In this video, I talked about how lead generation should work which came as a result of a conversation I had with a contractor. He was frustrated with his social media efforts and even started wondering if he was “wasting time.”
This is a conversation I have at least once a week, and while I specialize in working with contractors, this is a universal issue. More and more small business owners are overwhelmed with information on social media marketing and frustrated when they don’t see results that others claim to get.
Businesses want to generate more leads with online marketing efforts. If this is you, there are a lot of things you could be doing, but it boils down to this – you need to drive more traffic to your website. You can do it organically or you can do it with paid advertising and SEO services (which I highly recommend, but not everyone has the budget).
If you want to do it organically by putting the muscle into effectively and efficiently driving more traffic to your website and therefore getting more leads, here are the basic elements of online lead generation.
- Give away something of value (a freebie) in exchange for a person’s name and email. It can be a free consumer’s guide, a webinar, or a checklist – but the point is it needs to be extremely valuable to the person if he/she is going to give up their email for this. This freebie needs to be your best work.
- Once someone becomes a subscriber, have a series of emails pre-written that automatically go out to them. This helps solidify the relationship and reminds them of who you are and why they subscribed. If you wait a month (or more) until they receive your email newsletter, you are waiting way too long and risking too much.
- Speaking of an email newsletter, you need to publish one regularly. This allows your subscribers to know you a bit more, like you a bit more and trust you as a company. Your newsletter builds the relationship over time … and does some other way-wonderful things for your business, too.
- To attract people to come visit your website, publish articles on your blog and post them on social media. Like your freebie, your blog article also must be of high-quality. If you publish junk people will see your company as junkie. Don’t publish junk. Be awesome instead.
- Use social media to network with others. Sure, post your awesome blog articles and other business-related stuff, but social media is not about being self-promotional; it is about being SOCIAL. So start a conversation, or reply to a comment. Ask how someone’s day is going, or invite them to an online group or Twitter chat.
Yes, there is so much more you could also do, but these are the basic elements of online lead generation. It isn’t a fancy system and does take time, energy and commitment, but it also works.
