Business isn’t just about making a great product and building a dedicated team of employees working within a productive workplace. If consumers aren’t aware that your product exists or that you have a great team of staff ready to provide exceptional service, then none of it really matters. People need to be aware of your product and generating leads, and successfully following them up, is a crucial part of business promotion and growth.
Below are some handy tips in order to optimize lead generation.
Directly Engage with Your Consumers
This doesn’t just mean talking to them and being available to help when they approach you. You need to make every single avenue of engagement available to them. When they arrive on your website to browse, have a pop-up notification which immediately invites them to sign up via email. Have a 24/7 chat box ready and available which could pop up inviting to ask any questions as soon as they arrive on the website.
If a consumer has presented a query, follow up with them afterwards to check whether there is anything further you can do or if you successfully resolved their query.
Good customer engagement can be the difference between a potential customer quickly looking at your website and deciding to leave, and them staying on your website and interacting with your business, leading to a sale.
Indirect engagement can sometimes be as bad as no engagement at all.
Invest in the Right Marketing Tool
You should take the time to research helpful software and marketing tools which are designed to manage information and generate leads for your business. Good marketing tools can analyze data and present leads, and also provide helpful ways of how to follow up with them.
For example, IHomeFinder is a marketing tool which is allowing real estate developers to gather leads regarding property searches and better target their clients; a great tool for a busy real estate agent.
Whatever your business, there should always be the right tool to make your job a whole lot easier.
Study Social Media Habits
An important part of business is identifying your consumer market and directing your marketing towards them. Once you know the type of people you are focusing on, you can use social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, and analyze their behaviour.
For instance, if your consumers are a group of people who tend to be active on social media at a certain time of day, maybe they Tweet more often in the evening hours, then you know that your marketing and interaction needs to be focused during these hours, as opposed to 9 o’clock in the morning when the target market might not see it.
You can visit the profiles of some of your consumers or study a large group and look at their posting habits and the time of day they are usually online.
Use Social Media Correctly
More leads can be generated through social media when your business is posting in the accepted fashion. There is a reason Twitter is full of hashtags, and your business can be more easily found if you are implementing the correct hashtags into your tweets.
Take the time to investigate the trending hashtags, on any social media platform, and use them to your advantage.
Try Guest Blogging
If you want to get your name out there and generate more leads, then guest blogging is a great way to do that. As long as your content is unique and informative, you can include links to lead readers back to your website and hopefully entice potential new customers. You can also promote all your guest blogging through your own marketing channels.
The more information you get out there, the more likely it is you will find new leads.
Connect with Influential People
Depending on your market, if there is a certain individual, or individuals, who are highly respected within a certain industry, you could actively seek them out. You could connect with them through social media channels and offer the chance to interview them or ask them a few relevant questions which could be included in your latest website or social media post.
If consumers see that you have interacted with a name and face that they trust, and likewise that the influencer trusted your business enough to donate some of the time to you, then you are more likely to gain news leads and new customers through this.
Use Inbound and Outbound Marketing Tools
All marketing is important when it comes to generating new leads, and you should find a happy balance between inbound and outbound where you work hard to draw customers in and entice them to your product, but also not neglecting promotions and advertisements which help get your business name out there.
Most leads can be generated from good marketing techniques, and you should have a proper plan in place.
Don’t Neglect New Technology
You need to be aware of the different devices which your target consumers are using. Most people now use their smartphones to browse websites and shop online, so it’s important that your business is tailored for those using smart phones in order to generate the best leads. For instance, you need to ensure that your website is optimised in order to be viewed correctly on a smartphone device.
Different technology may also offer new ways to promote your brand and increase awareness.
It’s important to make an active effort to be aware of new, emerging technology.
Ensure Informative Content
As they say ‘content is king’ and relevant and informative content is one of the best ways to generate leads. No matter what your consumer reads or views when it comes to your business, it needs to be informative and interesting in order to garner the best reaction from them. Ensure that your website is kitted out with the most interesting content, and that your social media posts are on-topic and relevant.