20 Ways to Generate Leads for Your New Online Business

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20 Ways To Generate Leads for Your New Business

Jamieson Lee Hill, Head of Copywriting, March 2022

Leads are the cornerstone of any business. Without leads you won’t have any sales. Therefore, you need to be doing lead generation everyday to maintain a steady stream of sales. If sales are low, it is an indication that you need to increase your marketing to generate leads.

Lead generation is like fishing. It takes patience and you need to be in the right place to make a catch. Let’s look at 20 effective ways to get leads for your business.

1. Friends and Family

If you’re starting a business, ask your family and friends for referrals and to share your content on their social media and network. This is an effective way to start off because if you’re new in business. If your friends and family have their own businesses you could suggest having a reciprocal agreement with them i.e. you share each other’s business content and make referrals.

2. Word of Mouth

Although marketing and advertising are important in the digital age, word of mouth remains a very important source of leads. For an existing business, happy customers can become brand evangelists telling others about how great your business is and this attracts new clients. In the modern age, you can leverage the power of word of mouth by asking customers to tell their networks about how happy they were with your business.

3. Your Network

If you’re starting out in business for the first time, your network may be relatively small. The success of your business is largely dependent on your network. The bigger your network, the more likely you are to get customers.

You should add quality people to your network who are relevant to your business and are likely to generate leads. However, you can also add people to your network who are not in the same sector because leads can sometimes come from literally anywhere.

Doing favours for other startups can also lead to new clients for your business. As CEO of Blam Websites Grant Stain says, ‘Your Network is your Net Worth’. Blam is one of the many online business opportunities that Love My Businesses offers.

Networking may not generate direct revenue but it increases the chances of meeting businesses that do need your services or businesses that want to enter into reciprocal relationships.

Read more about networking here.

4. Sales Funnel and Content Lifecycle

Lead generation is part of the process of building your own sales funnel. The sales funnel or conversion funnel is part of the ‘Content Life Cycle’ (DigitalMarketer 2022 - see below*) which helps you to build relationships with prospects. This lifecycle of content is the material that you create to engage with prospects at different stages. The sales funnel has three keys stages:

Awareness: this is where your prospects first encounter your brand and business at what is known as the Top of The Funnel (TOFU). It could be through reading a blog, listening to a podcast, reading an infographic or newsletter etc.

Evaluation: The evaluation stage is also referred to as the Middle of the Funnel (MOFU). This is where your prospects encounter your content again. They are starting to evaluate your brand and decide if they would like to buy from you.

Conversion: The last stage of the process is conversion at the Bottom of the Funnel or BOFU. This is where the prospect buys from you and becomes a paying customer. However, the transaction may not be an exchange of money e..g they might attend a free webinar and give you their time or take a free trial. By giving a time commitment you are building your relationship with them and the trust is growing.

You will need to determine who your target audience is and how you will reach them through a Content Strategy. Also, you need to plan how to collect contact details and store them in a CRM database - See section 6.

*Source: DigitalMarketer, Developing a Content Strategy

5. Customer Avatar Profile

To comprehend where your leads are likely to come from you need to understand your typical customer profile. Your content strategy and sales funnel are focused on your target audiences. The Customer Avatar Profile or Persona is a template where you gather information about the profile of your typical customer(s).

You will probably have more than one profile or persona. Information on the profile will include demographics i.e. age, gender, location, occupation etc. Also, it will look at their sources of information, their challenges and pain points, their dreams and aspirations and how you can make their average day even better.

Watch this video and read the article from Digital Marketer to learn how to create your own Customer Avatar Profile. You can also download a free template here.

6. CRM Database

A CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. A CRM is basically a database where you store new and existing leads. Then using this software you can market to leads using techniques such as email campaigns and newsletters or simply phone them.

A CRM helps you to qualify leads which means determining those leads which are most likely to buy your product or service and those who are not. Then, it is a matter of nurturing new leads to make them into paying customers. This can be done by sending them email campaigns with useful content that gives solutions to their problems or inviting them to free webinar, free trials, discounts, offers and so forth.

However, you build your leads, the main objective of lead generation is to have a database of contacts to access instantly and market to. You can also purchase leads from a multitude of companies who will provide you with updated lists of companies with their contact details. One word of caution is that you can burn money paying for leads, so be careful when selecting your sources. You need to see a good return on the money you have invested.

Checkout this review of CRM Software for Startups.

7. Paid Ads

Paid advertising is an immediate hit for lead generation in the sense you should get a faster result than doing it the organic way i.e. using SEO (Search Engine Optimisation - see next section). You can take out adverts with a number of platforms including Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and so on. Understanding the process is key to your success.

Be warned, if you invest in advertising, especially Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC), you should test the waters with small amounts of money. See what works first and steadily invest first to get a good return on your money. I have had clients in the past who have burned lots of money on PPC advertising. There is free training online for Paid Advertising. here are some links to help you get started:

Paid Ads on Social Media

Paid advertising on social media is an important way to give your business brand presence. They are also part of a lead generation for your sales funnel. By engaging with the right social media channels you can market to your target audience where they hang out.

Paid advertising is a skill and it takes time to workout where to invest your money to get a decent return. For this reason, if you don’t have the time to learn, then you are better off hiring an agency or freelancer to run your advertising campaigns.

SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and is a type of internet marketing that involves promoting websites and improving their ranking through paid promotion.

8. SEO - Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is an enigma to many businesses. In its simplest form, it is understanding the search intent internet users have when they type a query into Google or other search engines. In understanding their search intent we can create content accordingly and optimise our websites to be more easily found.

SEO is the opposite of aipd advertising; SEO relies on organic traffic which is unpaid and advertising is traffic which has been bought via ads. If you search for something on Google and the listings say ‘ad’, then it is paid traffic. The rest of the content is organic. If you type ‘SEO’ into Google, the highest ranking organic search is Google’s own SEO Guide (on March 7th, 2022).

SEO is a form of marketing that focuses on getting the right leads for your company and helps you rank well in search engines, so that customers will find your business more easily. However, SEO is much more than just key phrases because it involves a range of onpage and offpage techniques. Content creation is a major part of SEO including blogging, press releases, infographics and other forms of content on social media and your website.

The main objective of SEO is to get multiple leads to your website. You can use a variety of SEO tools to help you find keyword phrases but many of them can be very costly e.g. SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Console. There are free tools as well, Google Ad Keyword Planner being one of the best.

9. Ask for Referrals for Rewards

One way businesses can create leads is through referrals for rewards. E.g. The online bank Wise offers incentives of £50 to customers for inviting three friends to use Wise, Duolingo gives free memberships and Dropbox gives 32GB per referral.

Referral programs can be an effective way to get new leads. You may even decide to refer clients to other companies as an extra source of income for your business. For referrals to your company, you may like to offer discounts to existing customers.

10. Establish Your Brand Authority

Giving away free, valuable content that provides solutions to your prospects’ problems will establish your business as a source of knowledge or authority. You can educate your audience by writing and publishing e-books, articles and other written materials. Also, think about holding free webinars, podcasts and interviews to share ideas and solutions within your sector.

Offer free downloadable content from your website e.g. a lead magnet, regularly post content on your blog and social media platforms. As you gain credibility as a brand it will build trust with prospects and naturally generate leads. People will start coming to you because you have educated them and they now trust your professional opinion.

11. Be a Walking Advert!

I remember a childhood friend who started his own business in 1999. In the early years, he would give out free merchandise wherever he went e.g. baseball caps, mugs, t-shirts etc. He was literally a walking advertisement for his business. Today that same business is worth millions.

Learn to eat, sleep and breathe your brand. Wherever you go in the world, tell people about it and give out your business cards and merchandise. Get a company logo for your car or van. Go to networking events and parties and give out branded freebies. Think of all the different ways to advertise your brand and put it on the map.

12. Email Marketing and Newsletters

Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of lead generation that you have as a business. It is still a lucrative form of marketing despite the bad press it gets in terms of email spamming. Email marketing done properly shares useful and relevant information to your target audience. This can nurture relationships that lead to paying clients.

“You might be wondering if email is still a worthwhile marketing strategy. Well, it is. In fact, email generates $42 for every $1 spent, which is an astounding 4,200% ROI, making it one of the most effective options available.”

Hubspot.com

According to the leading international marketing franchise DigitalMarketer, email campaigns can be divided into three main categories:

“

Transactional – to provide customer service.
Relational – to engage subscribers and nurture relationships with them.
Promotional – for generating sales.”

DigitalMarketer, 2022

If you are starting a new business you can create relational emails to nurture new prospects and help them become familiar with your brand. Transactional emails will be when customers buy from you e.g. taking an order, sending a receipt and despatch notice and following up on any after-service queries.

Building a database of emails in your CRM is an essential part of business growth. However, leads are not only about getting new prospects; you should also send email campaigns to old and existing customers offering loyalty bonuses, discounts and other promotions.

Personalised emails are more effective than generic ones. In fact, personalisation is the key to success in business as a whole studies have shown. Here are few points to remember:

When you craft your emails, it can be a series of either 5, 10, 15 or 20 emails.
Use the prospect’s name. Just writing ‘Hi’ without a name is likely to lead to your email being sent straight to spam by the reader.
Group your contacts by details such as location, purchase history, demographics etc.
Send emails out to these different groupings that are tailored to fit your audiences.
Seek to nurture new prospects and build relationships.
Re-engage people who have bought from you in the past.

Read more about how to write email campaigns.

Newsletters (via email)

Quality newsletters are very popular nowadays. The secret as always is to create valuable content for your audience which they want to consume. Keeping in touch with your leads regularly helps to build your relationship. It also seeks to remind them of your products and services.

As you will have different types of audiences, you should create different newsletters for different groups of people e.g. a newsletter for women looking to start their own business, a newsletter aimed at people starting their first business and so on. However, in the beginning you may have limited resources and time and prefer to stick to one type of newsletter.

An important part of email marketing is to track and monitor analytics. Using a tool such as Mail Chimp you can check to see which emails are opened, how many people click through to other content in your sales funnel and to identify which emails are the most successful. As you analyse your most successful email campaigns, workout which headlines and images worked best and which topics. Then you can emulate and repeat the best performing email content.

Newsletters do not have to be really long. You could send a monthly newsletter and include 4 short articles e.g. 2 x 500 words and 3 x 300 words. The main thing is to choose topics and solve problems that are relevant to your target audiences.

13. Google Maps

This is a tip that came from my friend Edward Van Der Kleijn when he was International Sales Manager at Blam Websites. He prescribed the following steps:

Open Google Maps on your pc or phone.
Then type in the type of business you are looking to focus on e.g. plumbers in North London.
Then click the website links for their contact details.
Once on the website, copy and paste their telephone number and other contact details.
Gather at least 20 contacts a day and put them into an Excel sheet.
Phone them to tell them about your products and services.
If you do this everyday for a 5 day week that gives you 100 potential customers to call by the end of the week.
Out of those 100 plumbers, you may only get one or two who buy your product and services, but a 2% sales conversion rate is a result!

Repeat this process and gather contact information for whichever businesses your products or services are relevant to. If you don’t enjoy doing telephone sales you could always hire staff to do the phoning for you. It is important not to be salesy on the phone. Build a relationship with them first and make them aware of your brand.

14. Question and Answer Forums

Platforms such as Reddit and Quora, where people ask questions for a multitude of topics, are an effective way to show your expertise. Reddit has 330 million active monthly users and Quora has about 300 million monthly active users. There is definitely potential for lead generation.

Start off by searching for categories on forums which are related to your own business. You can answer questions to help others for free and put a link to your website. You may find that the person who posed the question then contacts you about the services which you offer or other people reading the thread. If it doesn't lead to a paying customer, it might bring traffic to your website. Therefore, indirectly by improving your website ranking you are making your business website more visible in search engines and therefore you are more likely to get new leads.

Communities like Reddit and Quora appreciate transparency and honesty. If you just go on question threads trying to sell your products and services, the community will down vote your responses. Instead be helpful and offer free advice to questions. The rule of thumb for sharing your own content is no more than 10% of your own links and you should also share content from other sites as well. Be genuine and offer free valuable support and then it may create new leads for your business.

Read more about generating leads on question and answer forums like Reddit and Quora.

15. Lead Magnet

Every website needs a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a valuable piece of content giving information that solves problems for the prospect e.g. a collection of useful templates, a report, a discount, a quiz or survey, a test etc. Lead magnets are gated which means you have to give your email and contact details to access the content. For people to give their email the content needs to be valuable and relevant.

To create a lead magnet, research the top ten listings for organic search in Google for topics related to your sector. Then look at the keyword phrases, titles, and subheadings which businesses are using as these are high ranking search terms. Find a hook or angle which will be the main focus of the lead magnet; it needs to be engaging, so that the target audience download it.

The lead magnet is the precursor to an email campaign after the prospect has given their email. You can now start marketing via an email nurture campaign. The headline of your lead magnet needs to be compelling because if it isn’t they won’t give you their email and download it.