Leads are the lifeblood of any business. They’re necessary to drive sales and revenue.
For instance, car dealerships work these leads and have a system to organize them so that they understand where their customers are in the sales pipeline.
Fortunately for businesses across every industry today, there are various tools and software available to streamline the lead generation processes. For instance, Podium’s Lead Drive tool keeps your business data and inbound lead information organized. Through these features, leads across multiple channels are collected into one location for a unified view—meaning you’ll never miss out on a lead, or new business, again.
It also helps that Podium has a new Lead management tool just for your business! Speed to lead is critical in today’s fast-paced market, and Podium offers an unparalleled advantage by ensuring businesses engage with leads within a couple of minutes—guaranteed. Podium’s conversational AI is outcome-driven – it doesn’t just respond to inbound leads it guides conversations toward a specific goal, such as a sale or booking. Unlike other AI systems that focus on providing correct responses, Podium aims to drive specific customer actions to grow your business. Podium’s AI Employee guarantees your business engages with leads within a couple of minutes; during peak hours, off hours, and every hour in between.
In this blog post, we’ll explain how to generate and convert more leads in 10 ways.
What is lead generation?
Lead generation is the process of identifying potential clients for your business’s services and products. There are several different types of leads for you to consider. By understanding different lead types, B2C and B2B marketers will know how to properly handle the potential customers they come across. This also helps ensure that no lead generation opportunity goes to waste.
Cold leads are people who have shown little or even no interest in using your products and services. They may need your business but just don’t know it yet or are unaware of how your brand is different from your competition. Interacting with cold leads is similar to cold calling. You will need to get them warmed up to the idea of interacting with your business.
Warm leads are new leads that have learned why they need your product or service. This is a sales prospect who is showing interest in your business by offering their contact information. Compared to cold leads, they have more knowledge of what your brand offers and how it can help them.
SQLs, or sales qualified leads, are prospective customers who have been identified as having strong potential to purchase or are ready to buy. These leads may have already come close to the purchasing stage or have been referred by current customers. Marketing teams typically vet these leads before passing them on to sales reps.
MQLs, or marketing qualified leads, are generated from your marketing strategies and should be analyzed this way. They may be website visitors or social media users who have interacted with your brand online. These leads typically require nurturing before they become ready to purchase.
Lead Generation Basics and Best Practices
You need to do more than just have a lead generation strategy to get contact information. There needs to be a system for getting contact details through various social media platforms such as LinkedIn and then following up on their information. Consider some of the following methods of getting quality leads for your company.
1. Value Offer
You need to make sure that potential leads have a good incentive for the information they are going to give your sales reps. Giving website visitors something of value in exchange for their names, email addresses, and phone numbers is one of the best ways of generating quality leads. Such content is often referred to as lead magnets.
Some examples of value offered in exchange for contact information are signing up for a newsletter and expert content such as guides, checklists, and reports. You can also offer free tools like quizzes and calculators to engage potential leads. There are even brands that provide free trials, downloads, and even swag for contact details from their target audience.
2. Landing Pages and Chatbots
All your landing pages should be optimized to get the best leads according to your lead scoring system. Landing pages convert leads better than other systems the conversion rate is generally more than 10 percent. This can only happen when your website is getting a regular supply of fresh visitors. This can be achieved through search engine optimization or SEO.
Using strategies like providing website content relevant to your targeted audience is the first step to online lead gen. The next step is making sure you have something valuable to offer them in exchange for their contact details or leads.
Make sure to check your page regularly to see if its conversion rate is pushing double digits. If not, you will want to work on getting those numbers up. If you need help when it comes to SEO, don’t hesitate to hire professional help. SEO can help you reach your target audience and get qualified leads from all your social media platforms including LinkedIn.
If you’re not getting a good conversion rate, it’s time to consider optimizing your website and its content. Make sure the content on your landing page is engaging, sharp, and short. Keep it focused on the benefits of your services or products, not just their features. Add multiple forms of media to increase engagement and get more traffic.
Chatbots and other AI tools offer quite a bit of help when it comes to gathering quality leads as well. Podium offers many services with these features to help keep you in contact with your potential client base. The platform’s Webchat widget, for instance, can start conversations with customers and help boost engagement and conversion rates.
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3. Lead Management
Getting a slew of complete leads full of all the contact details necessary to reach out is only half the battle. Your lead generation efforts will be wasted if you aren’t ready to manage and nurture leads properly. Fortunately, business owners can count on tools like Podium.
Podium’s Lead Drive feature set ensures more efficient lead management, starting with collecting leads and lead requests across different channels and putting them in the Podium Inbox. This system helps keep your lead information easily organized and accessible. Once configured, the system can also automatically send text to leads, ensuring a quick response that keeps leads warm and engaged.
This automation can significantly increase your reps’ chances of converting leads, gaining more customers, and making more money.
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4. CRM and Tracking
Having a system for organizing your business’ lead data is just as important as getting these contact details. You can use customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Podium to manage client interactions and track how your sales team follows up with these leads. Tracking these details is one of the best ways of growing your brand and learning about weak aspects of your lead generation efforts. This way, you can improve and refine your strategies.
You may be able to start with a spreadsheet to track your leads and clients, but even small businesses tend to need something that can manage larger amounts of data. You want to be able to track each lead and where they are in their purchasing journey at any given time. You will also need room for notes on these interactions. This is why it’s almost always better to use a dedicated CRM tool for managing lead and customer information.
Using a CRM platform is also one of the best ways for you to automate your communication and make it more meaningful. When you have communications automated, response time is reduced, and customer satisfaction increases.
How to Generate Leads: 10 Effective Ways
1. Optimize Listings and Profiles
You can draw leads in with a quality profile and listing for your business. This can give you a better ROI than many other lead generation options. You will want to make sure company profiles are optimized through SEO strategies. Using relevant keywords to help your profiles and listings pop up on top when searched is the first step to getting and increasing the amount of traffic you get.
2. Implement Web Chat for Real-Time Engagement
Widgets for web chat help you get the real-time engagement that your brand needs to get the best leads. It is not cost-effective to have your site managed 24/7 by an actual person. You can, however, use AI-powered chatbots to answer common customer queries. This will go a long way to keeping visitors coming back and converting them into customers.
Chatbots and web chats are excellent ways of ensuring you connect with your potential customer base and can get their information before they move on. Making sure that your visitors are greeted and that they have the means to contact you is the easiest way of keeping potential customers interested. Podium offers several services to help you make the most of webchat capabilities.
3. Run Targeted Ad Campaigns
Not every advertisement is going to get you a lead that you can use. You don’t want to nurture leads that won’t give you the results you need. To get qualified leads, you need to make sure to run ads that are targeted correctly to people who may need your products and services. Focus your ad campaigns on getting effective, quality leads.
This means you need to do thorough research on your ideal customer and study customer data. This way, you can learn the best places and times for running ad campaigns.
4. Utilize SMS Campaigns
Utilizing SMS campaigns is a proven way to increase your conversion rate. However, it can be overwhelming trying to figure out the right message to send potential leads when working on your SMS marketing plan. Consider using one of the many texting templates Podium offers to improve your marketing campaigns. We can take the time-consuming aspects of your marketing campaigns and automate outreach to clients and potential clients through text marketing.
5. Host Webinars or Virtual Events
You can showcase your brand’s experience and expertise with webinars and other virtual events. You will need to make sure to advertise your webinar to maximize its lead generation potential. Make sure that your CTAs or call-to-actions are compelling enough for people to follow your accounts on social media platforms as well as subscribe to your newsletter. When offering these events, make sure that you follow up with your webinar attendees to maximize results.
6. Leverage Review Generation and Management
Sooner or later, your business is going to bring in reviews. You may not get tons of reviews in the beginning, but you may find it easier to use software to manage these reviews and respond to each review as they come in. This way, you don’t get overwhelmed. You must address not just the good reviews, but the bad reviews as well. This helps potential customers see that you are invested in your brand and what people are saying about it.
Podium offers plenty of tools to help you generate more reviews for your brand, like a Google review link generator. With this generator, you can easily create links where customers can submit their reviews of your business. Maximize your review generation efforts by texting this link to your customers.
With Podium, you can work with a professional company that understands how to get more reviews for your brand and helps with your lead generation efforts through improved digital marketing.
7. Offer Educational Content
One of the best ways of getting more qualified leads is to offer your visitors useful or educational content. This is a high-value tool that encourages visitors to give you contact information. If you have a dealership, you can shoot test-drive videos to showcase cars’ special features and capabilities. If your business is more focused on products like appliances, furniture, or jewelry, you can also create content focused on specific products or services.
Another way of boosting your digital marketing efforts is establishing partnerships with influencers to share your content. This will increase the effectiveness of your lead generation efforts very quickly.
8. Engage in Reputation Monitoring
Being in business is more than just putting your goods and services out there for the public to consider. You must also make sure you have a solid reputation as a reliable brand that customers can trust. This means you need to manage your reputation regularly and quickly resolve any issues you encounter.
For instance, both good and bad reviews need to be addressed promptly and consistently. Podium can help with this by providing AI-powered response suggestions to reviews. The platform also provides a centralized dashboard for managing reviews on different sites.
9. Offer Limited-time Promotions
Limited-time promotions are an excellent way to ensure your visitors have incentives to leave their contact details so you can follow up with them later. Providing a free facial to every client who refers their friend to your salon before the holiday season is one example of a limited-time promotion.
10. Implement Referral Programs
One of the oldest and most successful ways of generating leads is to use referral programs. Have your clients who are happy with your work refer their friends and family. You can offer incentives through email marketing but practice some caution before blasting messages to your email list.
You don’t want to come off like you are bribing your customers to get high-quality leads through their referrals. Sometimes, all it takes is asking the buyer if their friends would appreciate your products and services, too.
Using loyal clients’ testimonials and referrals is a fantastic way of starting to build trust with potential leads. Due to the power of word-of-mouth marketing, referral programs are a tried-and-true method for quality lead generation.
The Best Way to Generate Leads for Your Business
The good news is you don’t have to go about your B2C or B2B lead generation process unassisted. Podium has one of the best systems for generating leads for local small businesses. We can support your marketing strategies and help you get potential leads through email marketing and SMS marketing.
Podium’s Lead Drive features allow you to manage your leads from every source possible so your salespeople don’t miss any opportunity. The platform gathers all lead information from multiple sources into one place to improve the organization of lead information and improve your overall lead generation process.
Every customer inquiry, no matter what website it comes from, is redirected to the Podium Inbox for easier viewing and management. From here, you can automatically and immediately respond to the leads. This can help you keep lead outreach more personalized and give you a competitive edge. The only thing left to do is to convert these leads into paying customers.
High-quality leads come from quality content marketing and an excellent lead-generation process. When working with Podium’s Lead Drive features, you have access to a centralized system that ensures easier lead collection and faster lead outreach. The faster responses can help in building relationships and trust with potential leads. This also positions your brand as one that is always looking out for customers’ interests.
Lead Drive makes it easy to get organized, regardless of how many platforms your leads are coming in from. Don’t work your leads alone. Use a platform that has been helping small businesses expand and succeed for years. Podium’s different services will help you keep your customer details organized and even automate workflows for improved productivity.
