6 Lead Generation Strategies: A Cheat Sheet for Small Businesses

Congrats on starting a new business line.

You are now another competitor added to the list of multiple in the crowd.

But do you know that there are chances of you becoming a tough competitor within a short time?

How?

An expected answer from you. Well, this article can convert you from a fresher to a pro in a few easy steps.

The main agenda of this article is to cater to two things:

• Help your business to take the route which can increase better growth via efficient lead generation methods
• Gives you leverage on following those strategies which will guarantee your success sooner than your competitors

You want to grow and we know how. In this article, we will draw light on the below essentials factors to help you skyrocket your business from 0 to 100% faster and much more efficiently:

Table of Content

• What is a lead?
• How can you capture your potential leads?
• What is the process of conducting efficient lead generation?
• Which strategies can help enhance your lead generation activities?
• Which tools can help conduct lead generation activities better?
• Advice from companies about their lead generation strategies that worked for them

Let your cheat sheet tour begin.

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What is a lead?

A lead is an asset to your business. 

You have created your business for the purpose of catering to the issues of your audience. Your audience is referred to as potential prospects. 

Leads can add value to your business and help it grow better. They play the role of word of mouth advertising as well if your product has served its purpose and continues to do so whenever your leads use it.

Think of it in this way. Your product was created with the agenda that it needs to solve a particular problem. So there will be a few leads out there who will be experiencing that problem and your solution will help to resolve it. Those leads once they realize about your brand they will continue to explore your product.

And when you finally nurture them and cater to all their queries they invest in your solution. That is when your potential prospects convert to a sales lead which in other terms means they become your brand’s customer.

Let’s understand this better with a real example. 

Say now that there are many brands who offer better communication channels for businesses to sell better to their customers. You have created a solution that can do the same except you have filled in the missing gaps that your competitors have left out. It could be anything such as adding new report tactics, advanced features, and more.

Now there are a set of clients who are looking for a solution that can have all the answers in one product and they realize that your product has it. Now, these clients are your potential prospects. They have not been converted into a lead but if you engage with them better, there are chances. 

Now that you have managed to win them over, their status will change to a sales lead once they decide to invest in your product. Now since they are your sales leads they will continue to help your brand grow by investing in your solution with upgrades, tell their peers about your solution, and more.

There are three different types of leads you should be aware of:

• Hot lead– These are leads that are ready to invest in your product
• Warm lead- They have been convinced to invest in your product, but they need a little more convincing
• Cold lead– They are not ready to invest in your solution but with time and right nurturing there is a possibility of them converting into a warm and then hot lead. 

You have now understood what leads are and why do they matter to your business. In your next category, you will be able to understand what are the top ways you can capture your leads to land up on your website.

When your leads come to your website, that is the starting point of them learning about you and drawing them closer to your brand. 

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How can you capture your potential leads?

1. SEO

Source: HARI

‘’If done right, SEO can drive a 14.6% conversion rate.’’  SEO stands for search engine optimization and as the name states it helps to optimize your website or rather your SEO activities on any search engine your leads will use to find you. 

SEO activities are multiple such as placing keywords that your leads will use to find you, or backlinks which will direct your leads to your website. SEO is an excellent solution to help your leads get captured.

Let’s understand this with an example.

Say you write a blog and have placed keywords that pop up when your lead was finding the topic you’ve written. The lead will read through your blog and to learn more, it will land up on your website to understand the product you’re selling. When this happens you have the chance to connect with that lead, engage with that lead, and then convert it into a sales lead for your business. 

You can also make use of proxy servers who can help you have a look at your competitor’s SEO tactics and even from restricted websites to enhance your SEO tricks better. Focus on SEO, conduct its every action well because you can find more leads via this platform.

2. Social Media

Source:Oberlo

‘’81% of all small and medium businesses use some kind of social platform.’’ and do you know why such a huge number is recorded?

Because today everyone is on social media. If a lead wants to know about your brand or your business, they are aware that it is present on social media. Social media is the modern solution for brands like yours to engage with leads better. You can invest in any social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, and more. 

The simple theory is if your brand isn’t on social media, your business is bound to have slow closing of deals and your business growth will lie flat for a long time. What social media does is it lets you engage with your leads via different methods, comments, posts, groups, and more.

When your lead spots you there next relevant action would be to learn about your brand and for that to happen they will have to land up on your website. Social media can capture your leads through multiple ways as stated previously, and when a lead is being captured, they are bound to come to you.

3. Referrals

Source:Invitereferrals

‘’Business to business companies with referrals have a 70% higher conversion rate, and they report a 69% faster close time on sales.’’ So if you recommend a product to your friends, there are high chances that they will follow as well. Similarly, this tactic plays the same role.

So say you managed to satisfy three potential prospects and now they are your sales leads. Your business is continuously offering them better services and the finest experience with your business, that these sales leads will be compelled to tell their near ones about how your product has helped them to cater to their needs.

This will strike the next action of those possible sales leads to arrive on your website and learn more about what you have to offer. Being warm leads, it will not take much effort to convert them into hot leads. 

4. Influencer marketing

Source:Digital Examiner

‘’89% say ROI from influencer marketing is comparable to or better than other marketing channels’’  and why not?

Influencer marketing is another great way to draw more attention to your leads to land up on your website. For instance, say that you find an influencer who has a good number of followers on a particular social media channel. They endorse your product and say that it is great.

Now at least 10% or more of those followers will believe and go on the words of that influencer and come to your website to learn more about you. Isn’t this an easy way to capture your prospects?

The prospects who arrive from the influencer marketing tactics are relevant and with just a few engagements it will become easy to convert them since they are already pre-converted with the words of the influencer. 

This is an example of what influencer marketing looks like.

Source:Social media examiner

For influencer marketing, the best platform to invest in is Instagram because ‘’Instagram posts are the most used format of influencer marketing.’’

5. Paid ads

‘’PPC visitors are 50% more likely to purchase something than organic visitors.’’ These are leads which you can capture via paid ads. Paid ads appear in multiple places when a prospect views something it can appear as a listing option. 

Source:G2.com

Even when they scroll any social media channel, the ads will be used to stop them from scrolling and get them to click on the website link and capture their attention towards your brand.

Source: Sprout Social 

The process of capturing leads is now fulfilled. You are now heading to the next category which speaks about how you can convert that capturing into a potential sales lead. Your prospects have come to you, now with the below lead generation process, you are going to conduct the lead generation game. 

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What is the process of conducting efficient lead generation?

Source:Hubspot

1. Your first step is to attract your prospects. It could be in the form of blogs, video content, social media posts, SEO blogs, and more. Here the main agenda is to capture your prospect’s attention and make them understand that your brand exists and it is offering a solution that they have been looking for to cater to their needs.

2. Once you manage to capture the attention of your prospects, you need to start incorporating CTA’s for them to reach out to you. For instance, you could ask them to sign up for your service or click on a link that will take them to your website and more. For instance, if they want to learn about your brand, you can place forms that will let your prospects share their contact information so that in exchange for that they get their questions answered with reference to your product.

3. Now that you have the lead and its information it’s time to get started with the conversion. With constant follow-ups via email or calls, you can communicate with your prospects to convince them and give them assurity to trust your brand and the product. This will continue until your prospects give in and decide to invest in your brand’s solution.

4. Once your prospects are converted into sales leads, the process isn’t over. You need to provide them with more confidence to be proud of their investment. You need to offer them great upgrades, enhance their experience with your product so that they work as promoters of your product. Continue to study them and understand how you can enhance your product experience with them better so that you always have happy leads associated with your brands.

Let’s understand the chart better with an example.

Say your brand name is ABC and you sell live chat softwares.

1. So Adam is looking to grow his business better and needs a solution that can help capture his leads better. As he was scrolling on Instagram, he happened to see your brand ABC. 

2. Being curious he starts to explore your brand and continues to read what information is available. He signs up to get more information about your brand and ends up entering his details.

3. Your team will get back to him and start the process of nurturing him. You will get on calls or emails and understand his issues and then place your solution to him. For instance, if he wants a solution that can capture leads quickly, you could say that your live chat solution has automated chatbots that will engage with his leads to share their information. If Adam says that he is looking for a good budget solution, you could share your pricing packages that would match his needs.

4. Once Adam is convinced, you need to continue satisfying his needs better. You could take his suggestions, feedback, ask him opinions, and enhance your product solution accordingly. You could conduct frequent surveys as well to understand what Adam is looking for in your brand and give him a better user experience accordingly. 

This lead generation process cannot be completed efficiently without a good strategy list. With the help of a strategy, you can easily conduct the above-mentioned process easily and in the right direction. 

Our next category showcases the effective strategies that will help you in your lead generation activities. These strategies are easy and work well when done in the right way. No expensive add ons are needed nor any difficult process needs to be conducted, follow the strategies listed below, and watch your lead generation tactics skyrocket sooner. 

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Which strategies can help enhance your lead generation activities?

1. Work on your SEO tactics

SEO is important and as stated earlier, it is a great solution to capture potential prospects’ attention towards your website. If you work on functioning the right SEO tricks in your lead generation activities, you can capture, nurture, and convert leads much better. All you need to do is:

• Find keywords that your prospects would use to find you. You can use tools such as web scraping to help you find the data and scrape it
• Optimize your website accordingly in terms of data being placed, images being used and more
• Use more descriptions, meta tags to differentiate your SEO activities

Let’s help you understand SEO better with a few actionable tactics you can apply to conduct efficient lead generation strategies better:

• If you have old blogs, continue to upgrade them. You can do this by adding new inputs, modifying your content which could enhance that topic Then you could reshare it on social media or any other communication channels. Brian Dean from backlinko tried this method and received ‘’111.37% increase in organic traffic’’ to the page.
• Another great way to make your SEO keywords better is to take it from your competitors. Imagine how well your content blogs will be if you have all the keywords which will help rank it better. You can conduct this action with the help of a web scraping tool that will scrape the information for you and to ensure that your competitors are not aware that it is you you can make use of a good VPN or proxy service
• Make use of URLs which you can place in your content which can direct your prospects to a particular page or your website

You can also make use of proxy servers who can help you have a look at your competitor’s SEO tactics and even from restricted websites to enhance your SEO tricks better. Focus on SEO, conduct its every action well because you can find more leads via this platform.

2. Write blogs

Blogs can retain your prospects’ attention for long. When you write on a topic in detail and share it on your online channels, you are also helping your prospects to find a solution. When a prospect clicks on your blogs, they will be retained because you are stating their problem, offering a solution, and also explaining how you are going to do that for them.

‘’Longer, in-depth blog posts generate 9x more success in lead generation than short ones.’’ Investing in long-form content is better because you can write in detail about your topic. See it in this way, when you publish a blog, you are doing it because you are speaking about a topic which your audience would like to know more about.

Hence when they click on it, they will have the expectations that your blog can answer to their queries. When this happens, they will be bound to know more which will, in turn, lead them to your website and then directly to you. 

It is important that you create the best blogs because it can help retain the attention of your prospects for a long time, giving you an opportunity to tap their interest for longer. Following the below steps can help you succeed in better blog writing:

• Keep the content relevant and engaging
• Use high-quality images and videos to retain the attention
• The motive of the blog should be to help your prospects find a solution
• Fill your blog with facts, figures, and statistics so that you can establish a trust bond with the information you share
• Keep your content easy to understand
• Use simple language
• Write your content in 2 to 3 lines each
• Every content should have a flow

3. Invest in guest blogs

Guest blogs might take time but for the long term, it is a great investment to capture leads. In guest blogging, you need to write for other brands and place your website link in a few places. This is great because you are getting the attention of other audiences as well which can help identify your target audience and them reaching out to you.

Guest blogging is slow but conducting it can help you find leads in the long run. It is easy to conduct guest blogging activities. All you need to do is:

• Find out which brands conduct guest blogging activities
• Understand the rules and regulations they have set up
• Follow the deadlines accordingly
• Don’t overuse your brand in the content
• Conduct this activity regularly

4. Use social media to the maximum

Social media is a great tool that you can use to grow your business. Everyone is on social media, if your audience wants to know about you, get on social media, and start engaging. Social media is such a solution that gives your prospects the chance to learn about you, observe your actions, and then consider engaging with you. ‘’ 54% of social browsers use social media to research products.’’

Also connecting with prospects on social media is convenient such as joining social groups lets you showcase your knowledge and win over your prospect’s attention. Your daily social media apostles can spark the interest of your prospects to follow you and learn from you. Social media is one such tool that fits all the generations you want to engage with. 

To conduct efficient social media activities, conduct the following steps:

• Be active on social media, conduct regular activities such as blog posting, social media posts
• Conduct engagement activities in comments, Q and As and more
• Join groups and communities to engage better

5. Build a network 

When you want to sell to your prospects, the only way it can be succeeded is when you have the right networks. Whether it is your referrals or your target audience, start building a list starting from your local audience so that you can convert more potential prospects better. Get on prospect reviews, recommendations, surveys, and find out your right audience. 

6. Function on what’s working

Not all the tricks you apply for lead generation will work because they might be traditional methods. For instance, using social media and conducting email marketing activities can help boost your lead count and help you capture more potential prospects. To ensure that you are always working on the practices that matter at the moment, conducting research can help you.

Understand the market, follow the latest practices in trends and techniques of your industry. By regularly updating yourself, creating a better experience for your leads becomes enhanced.

These strategies will help you to make use of your lead generation activities in a refined and enhanced manner. By applying them, you will be able to scale your lead activities higher in a shorter time frame which will impact your business growth and product sales better.

You are aware that the market keeps changing and with technology growth, more unique solutions are introduced. This means that for you to conduct your lead generation activities, you have efficient tools that can ease your work better.

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Which tools can help conduct lead generation activities better?

1. Limecall

Limecall is a callback solution which appears as a widget on your website. It lets you connect with prospects in 28 seconds or schedule a call for later with just one click. Whether it’s your sales or marketing team, Limecall offers unique solutions for both with reference to lead generation. 

This tool can help you capture more leads and connect with them quicker.

Best features of Limecall:

• Conducts calls from any digital platform
• Provides click to call browser based communication (in addition to phone)
• Provides 24/7 customer support so that assistance is provided whenever prospects require them
• Offers widget targeting feature
• Conducts Facebook lead generation activities to tap potential leads
• Lets a brand set their business hours so that it becomes easier to connect with prospects
• Gives the ability to create widgets as per your wish
• Conducts call recording to deliver better performance for future calls
• Let’s brands purchase a new number which they can use to contact their prospects so that they will always know the call is from them
• Has an inbuilt call CRM system to track everything in one place 
• Conducts SMS processes so that prospects never forget about the brand they are engaging with
• It has efficient voice calls from the web instantly
• You can add qualification filters and validate the lead data before picking up the phone

Pricing:

Starter- Free plan- Pro-$35/month, Advanced- $75/month

They’ve also give more reasons here: https://limecall.com/callpage-alternative/

Limecall Ratings:

5/5

2. OutreachPlus

Outreachplus is an email marketing software that ensures emails are being sent in a personalized manner. It creates emails in such a manner where positive replies can be expected from your prospects. They have tons of templates and other features that can make your email marketing experience a great one. 

Best features of OutreachPlus:

• All cold outreach emails are personalized
• Keeps a check of prospects activities and creates emails accordingly
• All prospect communications are personalized
• Identify the best emails with A/B testing
• Emails can be sent according to prospects timezone as well
• Use the best templates from the options given

Pricing:

Solo-$11/month, Multi user- $24/month, Agency- $54/month 

G2 Ratings:

4/5

3. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is a lead generation software that integrates with email marketing and CRM platforms. It aims to help its users by providing a convenient platform to manage and capture sales leads. They have also helped a few brands with the same purpose, such as ‘’Snack Nation earns 1200 new leads each week by using OptinMonster to deliver content upgrades, Woodside Communities was able to increase their leads by 476% and shorten their average lead-to-sale time from 3-6 months to just under two weeks.’’

Best features of OptinMonster:

• Conducts page-level targeting so that campaigns can run on targeted pages with the related content
• Provides Exit-intent technology where a trigger is showcased the minute your prospect’s decision to walk away from your website
• Let’s you conduct lead sharing to other relevant persons in your team
• Conducts onsite retargeting to capture prospects attention with offers and discounts

Pricing:

Basic- $9/month, Plus- $19/month, Pro- $29/month, Growth- $49/month

G2 Ratings:

4.2/5

4. Hunter

When you want to capture your leads wouldn’t it be great if you had one extra information about them so that reaching out to them can be easier? This is exactly what Hunter provides. It ensures that you can find valid email addresses. All you need to do is enter the domain name and the email address will appear for you.

Best features of Hunter:

• Hunter provides confidence ratings so that you are aware if an email is right
• Finds email addresses either individually or in bulk
• Conducts simple email campaigns which are personalized
• Users can personalize their emails by integrating their data

Pricing:

Free plan, Starter- $49/month, Growth- $99/month, Pro- $199/month, Enterprise- $399/month

Capterra Ratings:

4.6/5

Just like you, there are many brands that are following the same ways just like how you are intending to do now. The better motivation and boost you need that you can grow your business better with efficient lead generation tactics can take place when you hear from the successful business themselves.

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Advice from companies about their lead generation strategies that worked for them

1. Offer a free tool

Sometimes you should let your prospects understand you better by offering them your service for them to analyze themselves. Creating free tools can help you get started. Yoast SEO and Screaming Frog offer their services this way as well. They also offer a premium version of the plugin as well apart from their free plugin to WordPress. 

To get started with the free tool, you can try the below list:

• Linkedin Sales Navigator
• D7 Lead Finder
• Discoverly
• Skrapp
• Sumo
• Sendgrid

2. Sending surveys instead of cold email sales pitch

You could have the best pitch but there will be a few potential prospects who would not want to click on your email or read the email either. Instead of you having to send them the usual, why don’t you send them a new approach?

Sending surveys can help you understand the prospect better with their answers. This will help you reach out to them better and frame your product according to their needs. This will help you sell better. 

Mr. Sid Bharath, Growth Marketer, and SaaS Consultant applied this practice and saw his results, ‘’One of his clients received a 14% response rate by emailing a survey instead of the traditional cold email outreach approach, One of my clients recently did this with great effect. The first round was to 700 recipients and they received 100 responses and booked demos from it! Not bad for the first round of a cold email campaign. We’re working on round 2 to the same list with some copy tweaks and then expanding to a larger list,” 

Mr. Sid further shared his suggestions stating, ‘’In the survey, ask respondents what their biggest problem is, Follow that up with a few multiple-choice questions about their business in the area that your product serves. Then, end with asking them for their contact information. Lastly, give respondents a reason to want to fill out your survey. Let them know that when they finish, they will gain access to industry data that’s not available elsewhere. You can also offer a discount on your product.’’

The Bottom Line…

You now have everything you need to close more deals quicker and capture leads better.

Shall we refresh your learnings again?

Key learnings:

• Leads add value to your business
• To capture your potential lead you can use social media, SEO and more
• To conduct the lead generation process, you need to first attract, convert, close and delight
• The strategies you can use to conduct efficient lead generation activities are blog writing, being active on social media and more
• Tools you can use to conduct efficient lead generation activities are Limecall, OutreachPlus and more
• Growth Experts say that giving free tools and sending surveys instead of cold emails are a better way to generate more leads. To name a few free tools we covered are Linkedin sales navigator, Skrapp and more

So, what do you think? Which strategy would you apply first? We would like to hear from you.