Creating a successful business has always been a difficult task.

To be able to sell your products or services you have to check a lot of marks.

Creating interest and acquiring prospect customers is one of these and it is vital to your business’s success.

This process is called Lead Generation.

As a small business, you may come up with the counter argument that you don’t have to invest in a marketing strategy since the word of mouth is working effectively for you.

But this is not the case.

If you want your business to grow you’ll have to take advantage of many different practices in order to create more sales and increase your revenue.

In the end, all these practices are about creating leads, so stay focused for the next few minutes because I am going to show you how to capture them so you can convert them to customers later.

Building your Website Properly

Having a website nowadays is a no-brainer.

Chances are that your customers are spending time on the web so you have to be present there no matter what.

Of course, not every one of your visitors is ready to buy from you.

Majority of your online traffic is looking for answers or conducts research on the niche market that you exist.

This means that you are not the only website they are going to visit.

The key here is to create a system that it is able to capture your audience’s information.

This way you’ll have the opportunity to engage with them in the future via email marketing.

By constantly communicating with your audience you will find out that you can nurture them to the point that they will become customers of your business.

This is the key idea but to implement it in your strategy you’ll have to make some specific actions.

Pro tip: If you are using WodPress you need to make sure that you are choosing a reliable and fast WordPress hosting service.

Using lead capture inline forms

Inline forms is a very common lead capture method that exists among landing pages and you’ve probably come across in the past (Unless you live under a rock).

These are the forms that exist in websites and their main purpose is to capture your email address.

Use a live chat

A live chat’s main purpose is to answer the visitor’s possible questions.

But by replying to your first time visitors you can instantly raise your subscriptions.

This is achieved simply because you either

• Create trust between your brand and your user
• Your support team is too busy to respond so you ask for their email in order to resolve their issue later.

This way you both serve your potential customers and you capture their emails so you can drop them into your sales funnel.

Exit intent Popups

This is a trend that appeared some years ago and it is a very clever way to approach your lead generation goals.

Exit intent Popups are essentially inline forms that show up each time a user is reaching the back or the exit buttons.

Don’t put too much thought into that.

Just install an exit intent plugin on your website and watch the magic happen, this will also help you reduce bounce rate.

Last but not least you’ll have to constantly check your KPI’s through your Analytics account to monitor your success when it comes to converting users to customers.

Nailing your Social Media Game

If you are serious about enlarging your email list then you shouldn’t miss this.

Social Media are crazy good when it comes to acquiring email addresses.

There is a good reason why marketers keep investing so much on their Social Media channels and this is their ability to attract in a variety of different ways

Taking Advantage of your Facebook Page

Especially if you are trying to reach B2C audiences this is the way to go.

Facebook is among the most visited websites in the world along with Google and Youtube serving more than 1.5 billion users daily.

Here is how to optimize your Facebook page for a lead generation strategy.

• Take advantage of your Facebook page’s CTA button
• Create a Facebook Ad
• Post regularly content from your website or promote your subscription page
• Post in Facebook groups

Reaching B2C Audiences via Linkedin

Linkedin is the B2B equivalent to Facebook Social Media.

With millions of daily users from the business world, it’s the perfect place to search for leads if you are into the B2B market.

It’s a simple and really effective way to attract businesses, big corporations, decision makers or even fortune 500 companies from various industries and drop them into your sales funnel.

Furthermore, it’s as easy as it gets in terms of use which adds a couple of points to it.

Starting with Linkedin you should:

• Create your company page of course
• Create unique posts with CTA’s in them
• Promote your website or blog in Linkedin groups (Just like you did with Facebook)
• Send private messages to individual  decision makers that become active in your target market

Instagrammiiing

Instagram keeps growing constantly with a consistent amount of added features, daily registrations and log-ins.

This is the best time to use this awesome Social Media platform to expand your business by leveraging Instagram marketing.

Here is why:

• It’s the best place to weight Influencer Marketing
• It is a good place to post your video content which is proved to be the most efficient content format in terms of user activation
• Regular feed advertising is also a very capable medium of re-targeting marketing

Some Other Cool Lead Generation Practices

Using Quora to Answer Questions

Quora is the place where questions are answered.

This is a website that authorities and experts from different industries are using to answer popular questions.

If you are confused about why this is a good place to generate leads and why you should even care about answering all these questions then try asking this question in a thread on Quora.

What you’ll notice is that the individuals that will answer your questions may attract your interest.

Because by answering this question he is immediately considered as an authority in his niche market.

This triggers brand awareness which comes in handy if you want to fill your sales funnel with leads.

It’s also a good time to onboard on Quora and start replying to questions

Quora is a platform that is currently gaining traction and the competition you will face is tolerable.

No matter what you are trying to achieve.

Attract Leads with Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is an old time classic but there are reasons why.

With affiliate marketing, you can increase your Brand exposure and sales figures without unbearable costs.

What actually happens with Affiliate Marketing is that you create a partnership with influencers or other websites.

These individuals promote your Brand through their content and they earn a commission every time someone clicks their links to buy your product.

In the end, you are sacrificing your profit margin in order to drive more sales which is a future proof strategy that promises to achieve your long term goals.

Conclusion

Lead Generation is vital to your business.

Without leads, you won’t have sales which are the ultimate goal of every business in the world.

This could be a very long article with tons of Lead Generation examples and ideas but its purpose is to simplify the process of creating a lead acquiring strategy.

So keep the tips above in mind while you are diving into the lead generation game and you’ll see your company grow along with your sales figures.

George is a Growth Marketing Associate working for email marketing software Moosend! He loves to write about Marketing in the Digital Era and the growth hacks that he is discovering in his everyday explorations. He is always interested in talking about experiences and ideas so feel free to drop him a message to share your interesting knowledge.

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