets work so well.What lead magnet should you provide?
Well, you have tons of options to choose from. Lead magnets can range from ebooks to quizzes to PDF guides.
To help you create a lead magnet that people will find hard to resist, it needs to possess the right attributes. Here are five must-do’s for the best lead magnet.
5. Use various channels to promote your content.
Let’s say that you’ve got a landing page or blog post where you’re offering a free ebook.
But no matter how awesome your content is, it won’t generate leads unless you promote it. What’s great is that there are many ways to get maximum exposure for your content.
To identify the best promotion channels, you need to consider where your audience hangs out.
Are they on Facebook? Instagram? YouTube? Online communities like Reddit, Zest, and Pinterest group boards? Will you consider paid marketing?
It helps to see what’s working for your competition. Avoid copying their exact content strategies. Rather, borrow their ideas and improvise.
Prioritize channels that don’t require a lot of time and effort but bring good results.
6. Write headlines that draw attention.
If you don’t know how to write good headlines, there’s less chance you’ll drive clicks and attract leads.
Headlines create a first impression like you do on a first date or job interview. That is why if you want to entice people the moment they read your content, you need to take your headlines seriously.
Make your main selling point the focus of your headline. In other words, state the big benefit of your content or offer.
You may also want to test the quality of your headline. Create variations and enter them into a tool like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer.
7. Partner with an influencer.
A common misconception is that you need to become a known expert to grow a huge following.
While you can build your authority over time, you should grab every chance to collect more leads in the process.
Here’s the secret: Borrow an influential person’s massive audience.
Find an influencer who is in the same niche. For example, if you’re in the weight loss niche, then choose an influencer who’s also known in the fitness space. Observe their content. It has to be similar to yours.
You also want to make sure that your influencer of choice has a decent following.
Guest posting or getting featured on their blog lets you gain traffic and leads fast. In fact, it can boost your sales in less time.
8. Sprinkle CTAs throughout a podcast episode.
We’ve entered the era of podcasting. One out of three people listen to at least one podcast every month.
There’s something special about tuning in to podcasts - they’re convenient and leverage the art of storytelling.
If you already run a podcast, make sure that you’re generating leads with it!
First of all, come up with topics that your audience is truly interested in.
Since not everyone is going to listen until the end of your podcast episode, identify their average listening time. Craft calls-to-action and include them within that time.
Perhaps you’ll invite people to sign up for your newsletter, join your program, or download your free resource.
9. Reduce your form fields.
When generating leads, obviously, you’ll need to create forms that capture people’s email addresses.
To ensure that your lead generation forms convert well, keep your form fields to a minimum. Dan Zarrella at HubSpot studied 40,000 landing pages and discovered that removing unnecessary fields increased conversion rates.
While you should add an email field, think carefully about other fields. Do you really need them? What’s necessary and what’s not?
In the example above (see screenshot), John Lee Dumas of Eofire used only one field - email. This strategy increases his number of sign-ups.
But here’s what’s great about it:
To ensure that every lead is qualified, he includes a confirmation checkbox where people can consent to become part of his mailing list.
10. Make your CTAs descriptive.
Recently, Google released their UX Playbook for Lead Gen - a collection of best practices to acquire potential customers.
In the document, Google mentions the importance of making your calls-to-action more descriptive. A descriptive CTA entices and persuades people.
If you look around, you’ll notice that a lot of CTAs are vague.
For example, the CTA “Get Started” doesn’t say much about what users can expect. A more specific CTA would be “Start Your Free Trial” or “Download Your Free Ebook.”
<<Bonus Content: 6 Ways to Double Your Email List Easily>>
Bonus Strategy: Run an Online Referral Contest
When it comes to the most effective lead generation strategies, don’t ignore referral contests. 🎉🎉🎉
A referral contest entails rewarding your audience for spreading the good word about your business to their friends and family.
On your contest landing page, people are going to sign-up and get a unique invite link that they can use to refer their friends into your campaign. (This unique referral code ensures that proper credit will be given to the referrers.)
This is what we do at UpViral. Our tool enables you to create viral campaigns that grow your email list and achieve other goals in less time!Here are a few of the many things that UpViral lets you do to put together a viral campaign:
- Create beautiful opt-in pages and share pages
- Pick winners and unlock prizes
- Craft email reminders that will be automatically sent to your leads
- Track the results of your campaigns
- Integrate UpViral into your tools
We leverage the same strategy that successful companies like Dropbox, Airbnb, and PayPal use. Here’s what UpViral can do for you!
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