6 Proven Ways of Generating Online Leads
With the situation evolving around the Covid-19, many small businesses are struggling to achieve their marketing objectives. In the present scenario, digital marketing has the potential to help out business owners and marketers looking to find new leads and customers online.
With a little research, you will find that there are many different digital marketing tactics you can use to discover new business opportunities. Don’t be overwhelmed by the plethora of information you are bombarded with. Here are some of the proven online lead generation tools for small and medium businesses:
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a surefire way of generating new leads online. It involves creating useful content about your business niche. The intent here is not to sell a product or service, but to establish your authority and trust in that domain. It is a powerful inbound lead generation tactic that is known to work phenomenally well if properly executed.
So for instance, if you provide lawn care services, then start creating content on how lawn care services can help customers in getting rid of weeds and promoting the health of their turf.
Such content generates the interest of your readers. It also encourages them to participate in discussions around issues of common interest.
Content marketing has many formats, including blogs, infographics, videos, slides, and podcasts. Choose a format that matches your brand voice and style.
You can share content on your website or through third-party websites. The latter method can be used for building backlinks to your website. Google recognizes backlinks from authority websites to your site as a key ranking factor when determining the ranking of your website.
Guest Posting
Some consider it a type of content marketing but given its effectiveness, it wouldn't be wrong to give it a category of its own.
Surprisingly, guest posting is largely ignored but the limited number of Internet marketers who do take the pain and effort of creating and submitting high-quality guest posts reap multifold benefits of the endeavor.
Guest posting can not only help you connect with new readers on other blogs, but is also a great way of earning valuable backlinks and improving your website’s organic SEO score.
A great way to succeed in guest blogging is to consistently pitch to potential publications that are relevant to your business niche. A general thumb rule is to reach out to 10 to 15 blogs for two to three post ideas.
Having a greater demand is always better than having a lesser supply. So if you get more blog owners interested, you can tell them that that post has now been published on another blog, but you have some new post ideas for them to consider.
Landing Page
A landing page is a Web page on which your visitors land from an online ad or a link in a social media post. Use it as an opportunity to make your value proposition and convert visitors into leads.
The most successful landing pages merge page design and copy to create a strong brand identity in the reader’s mind. Use headings in your page to highlight the customer’s problems and the proposed solutions. Keep the landing page short without omitting any important and relevant information about your business/value proposition. Use of bullet points is also encouraged. Include a powerful call-to-action, which constitutes actionable verbs that compel a reader to take action. Lastly, using a mix of images and videos can also help to make the landing page more engaging.
Email marketing
Some people wrongly assume that email marketing is outdated. The fact is that it is still a widely used online lead generation channel.
Email marketing works because it's simple and doesn't require serious developer skills. People also tend to stick to their email addresses and don't change them as often.
To make matters simpler, you can easily find ready to use email templates to quickly connect with your prospects.
Social Media
While it can be difficult to get started initially, there's practically no limit to the amount of traffic and leads you can generate using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms once you get going.
Invest in social media that are relevant to your business. You can also lookup social media influencers in your niche and get ideas from their pages and profiles.
Google Text Ads
Google text ads are also known as pay-per-click ads or PPC ads. These ads show up as sponsored content on top of the organic search results page. Google ads are a good option if you want to instantly start generating online leads for your business.
They are also a cost-effective advertising platform. You only pay when someone clicks your ad.
Adding keywords and calls to action in the ad copy can help you optimize your ad campaign.
If there are any methods for online lead generation that have worked for you but are not listed here, please don’t hesitate to mention them in the comments below.
© 2020 Rizwan Qadir