How To Generate More Leads

Jan 30, 2023 | Online Marketing, SEO, Web Design

Are you a business owner that’s ready to take on new initiatives to generate more leads?

Be sure to check out our official Part 1 of this blog series, entitled How To Generate Leads; for 3 starting point initiatives that every business should have in place.

And if you already have those checked off the list, and are ready for more, read on to learn…

How To Generate MORE Leads!

 



Offering Freebies for Lead Generation

 


To the new entrepreneur, the thought of offering products or services for free (before securing steady revenue) is hard to consider. But who doesn’t like free things? Doesn’t this not make you feel welcomed and more inclined to spend your money with the company that provided it?

Offering free products is a sure way to gather initial reviews… but it’s also a lead generation tool with a long lifeline.

There are several different methods that can be used; all of which need consideration for how it applies. The goal with each and every single one of these methods is to collect new leads.

For example: If you offer specialized services, you can offer free introductory webinars to educate and gather new leads. Posting these on outside networks, or event sites like Eventbrite, is one way to attract an audience that isn’t already aware of you. 

 

Create a freebie of value that’s related to your offers.



If your company is product-based, and you cannot justify handing out products for free, consider how to create an “add-on” freebie that incentivizes people to make a purchase. Larger companies use this method and – along with paid advertising of the freebie add-on product – collect leads that are interested. 

This add-on product then turns into the offer that you’re promoting… so you won’t have to decide on what you should advertise.

For more service based companies, it can be as simple as considering your area of expertise. Educational and factual blog posts could be where you collect your leads.

But you can also take this a step further and create a helpful freebie document that is a highlighted focus on the homepage. The downloading of this document should be conditional on inputting one’s email address first (which is then used for email marketing) — contact your web developer if you need assistance in setting this up.

 

Follow up on the freebie with email marketing.



Giving out freebies and making a few new connections should not be where this initiative ends. In fact, you should have a whole email journey that follows up with the leads collected from your freebie.

This should start off by thanking your leads for their interest and taking part, and asking them to reach out to you with questions or feedback.

Not only is this a good way to receive your most valuable forms of business-related feedback, but it opens the door for further communication.

From here, follow up with more emails that provide even more information on the service/product they’re not aware of, and then work your way up to more sales CTAs. It’s similar to your website lead generation journey, except tailored to the fact that we know this audience already has a taste of what you’re offering – and that you know the specific interest to promote.

 



Work on SEO for Lead Generation

 


Believe it or not, SEO alone can increase a business’ visibility and bring more leads without having to spend a ton on advertising. When you do this along with other lead generation methods, you build yourself a solid system that doesn’t leave anybody out.

SEO involves strengthening the web vitals and written content of your website so you rank higher in search engine results.

This means that people can find you without knowing who you are or seeing any of your content on social media. That’s one reason why we consider it an essential tool in big project digital marketing plans.

The bonus is that doing this along with email marketing can create a lead generation stream that doesn’t involve any of the other methods. While we’d still recommend doing all of them to ensure the most bountiful results, it’s also entirely possible for you to focus on these alone if time and budget are concerns.

 

Ensure you have a more accessible website.



SEO campaign work starts with a Site Audit to see how well your website is performing. Even web developer companies like ours can ensure you launch with a fast website, complete with all the features that engage your customers, and ensure flawless booking & check-out processes, etc. Having said that, we only learn about issues that specifically effect a website’s SEO status by running a Site Audit using SEMRUSH.

These reports tell us everything from broken links to slow-loading pages, and all of the details that cause pages to rank low – including missing or duplicated titles, missing meta data, not enough page content, missing image alt text, and more.

Once these key issues are fixed, your website’s vitals increase. This means when Google crawls it to update indexing, it will see it’s much healthier and therefore worthy of being ranked higher for your applicable keywords. 

One measurement that’s included in these assessments is how well a website performs regardless of the device that is used to access it. When it comes to websites, “accessibility” has to do with how well it transfers to all types of devices. So it your website doesn’t load well in mobile views (cell phones), it’s not going to be a reputable source in Google’s eyes – changing this is only a good thing for your business.

 

Make yourself more easily findable.



After completing fixes using a Site Audit, you should start with a Competitor Comparison and Keyword Research. This gives you a starting point to figure out not only where you stand now, but what your highest ranking competition is doing right (or wrong). 

On the one hand, a Competitor Comparison will show you what terminology is making them more visible than you. You can learn from this information by trying to replicate (in your words) what is working. Similarly, as you see which words are in the 20+ positions, you know which words to stay away from.

On the other hand… doing keyword research will show you which terminology is better to use; regardless of if you or your competition is currently using them.

The key is to use keywords / keyphrases that have a search volume, but low competition. Choosing keywords that have high competition could mean that you enter the board (search engine result rankings) at position #100 or even higher – which means you’ll be on the last pages of results. You want to work with content that will land you in the first 10 positions. Keeping in mind, this is something that takes time to catch on so SEO Plans are not a “one and done” piece of work.

 



Paid Advertising for Lead Generation

 


Assuming that all previous methods & tools for lead generation are in place, you’re now set to start paid advertising. We touched on Social Media advertising in that section.. but that’s only one way to go about paid advertising.

Like how you want to be visible to everyone not on social media, you’ll also want to pay for ads outside of social media.

There are many ways you can do this, and using local news sources and networks might be one method to try out. If you’re a part of a professional association, you might have advertising options there too.

However, to make the most of your reach, we’d recommend skipping ahead to Google Ads. If doing this following the start of your SEO campaign work, you’ll be in the best position possible for lead generating results.

 

Make sure your foundation is in place for Google.



As mentioned, it’s best to do this after you’ve started with SEO work so that you can hone in on your highest ranking keywords. Running a Google Ads campaign before this is done is a gamble. That doesn’t mean that you won’t get any results… but it will mean you’re better positioned for best results by covering all your bases first.

You’ll want to focus on that offer that you’re using for your current marketing initiative. Not only will this make it easier and more straight forward for all forms of content you’re creating… but it will also mean that if someone finds you through a Google Ad for one thing, they won’t be seeing social media posts or emails that are for something else.

By focusing your entire marketing campaign on one offer and one landing page, of which should be set up with a mailing list sign-up tied into it’s applicable email journey, you won’t lose leads’ interest through confusion. 

Doing all of the previous work would’ve set you up to know what the target profile of these ads will be. Make sure every piece of the puzzle is in place and you know this before setting up your ad.

 

Experiment and give ads time to work.



Similar to how social media ads take experimenting, the same applies to Google ads. You’ll want to run ads for a period of time that’s longer than 1 week to ensure you’re not missing those ideal clients that may have been too busy in previous days to spend time looking at things online (of which could lead to you).

You’ll also want to trial out at least 2 different approaches to your ads. Your core ad content might not change, but perhaps you could get more results if you broaden the target location area the second time around?

You can only try to find out for sure!

Larger companies continuously run Google ads; literally never, or rarely, taking a break. Some companies spend more than $50,000/year on Google Ads alone. This is not to say that you have to spend this much to be successful, but it does help to have as large of a budget as possible for your campaign. This is mostly to say (and to keep in mind) that you can’t expect a large positive turnover by spending only a few hundred dollars and only advertising for a few days… it will take more time and exact targeting at that budget.

 


 

If you need assistance in putting together and completing any, or all, parts of your digital marketing plans, we’d like to hear you from! Contact us to have a consultation call on Zoom and we’ll follow up with a proposal that’s customized to your needs!

 

Northnet Media is your web team, providing your business with customized web solutions including website design, SEO (search engine optimization), WordPress development, online strategy & marketing, and website & email hosting.

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