How to Generate Sales Leads Online for Your Small Business

In today’s digital world, many small business owners continue to struggle in growing their businesses, considering the stiff competition in the online market. This is where generating sales leads comes into the picture. It plays an essential role in boosting your customer base and making your business more attractive to potential customers. 

With sales leads, your small business can position itself to success by making connections with your growing customer base and performing better than your competitors. However, if your small business needs more sales leads, you should turn to the digital world. Here is your guide on how to generate sales leads online.

Want to know the secret for how to get leads for your small business?

Is your business just starting out, or are you stuck in a sales rut?

We got you covered! We put together this comprehensive step by step guide for how to generate sales leads for your small business.

Read on to learn how to get started.

Figure out Your Target Audience

Before you start any marketing strategy, you have to know who you are marketing to. To do this, you have to get a deep understanding of your potential customers.

Create a Buyer Persona

A buyer persona is a representation of your customer and can include the following information:

• Name (You can make this part up)
• Age
• Marital Status
• Income
• Hobbies, Interests
• What Would Influence Their Buying Decisions

A buyer persona can help you learn more about your customers. It will also help you target your marketing specific to their needs. You can put together a buyer persona by studying your current customers. You can also do market research through feedback and questionnaires. You can have multiple buyer personas based on what you’re selling and your services. For example, if you sell bikes and biking gear, you may have a different buyer persona for beginner riders and a separate persona for seasoned riders.

Create Engaging Content

Now it’s time for the hard work. You have to create good, quality content that will engage your customers and get them to visit your website and check out your services or products.

You can create content in a variety of forms:

• Blog Posts
• E-Books
• Webinars
• Videos
• Images
• Infographics

This is a very good example of engaging infographics about ” How to Create Engaging Content”.  You can get some idea and inspiration here to create infographics for your contents as well.

Infographic Source via : elearninginfographics.com

The key is to create informative, shareable content that your audience will learn from. For example, if you’re a bakery you can create short how-to tutorial videos for icing cupcakes. Your content should represent you as a leader in your industry.

You can also create webinars and use them to convey your message to your current and prospective customers. Like other forms of digital content, webinars can help bring people together to establish good relationships by automating sales demos and other related activities. They allow your hosts and the participants to interact with one another, allowing your small business to answer any questions or queries about your products or services. This can be an excellent way to generate quality sales leads online. 

Hence, if you want to get the most out of a webinar for marketing purposes, find the right webinar platform. Having an easy-to-use interface for your webinar can improve the attendees’ user experience, which also plays a crucial role in generating sales leads for your small business.

Use SEO Strategies

According to Hive Digital Strategies, SEO is a valuable tool if you want to generate leads online.  In fact, SEO strategies can increase your website’s search ranking, drive more traffic, and get you leads.

Create a List of Relevant Keywords

Now that you have your buyer personas, you can create a list of keywords that is tailored to them and relevant to your services.  You can use tools such as Google Analytics and Google Trends to figure out what keywords are leading to your website, and you can track their search history over time.

Optimize Your Content

Once you create a list of keywords, you can use them to optimize your website and content. Be careful not to overstuff with keywords. You want to use keywords in a natural, contextual way.  Other SEO tips you can implement:

• Make sure your website loads quickly
• Use relevant internal and external links
• Consider outsourcing SEO to a professional

Use Social Media to Market Your Content

Now that you created your content, it’s time to showcase it to the world and get some leads.  The first step is to leverage your social networks. Create quality, engaging social media posts on your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn business pages. Make sure to optimize each post for the specific social media platform, since not all social media networks are made the same.  Facebook, for example, is best for posting videos.  You can use Twitter to post blog articles and to follow and engage with influencers in your industry.  LinkedIn, on the other hand, is best for news about your industry or job postings.

You can also use other social media platforms to engage with your customers. A wedding planner, for example, can make use of Pinterest or Instagram which are image-heavy platforms.  It’s important to set a consistent schedule for your social media accounts and to constantly post and engage with your customers. You can use tools that auto-schedule your posts in advance.  Or, you can hire someone to manage your social media services.

Create a Landing Page and Form

You targeted audience, created content, and you have a steady stream of social media posts, now how can you collect information about your leads?  You can create a landing page and direct your potential leads to a contact form to fill out.  For example, say you are marketing a webinar. You can post information about the upcoming webinar on your social media pages. Then, when a potential lead clicks on the webinar, they are sent to a landing page that has a contact form to fill out before they can access the webinar.  The landing page and contact form can funnel your potential leads into one place.

Create a Newsletter to Stay Engaged

After you generate sales leads, your relationship with your leads is not over! Now it’s time to maintain that relationship. A newsletter can keep your audience engaged.  Don’t just talk about your company in your newsletters. Offer useful information such as a great sale or informative blog posts.  You also don’t want to send out too many emails which can irritate your customers. And make sure to follow the CAN-SPAM act so you don’t accidentally spam people.

Consider Using Paid Search Advertising

Paid search advertising can drive more traffic to your website and potentially bring new leads.  Paid search advertising can help you spread the word about a new product launch.

 It can also offer better branding. When your paid search ads appear on top of the search engine results page, you can build a good brand reputation. The people searching can know that the ones in the first page are the most relevant among several options. 

So, if you are a new business, you can use paid search to target potential customers.  Think of paid search advertising as a boost for your current marketing strategies.  There are a few different ways to implement paid search advertising, but the most popular is through Google Adwords.

The Secret for How To Generate Sales Leads

The truth is, there is no secret to generating sales leads. There are, however, steps you can take to create great content, engage your audience, and build a relationship with potential leads. Want more advice on how to generate sales leads? Read our blog for more tips.