Lead Generation Strategies for Small Businesses

To get the most growth and progress, learning about lead generation for small businesses is a critical step. No matter what industry you work in, lead generation is a key factor in helping grow your customer pool.

If this aspect of business is out of your wheelhouse, there’s help. Here’s what you need to know to generate leads quickly and efficiently.

What Is Lead Generation?

Leads are people that may be interested in your products or services and could become customers. Lead generation is the process of finding these people and connecting with them in a way that gets them closer to making a purchase.

Having quality leads will help you grow your company faster, especially as you turn your efforts to digital lead generation. The internet is a key marketing tool for small businesses, but it takes strategy to find the people who are looking for products and services just like yours.

How To Increase Lead Generation

Getting more potential customers connected to your business sounds great, but most businesses struggle with finding and securing leads. There are several methods you can use to increase lead generation, but here are the ones that can produce the best results:

Create Content for Your Audience

Too often, small businesses miss out on the opportunity to use original content to generate sales leads. Business owners may think that a blog wouldn’t benefit them because of their company type or industry. However, whether you run a lifestyle company or a machine factory, a blog is a great tool to help you reach people.

Why Content Matters

Remember that before people make a purchase, they often search for information on the item or service they need. They are looking to read about what they will get from their investment, and they want information from a quality source. That’s where your blog comes into play.

When a potential lead lands on your blog, they have the chance to see how much your company understands about the issue they are dealing with or the product they are seeking. You also have a chance to position yourself as an expert in that space and to link to your product or service.

Blogs are also very effective for technical and industrial companies that may offer complicated services. By writing a blog that helps someone understand certain technical terms or products, you increase the likelihood that they will become a customer.

Do Blogs Actually Increase Lead Generation?

The facts really do point to the benefits of blogging for lead generation. HubSpot performed a study that shows how over 50% of their traffic came from blog posts they wrote. After a few months, those blog posts were the source of most of their lead generation. Here are the results:

To sum up this case study, the results compounded over time, which is why it’s crucial to produce high-quality content consistently as part of your sales and marketing strategy. That’s why we offer an SEO subscription package, which gives you high-quality blog posts every month and includes every step of the content creation process: keyword research, topic creation and blog writing. 

How To Create Content for Your Small Business

Depending on your budget and schedule, you can create as much content as you want. As mentioned, the key is consistency and quality. As long as you’re pumping out content that meets potential customers’ needs frequently, you’re on the right track.

So how do you create content that meets users’ needs?

There are three types of content you can focus on: informational, navigational and transactional. Informational content is a huge lead magnet because it answers general questions that users have about your industry. Millions of google search queries happen every day that lead users to informational blog posts. Besides, most potential clients will search for general information before considering a service or product. If your blog post is the first to show up and gives detailed information on the topic, this is a great way to build trust and lead customers down the sales funnel.

However, navigational and transactional content are just as important. Navigational content is when a user is looking for a specific website and transactional content is when the user types the specific product they are looking for in the search bar. You want to have content that addresses both of these types of search queries because although they are much less common, they can lead to direct sales.

In other words, you need a large arsenal of How-To’s, landing pages, detailed guides, FAQs and other kinds of content that engage readers and help them get the information they are looking for.

Improve Website SEO

To get the most out of blogging, you will want to combine it with another one of the best lead generation strategies: SEO.

SEO is short for search engine optimization. It’s the process of enhancing your website so search engines can easily read the content and offer your website to people searching for certain topics online.

Improving your SEO sounds like an intimidating method for lead generation for small businesses, but it doesn’t need to be. Start by optimizing the content you already have on your website. Identify a few key terms you want your business associated with, and start writing content that focuses on these keywords. Additionally, imagine which search terms you would want your website to rank for as a result.

Then make sure these keywords are integrated throughout your site. Your blog is a great place to start. If you have existing posts, rewrite them to emphasize these terms. As you create new content make sure your preferred keywords are always naturally integrated.

As you look at how to increase lead generation with SEO, also talk to your web developer. Make sure your website is coded properly so that Google and other web search engines can read your website and rank you properly in search results.

Embrace Email Marketing

Don’t overlook email marketing as one of your lead generation strategies. It may seem old-fashioned, but sending emails directly to customers is a great way to generate sales. There are a few reasons this method works.

First, good email marketing relies on people giving you their email addresses. That seems obvious, but it means that the person had enough interest in your company to share their information at some point. This shows you that they are more likely to complete a purchase in the future, so they are a lead worth nurturing.

Email marketing is also great at creating sales leads because you can send product information, discounts and purchase links directly to the potential customer. You don’t have to wait for the person to search for information and hopefully make their way to your site.

You can also combine your blogging and email marketing to build relationships. This may not be what you thought of when you considered how to generate leads, but it can work. Create blog content that educates consumers, and send it out. They’ll enjoy what they’re reading while also landing on your website.

Start a Referral Program

To get the most out of any lead generation for small businesses, let your leads send you more leads. That means a referral program. Find ways to let current customers or leads send you other people who may be interested in what you have to offer.

There are a few different ways to do this. A simple way to increase sales leads is to offer discount codes to people who purchase from you and recommend you to a friend. At the end of a transaction, include an offer for your customer to get a certain percentage off if they share a friend’s email address. Then send that new lead a message with a great offer to help convert them into a customer.

A less direct way people refer each other to your company is by sharing content. If you create a really great blog post that’s entertaining and informing, someone may forward it to a contact or share it on social media. This gives other people an opportunity to check out what you can do for them. Consumers would rather learn about you through blogs instead of ads, so this is helpful.

Post to Social Media

Social media use has been one of the most important lead generation strategies for small businesses for years and for good reason. People spend more and more time on social media, so it’s important for you to meet people where they are.

Evaluate how your current social media pages are contributing to your lead generation strategies. Make sure every profile includes an updated profile picture with a logo, as well as contact information for your business so leads can get in touch with you.

Your posts should be engaging while also showing what you can do for your customers. This is where some of the other aspects lead generation for small businesses come into play. You can write a new blog or webpage that explains how something in your industry works and share it on social media. Now it’s easy for people to consume and share.

Social media is also a great place to create videos, live webinars and engaging conversations with your audience. Keeping people interested is how you generate leads with this platform.

How To Get Started Easily

All these ways to increase lead generation for small businesses sound great, but how do you get started? When you begin planning for ways to improve lead generation, you may find yourself faced with a lack of time and know-how. That’s where outsourcing comes in handy.

You can hire other companies to take care of your lead generation strategies for you. Tell them what you want and you can get the content you need. For instance, BKA Content can help with several of these aspects through one service.

A blog writing subscription service can provide you with as many high-quality blogs as you need for your website to increase the amount of content on your site. Those articles will also be optimized for your SEO goals so they help your website rank higher. And the content is ready to be shared through your email lists and social media, all at an affordable price.

By trusting a quality company to handle things like this you are able to focus on running the other aspects of your business. You can innovate and create new products, look for expansion opportunities or create new partnerships. You don’t have to spend time retraining yourself as a writer or taking time out of your day to compose dozens of blog posts for your site.

Growing a company involves constantly growing your customer base, which starts with digging into lead generation for small businesses. You have to find the best ways to get people to learn about you and how you can make their lives easier. The process can be simpler than you realize. You just need to have partners you can trust, like BKA Content, and a vision of how high your business can soar in the future.