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Six Small Business Lead Generation Ideas

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Last editedSep 20213 min read

It’s impossible for any small business to grow without attracting new sales leads. From social media outreach to email marketing campaigns, the best approach often involves a combination of lead generation strategies. Here are six small business lead generation ideas to take your growth to the next level.

Why is small business lead generation so important?

While it’s important for businesses of any size to spend some time crafting lead generation strategies, this is particularly vital for smaller businesses. Without an established client base, you must focus on attention-grabbing strategies to drive traffic to your website.

A good lead generation business strategy not only pulls in new visitors to your online store but also builds relationships. Customers learn more about your brand through quality content, inspiring trust and eventually converting visits into sales. With the right strategies in place, you’ll focus your efforts on qualified leads most likely to appreciate what your business provides. Otherwise, you’ll waste time and money advertising your services to uninterested leads.

Small business lead generation ideas

Now that we’ve covered how important lead generation business strategy is, you might be wondering how to generate leads. Here are six ideas to take on board and customise, as you create a strategy that suits your brand dynamic, industry, and target customer.

Social media provides a free and easy platform for reaching a broad range of customers. You’ll need to get started with some basic research, identifying the channels your customers are most likely to use. For example, a younger demographic may be more active on channels like TikTok and Snapchat in comparison to Facebook.

Set up business profiles on your channels of choice and start crafting content your followers are likely to enjoy. You’ll need to interact with other brands and influencers, leaving comments and answering questions as you grow your social media profile.

2. Focus on local SEO techniques

Another fundamental answer to the question of how to generate leads is working on your local SEO efforts. Google My Business is a great place to start with setting up a free business listing. Place keywords and phrases that your leads are likely to search for within your business profile and primary website, optimising each page with meta descriptions and calls to action.

Small business lead generation involves a high level of outreach, so don’t be shy when it comes to connecting with local reviewers and bloggers. Offer to guest post on their sites to take advantage of an established audience to increase brand awareness.

3. Publish a small business blog

Along with guest posting, you should create a blog for your own business. This will build brand authority in your industry while attracting more eyes on your content and services. As you get started, write posts that answer questions your customers are likely to ask. Try using a multimedia approach combining text with visuals, videos, and podcasts to keep your content fresh. Innovative, compelling, and useful content will keep your leads returning over time.

4. Host special events

Whether in-person or online, special events are a great way to bring potential leads together to learn more about your business and network. If you’re not ready to throw a high-profile launch party as a small business, a good way to get started is by hosting an online webinar. With your webinar, you can cover a range of topics related to your business goods and services while positioning yourself as an authority. Provide free downloads to those who cannot attend live.

5. Market with emails

Generate inbound traffic to your website with email outreach. You’ll need to target leads that have already expressed enough interest to sign up for your mailing list, which means they’re further down the marketing funnel. Reel them in with special offers, promotions, and advance news about new products. Schedule a monthly newsletter as part of your small business lead generation strategy to keep your business fresh in your potential clients’ minds.

6. Pay for advertising

A final way to generate leads is by paying for advertisements. Use a combination of affiliate marketing, paid search ads, and social media advertising to target your customers where they hang out online. With pay-per-click advertising, you’ll only pay out when the customer clicks through to your website or converts to a sale, so it’s relatively low risk.

Finally, remember that lead generation is only half the battle for small businesses. Once you have their attention, you must hold onto it. Free samples, special offers, and contests are examples of strategies to keep your leads engaged over time – and more likely to make a purchase.

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