Whether your business could use a boost or whether things are actually going quite well for you, having more than enough leads coming through is always a nice feeling.
There are a tonne of blogs and guides out there with advice on how to get more leads – Over 8,220,000,000 to be exact so why should you give this one a read?
Never Settle have been helping businesses grow for over 10 years. We’ve worked with businesses minuscule to massive and we understand the challenges that are faced in an ever-changing work of digital marketing.
We’re experts in everything from web design to SEO, custom development to marketing strategy, so if there’s just one blog out of those 8 billion you should read, it’s this one!
We’ve distilled our decade of experience into 5 actionable tips that will help any business grow. No mater how obscure your product or audience may be, here are 5 ways that will help get more leads.
How do I get more leads?
Before we get into all the lead-generating goodness, let’s break down the theory behind getting more leads.
Like baking a cake, there are many different recipes for getting an equally tasty result. Some recipes may work for your business better than others, the important thing to remember is that the more platforms and techniques you cover, the more chance you have at generating leads, or at the very least, awareness.
The single best thing you can do is try as many of these recipes as you can, see if one in particular works well for your business, and then double down on your efforts.
We’re defining leads as: Potential customers making contact with your business.
Whether that be an email, phone call, mail-carrier pigeon, we’re keeping things simple.
The way to get leads is to appeal to your audience. To appeal to your audience your product or service must:
- Help your audience save time
- Help your audience save money
- Make life easier for your audiences
That’s it.
If you think about every product ever to exist, they all fall into one or more of those categories.
- Cars – Save you time because they’re faster than walking.
- Multipacks of toilet roll – Save you money.
- Vacuum cleaners – Much easier than sweeping up.
You simply need to communicate to your audience at the right place and right time that way you offer will benefit them in some way.
But first, you need to know who you’re talking to...
Who is your audience?
It’s easy to say your audience is ‘people who drive cars’ or ‘people who don’t like sweeping’, but that’s still way too broad.
If you don’t know who your audience truly is, marketing as a whole is going to be pretty tricky indeed.
To define your audience, you need to think about:
- What sets your product or service apart from your competition
- What is your audience’s need
- What’s your ‘why’ or ‘story’ what appeals to your audience
Here’s an example…
Blue Goo Bakery sells fruit-based, healthy cakes and pastries. They’re in a town dominated by other bakeries from large chains to one-off stores like theirs.
They have been able to dominate their niche by defining their audience like so:
- Their products are 100% fruit-based unlike their competitors
- Their audience needs to be healthier while still enjoying baked goods
- Their ‘why’ is they want to make their town a healthier place while still be tasty
Define your audience and everything becomes so much easier!
1. Content Marketing: Get creative with content
Content marketing? What’s content marketing? Simply put, it’s strategically creating content, such as blogs, that appeals to your audience and shares free information.
Putting words on the internet is one of the easiest ways to generate leads. If you have a limited budget but are handy with a keyboard and knowledgable about your product or service, this is the way to go.
Content marketing can be quite broad, which gives you room to adapt depending on your niche. For some that may be as simple as blogging, for others it may be creating videos or infographics. If you need somewhere to start, take a look at your biggest competitors for some tips.
Now the number one thing to take away from this tip is that it must be strategic. What do we mean by that? To save your time and to get the most out of content marketing, you need to know:
- What appeals to your audience
- What are they looking for
- Is there any pain points you can help with
- How do they find and consume content
Going back to our Blue Goo Bakery as an example, they may answer the above questions like so:
- Their audience likes short-form content that’s easy to read.
- They’re looking for useful tips to make their lives healthier.
- Their audience really likes cake so find it hard to find bakery food that is healthy.
- Their audience tends to spend a lot of time on social media, particularly Facebook.
With this info, Blue Goo Bakery could write short blogs that are less than 500 words with plenty of visuals and bullet points covering ways that their audience can still eat bakery goods while also pursuing a healthy lifestyle. Since their audiences hangs out on Facebook, they could post links to their blog on their Facebook page.
The best way to get leads through content marketing is to work backwards.
Find a question or pain point that your audience is looking for, answer it creatively and then work backwards to get your content in front of them.
Content marketing is a very long term strategy. Don’t expect to write one blog and get loads of leads as it’s not likely to happen.
Instead you need to build yourself up as the ‘go-to’ place for information in your niche. Build trust, gain awareness, and then when your audience is then ready to purchase, you’ll be the number one brand in their mind.
2. Paid Ads: Turn dimes into dollars
A lot of folks we speak to can sometimes get a little freaked out by paid ads. Whether they’ve tried Google Ads or Facebook Ads, some business owners may have given ads a go, not seen a return and never gone back again.
While no business should ever rely on paid ads for sure, paid ads are a great way of being seen, getting content out there fast and even protecting your brand.
Protecting your brand? What would you say if we recommended creating Google Ad campaigns for your own brand name? You might think we’re crazy and that’s money down the drain that you should otherwise show up for organically right? Well it’s not that simple.
If you don’t bid for your own brand name in Google Ads, that leaves the door wide open for your competitors. Sure, you are probably already ranking near the top of page one for your own brand keyword, but who is above you?
Creating campaigns for your own brand name makes it harder for competitor ads to show. After all, since you own the brand, you’re going to have a much better quality score than your competitors and at the very least they’ll have to pay a lot more to show for your brand name.
There are a lot of paid ad platforms out there, but we’d recommend sticking to Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Why? Because both actually do two very different jobs.
Google Ads is a way of being seen for certain keywords. You are putting your business out in front of those that are looking for your product or service.
While Facebook Ads is the opposite; you’re putting your ad in front of the audience you choose, who are most likely to respond to your product or service.
By utilizing both Facebook Ads and Google Ads, you’re covering both basis.
Ok, so how do you actually generate leads from paid ads?
Being successful with paid ads is an art, but we’ll start with a real simple process that will help you make the most from your budget.
For Facebook Ads
- Create lookalike audiences. What is a lookalike audience? It helps further broaden your chosen audience with those with similar interests.
- When creating a campaign, creating multiple ads with varying creative. One ad may use a carousel, another a video, another a single static image. Test the waters, see which one works best and run with it.
- That said, if you can use video, definitely use video. Video ads outperform regular image ads by some margin.
- Run an Ecommerce store? Carousels work best for products.
- Use some of your budget purely for awareness – It’s not just about getting leads not but also in the future!
For Google Ads
- Before you even setup an ad campaign, make sure the landing page you’re pointing your ads towards is optimized! Does it have enough call to actions? Is the page fast to load? Is it relevant to the ad?
- Cover your own brand name with a campaign as explained above!
- Be sure to use negative keywords so you don’t waste ad budget on phrases that aren’t related.
- Fill out the entire ad! We know it’s time consuming, but every bit of real estate gives your ad a better chance of success!
- Use all the ad extensions! Same reason, the more you got going, the more chance you’ll get that lead.
And if you’re struggling with paid ads or just don’t have the time, our SEM service will help you get the most from your budget.
3. Email Marketing: Nurture those sign ups
Is email still a thing?! You betcha! In fact, email marketing remains one of the most effective forms of marketing. And here’s why…
Once you have built an audience (being sure to handle data with care and within the law), that audience is yours to contact whenever and as much as you like. Of course we’d recommend not bombarding folks too often, but no algorithm or sudden platform change is going to take that away from you.
So how often should you email your audience anyway? We’d recommend touching in at least once a month to keep your brand in their minds. Less than this and when you do reach out they’ll think you’re only emailing because you want something.
Providing you segment your audience into lifecycles or interests, there’s no harm in emailing much more often, especially around times of year that are relevant to your product or service.
There’s a saying that goes:
If you aren’t contacting folks just enough to annoy one or two of them, then you aren’t emailing enough.
It can be scary for sure, but as long as your emails are relevant and are providing value, most people will welcome them, or at least read them later.
So what should you be emailing? Well aside from your monthly newsletter, which is great for repurposing all that content you created back in step one, you should be giving value twice as often as you ask for something in return.
What do we mean? Well for every email that is selling a product or service, you should send two that don’t ask for anything in return and instead you give free value, such as the blogs we mentioned back up there.
What this does is nurture your audience, makes it look like you’re not just emailing them because you want them to buy your stuff and instead makes you a brand to stay subscribed to because you’re offering free resources.
4. Social Media: Beyond like, follow and share
So you’re already posting on social media regularly and repurposing your content right? Right?!
We get it, there’s so many social networks around these days it’s hard to know when you should be tweeting liking, tik toking or pushing on the ‘gram.
At the very least, whenever you create a new piece of content on your website, such as a new blog, share it on your social media channels. This at least makes makes it easier for your audience to get to your website and potentially convert.
At the other end of the scale, if you really want to ramp up your social presence, we recommend posting different content across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter ideally two to five times a day and YouTube and LinkedIn ideally two to five times per week.
Shocked at the frequency? Sometimes we are too, but a single post here and there just isn’t enough to keep users engaged and to be found.
Why different content? Each platform is different and different content resonates better. Linking to your blog works great on Facebook, short form content works great on Twitter, Instagram is all about the reels and carousels where as LinkedIn is a different audience altogether.
And if you really don’t have the time to create this much content, what should you do?
Pick a social network that best resonates with your audience and go all-in there. Focus on quality, but if you can, quantity is important in the social media marketing game.
- Choose Facebook if – Your audience is older and is likely to click something you post
- Choose Twitter if – Your industry moves fast and your audience wants snippets
- Choose Instagram if – Your products or services are visual or your audience is younger
- Choose YouTube if – You have the resources to make great content
- Choose LinkedIn if – Your business is mainly B2B
And what should you be posting? Like email marketing, social media is all about nurturing the audience you already have but while also building a bigger audience.
Like email marketing, remember to give more value more than you try to sell your products or services.
5. Optimize what you already have
Wait what? Yes, instead of creating something new spend time making sure what you already have is working well and is as optimized as possible.
Creating new content takes time, creating ads costs money, so if you literally can’t do any of the tips we’ve given you so far, at the very least make sure what you’re already doing is the best it can be.
So what does this look like?
Your website is the easiest place to start. There’s loads of tools out there, and with our SEO services we’re always happy to help, but we’d recommend getting the basics right first.
Check your spelling!
Make sure there are no typos as users and search engines don’t like this.
Headings
Every page should only have one H1 heading. As headings contain less relevance, they change to H2, H3 and so on. If you have more than one H1 on any page, fix these now!
Page Titles
Make sure your page titles aren’t too long or too short (and that they are filled out!). We like this tool for testing your page titles to ensure they aren’t too short or too long.
(Wait, what are page titles? The text you see at the top of your browser in a tab and the blue link text you see in search engines! Very important!).
Meta Descriptions
Like page titles make sure these aren’t too short, too long and are filled out!
How will all this help you generate more leads? A cleaner, more optimized website is likely to rank higher in search results, meaning more traffic to your site, more inquiries meaning more leads.
Just an hour a week is enough to make a noticeable difference over time.
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