“Why Lead Generation Should Be a Priority in Your Business”

“Why Lead Generation Should Be a Priority in Your Business”
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If you’re online every day like most people, it’s most likely that where you go—after you check your email—is Facebook.  Since there are over 2 billion monthly active users, it’s a good bet you spend at least part of your day on this social media platform.

Marketers and savvy business people will tell you to establish your brand and post content on social media that is relevant to your target audience.  The new model for social media marketing is to give away a lot of information that educates, informs or entertains your tribe and establishes a relationship before trying to sell to them.

I agree with this approach since there is so much competition online for people’s attention.  The first thing a business needs to do it get that attention.  This is why posting content regularly—and then engaging with people who comment on your content— on the various platforms is so important.

But while there is a lot of discussion regarding posting content for free on social media, this is not the only way to develop relationships with customers and generate leads for your products and services. 

Lead generation should be a priority for your business to continue to grow.  Customers and clients will fall off every year for various reasons and this is why it’s so important to keep a steady stream of prospects coming into your sales pipeline.

Below are 5 ways to generate leads using social media and other methods.

1. LinkedIn automation.  If your business is B2B this is a great way to generate leads to a particular market or demographic.  There are various companies online that provide this service. It works like this:  The service will re-write or tweak your LinkedIn introduction so that it’s specifically targeted for the demographic you want to reach.  You can target your audience by industry, number of employees, geography and other demographics.  The service then attempts to connect with people you target in that industry and sends them a follow up message sequence once they connect with you. This sequence attempts to build a relationship outlining the benefits of your offer. 

2. Facebook Ads—This is still a very under-priced way to generate leads. Many business owners have tried to do a Facebook Ads campaign and then quit when it wasn’t working for them. You need to tweak and adjust the campaign once it’s set up.  This is the secret (which really isn’t a secret at all) to getting results with Facebook Ads for virtually any business.  You can also narrowly define your target market on there.  I predict these ads won’t be as cheap as they are for much longer, similar to Google Adwords when they first came out. 

3. Remarketing or Re-targeting.  These two terms are interchangeable.  It’s a way to get your banner ad placed on literally thousands of websites your target audience sees. It’s done by using Google’s Display Network. This is different than Google Adwords. Instead of placing text ads on Google’s search network, you’re putting display ads across a huge network of sites on the internet. 

4. Email Marketing.  This entails gathering your prospects email addresses and then sending them regular emails that educate, inform and entertain like social media posts. The idea here is to develop a personal relationship with prospects ( like on social media) and then make an occasional offer.  It’s very effective and the frequency of emailing is different for each industry and audience. You’ll need to test to see what works best for your particular market. The key is to get as few unsubscribes as possible while building your list. Also, a small list that is hungry for what you sell is much more effective than a big list that only has a mild interest in your products or services.

5. Combine methods. I am currently running a campaign for a client that entails sending out a postcard to a very specific niche. The postcard with drive the prospect to a landing page where they can download a PDF of specialized information that they,  hopefully, will want. If they download the PDF in exchange for giving us their email, they’ll automatically be included in an autoresponder series. This is simply a follow-up email sequence that outlines the benefits of what we’re trying to sell them. Even if they don’t download the PDF, because they landed on the page, they’ll be retargeted and will see the client’s banner ads on various websites they visit as well as on Facebook.  This  uses three different methods of lead generation within one campaign:

– Sending a physical postcard.

– Email marketing.

– Remarketing.

As you can see, lead generation has changed dramatically with the advent of the internet.  There are automated ways to reach your audience in cost-effective and time-saving ways today.  You should be continually trying out different methods to see what works best for your business. 

 

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