Generating sales leads for real estate, or any other small or local business, can be a frustrating and costly endeavor, but there is an alternative to hitting the pavement and cold calling your neighbors. Not only is there a way to generate sales leads online, but you can also do it in an ethical and compliant manner.
When it comes to generating leads, many business owners think of social media as their go-to platform. However, it’s important to understand that local businesses need to be able to market themselves in a range of venues. This is particularly true for small-to-medium sized companies that don’t have the brand recognition of big corporations. Fortunately, there are numerous avenues for building your business’ online presence.
Generating sales leads online is not as difficult as you think. It seems like you’re a sales lead generation expert, but in reality, there are certain things that you don’t know. For example, how to generate leads for internet marketing. Improving your marketing skills will improve your conversion and help in generating sales leads online.
Now, let’s revisit some grade-school math terms. The numbers on the left-hand side of a multiplication equation are factors. Traffic and conversion rate are the factors in this case. The number that follows the equals sign on the right-hand side is the product.
What is local lead generation?
First, we need to determine what a ‘lead is’.
A lead is simply someone who has shown interest in your product/service.
They might have come to you, or you might have consciously reached out to them. It’s someone who has shown an interest in your products or services.
Perhaps they’ve found your website and completed a form, or they might have emailed you. They may have called your office or sent a message to your Facebook Page.
Your job as a business is to turn that lead into a revenue-generating transaction.
Consider a basic sales funnel. Here’s one from my good friend Dennis Yu.
It might look like this:
- Brand Awareness – your content; your marketing activity
- Lead Generation – the customer following a specific behaviour; making contact
- Sale – the customer pays for your service/product
Lead generation is the process of encouraging more interaction with your funnel; getting people to take the first step.
Without leads, we have no sales.
But we don’t want to do outbound lead generation. We want leads to come to us. Commonly referred to as inbound marketing.
Create a Lead Generation System
Sure; word-of-mouth gets you leads (if you’re lucky).
Networking events help you to make connections with potentially useful people.
Handing out leaflets might generate some interest.
But:
Those approaches rely on the intangible: LUCK.
Luck can make us rich. But it wears thin, and it’s a stab in the dark. It might work. But then again, it might not.
Now, let’s remind ourselves of a fundamental reality of mathematics: the multiplication property of zero. It states:
The product of any number and zero is zero.
Apply it like so: ANY traffic number times ZERO conversion rate produces ZERO leads. A ZERO traffic number times ANY conversion rate produces ZERO leads.
So, while I encourage you to read our recent posts, including the guide about how to generate leads and the list of 21 Winning Lead Generation Strategies, stay tuned now for a helpful breakdown of ideas to help you drive traffic and conversions to improve online-lead generation for your small business.
What is Small Business Lead Generation?
Small business lead generation is when a small business deploys various strategies to build interest in their product or service and attract those who are interested in the hopes that they will eventually become customers.
Here, we’ll dive into some of these strategies and tactics, and how they specifically apply to small businesses.
Lead Generation Ideas for Small Business
Small business lead generation begins by creating a presence in the path of would-be leads and giving them a reason to visit your website. Here’s a robust list of ideas to help you accomplish this.
1. Do basic local SEO
- Claim your free Google My Business directory listing and optimize it.
- Perform basic search engine optimization (SEO) across your website’s pages with descriptive title tags.
- Optimize each page with a compelling meta description to inspire click-throughs from search engine results.
- Claim local business listings on online business directories, such as Yelp, Merchant Circle, Citysearch, and other local directories.
- Encourage customers to post reviews about your business. When asked, the majority of satisfied customers do oblige.
For example, when I did a search for ‘event catering,’ as shown above, a number of local companies that have claimed pages in the Google My Business directory appeared prominently in the results.
2. Publish a blog
- A blog can feature articles, videos, podcasts, infographics, galleries, or any combination. The point is to create content that provides the answers to the questions customers search for.
- Learn and apply the SEO techniques that will improve your search rankings.
Here’s a strong example of how a small business becomes the go-to resource for answers and insights in its niche.
3. Guest post on relevant websites
- Offer your expertise, for free, to online publishers in the form of guest posts.
- Where possible, include links in your articles to useful resources on your website.
- Also apply this strategy to local print publications, remembering to include a mention of your website.
4. Get active on social media
- Identify the social media channels your customers prefer.
- Share content — be it homemade or curated — as often as possible on your profiles.
- Promote your social media channels everywhere possible.
- Interact with prospects in an informative and helpful manner.
- Follow influential people in your industry and try to build mutually beneficial relationships.
Pura Vida Bracelets consistently populates the social media networks its customers prefer with a combination of beaches, beauty and bracelets, but it also tosses in the occasional special offer, as shown here.
5. Run paid search ads
- Explore the many advertising options offered by Google Ads.
- Refine your tactics to reduce pay-per-click costs and improve ROI.
- Consider Microsoft advertising, which runs on Bing and Yahoo! Search.
6. Run social media ads
- Facebook advertising is easy, often effective and offers a very low cost for entry. You can get started for $5 per day.
- Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and YouTube all offer online advertising programs you can experiment with to generate leads.
7. Run native advertising
- Your online advertising options expand beyond the top search and social channels with native advertising and include millions of publishers.
- Learn how to run programmatic ads on discovery networks such as Taboola.
Check out how Flare Audio launched their revolutionary headphones with traffic from premium publisher sites.
- Examine the potential of collaborating with publishers to create sponsored ads and content.
8. Build a referral network
- Identify practical marketing projects (like co-hosted events, co-created content or social media partnerships) that justify reaching out to experts to make connections, build relationships and create content.
- Consider projects based on interviews, case studies and various types of collaboration.
- Invite respected authorities to guest blog on your website.
- Rather than ask for reciprocation, simply support your supporters.
9. Run events
- Host webinars.
- Speak at conferences and local events.
- Participate in expos and give attendees a reason to engage.
- Use social media to create live streams and other types of events.
Here is some smart small business marketing by Visor: free tax webinars for prospects and customers.
10. Use email marketing
- Traffic you generate with email marketing comes with a caveat: it’s bound for people that have already been there and opted-into your list (unless you built an email list offline). You can capitalize on email and generate traffic to your website by giving subscribers strong reasons to return.
- Send newsletters and meaningful emails that inform recipients of helpful content you’ve published on your site.
AllTrails fills its funnel by offering a free version of its app and then, atop its newsletter, it sends special offers to encourage upgrading to the paid pro version.
11. Do more of what’s working
- Setup a Google Analytics account and gather data from it regularly. Your goal is to identify who visits, where they came from, what pages they consume and how they behave.
- Use this information to inform your promotional and content strategies.
- Do more of what’s driving traffic and less of what isn’t. Of course, you’ll also want to factor-in what drives conversion… And so, we move on to part two.
Ideas that transform visitors to leads
A ton of traffic to your website means nothing if it doesn’t foster conversion. Your first challenge is to define what conversion means — subscribe, attend, try, buy or any other objective. Next, your challenge is to make it happen with compelling offers.
1. Offer deals
When a first-time visitor arrives at a landing page to shop for a product or a service, promoting a coupon or discount program is often the way to make a sale.
Here, Candyclub offers ‘sweet savings’ when you arrive on its e-commerce website.
2. Offer samples
In many cases, prospects arrive because they’re interested in trying or sampling your product or service.
- A free trial is often the go-to approach for the Software as a Service (SaaS) business and other software-driven categories, such as games and apps.
- Though you’ll need to give to get, you may want to ship samples of physical products to interested shoppers. The law of reciprocity suggests many will reward you with a purchase.
This home try-on program offered by Warby Parker plays a significant role in the success of this eyewear brand.
3. Offer advice
A proven tactic to build email lists — and industry authority — is to create and offer an educational lead magnet in exchange for an opt-in. Popular offers of this type include:
- eBooks/guides
- White papers
- Research reports
- Buying guides
- Courses
- Newsletters
Here, Brian Dean of Backlinko uses the lead magnet strategy to offer website visitors valuable how-to resources.
4. Offer personalized advice
While the standard content-based approaches listed above are strong general purpose offers, there are a variety of ways you can earn a higher conversion rate by personalizing the advice you’ll give via:
- Free consultation
- Online chat
- Interactive tools, such as assessments and calculators
- Demonstrations
5. Offer fun
Increase engagement on your website and excitement about your products with fun offers such as:
- Contests
- Giveaways
- Quizzes
6. Offer proof
Prospects want confirmation first and foremost. Increase the credibility of your company with:
- Reviews
- Testimonials
- Accolades
- Trust badges
- Media mentions
- Use cases
- Customer stories
- Customer showcases
- Portfolios and galleries
7. Offer one last thing
However hard you try to win a conversion on a page or via a form, your offer will often be ignored. Attempt to boost conversions with ‘one last try’ in the form of an exit intent pop-up.
Lead Generation Tools
If we’re getting leads and failing to act upon them, we’re wasting our time (and our money).
But, in order to capture those leads in the first place, we need a system to set up our lead generating activity.
We need two things:
1. A place to store our leads and track their progress so that we don’t lose track of them
2. A system that allows us to market to those leads.
I’m going to recommend two types of tools.
Get Yourself an Email Marketing Tool
Some people say that email marketing is dead.
Those people are wrong.
Statistically, email marketing represents the best ROI on any other marketing activity…
Email marketing provides up to 3,800% ROI according to this study by Hubspot.
When people start finding you online, you’ll need a way to start connecting with them and to securely store their details (with all the GDPR stuff controlled by safe hands).
My favourite tool for email marketing is ActiveCampaign. I’ve used many others: Mailchimp, ConvertKit and a list of others – but ActiveCampaign remains my go-to; providing an array of advanced automations that suit my marketing strategy.
However:
If you’re just starting out, I’d suggest going with something like Mailchimp – it’s much easier to navigate and use, and probably the cheapest email marketing tool on the mass market. And it will provide you with great tools to get you started (and they have the all-important GDPR toolset built-in).
Once you have your way of gathering a mailing list and a means to regularly connect, you should look at a landing page/funnel building tool.
Landing Page Software/Funnel Builder
These tools allow you to build super-quick and technically sophisticated landing pages and marketing funnels WITHOUT requiring ANY coding, design or programming knowledge.
When we’re creating offers or new pages on our website, these tools make everything just that little bit easier.
They allow you to:
- Create workable sales funnels, bespoke to your exact campaign requirements
- Test them
- Get them out there very quickly
My favourite tool is ClickFunnels. This platform allows you to build sales funnels, make landing pages, and start generating leads and making money super-quick – all within around 30 minutes of signing up.
Other funnel building tools are LeadPages, Instapage, Unbounce – they all give you a pretty similar result. So find the one that works for you.
Once you have these two tools in play, we can start generating leads that are more likely to result in increased revenue, higher engagement, and – most importantly – new customers.
I’m going to share a 6-step process with you to maximise your local lead-generating potential.
Step One – Set Up “Google My Business”
Setting up “Google My Business” is a straightforward process. But without it, you’re going to struggle to get found in organic search.
Think about the ways someone might search for your business online.
Say, for example, you run a coffee shop.
If someone wants a coffee and they’re in your local area, what do you think they’re going to do?
Google something like… “Best coffee shops near me”. What appears first? A map like this…
You need to be on that map.
That map could contain your opening hours, images of the outside of your building (if you have business premises), phone numbers, reviews, etc. It’s the perfect business card.
If your info isn’t there, potential customers are going to go to the businesses that appear in your place.
It takes ten minutes to register.
Can you afford NOT to spend ten minutes setting it up?
Step Two – Content Marketing
If you’re not producing content online, then – effectively – your business doesn’t exist.
Think about your own consumer behaviour:
Say, you have back pain.
One of the first things you’re likely to Google is:
“Why do I have back pain?”, or
“Best Chiropractor in Edinburgh”, or
“Massage Edinburgh” (be careful with that one! ?)
This is why we set up Google My Business: so we appear on the list.
But you also want to use those very search terms to build your content. Create articles, videos or blog posts that address those questions.
A user is likely to look at the business that’s at the top of Google first, of course. And – if you’re going down the organic route – you can work your way up the Google rankings by producing content that addresses those search terms related to your business.
Be THE source of education and information for your niche.
Do it in video format as well as in text. That way, you get the SEO rankings on both Google AND YouTube.
What’s most important is that most businesses aren’t doing this. Most companies are relying on clunky keyword stuffing and not addressing problems that their customers are likely to have through their content.
Google wants your site to be valuable and useful, and they’ll direct traffic your way if they observe that visitors are exploring your site beyond that landing page.
Think about the questions your customers might have, and address them through blogs and videos on your website and/or YouTube channel.
Step Three – Use Facebook ads
Once you’re starting to create content, use Facebook Ads to promote it to reach new audiences, defined by their interests, location, and behaviours.
Facebooks Ads are amazingly powerful because the platform has SO much information about its users. And you can use that information to reach people in your local area.
This way, they find out about your business – through the content that you create and share.
Quick Local Business Example
Say, you’re a chiropractor, and your typical customer is male and aged 45-65.
Create a post with your content marketing copy, and promote it; telling Facebook that you want to target men aged 45-65 in your local area.
And – just like that – your marketing content will appear in people’s timelines who are likely to be your future customers.
Facebook has this unique ability to target people based on their locality and on a wide range of very subtle and specific niches and demography categories.
And you’re totally missing out if you’re not using it.
And because your content is valuable, useful, and not directly selling anything, you’re going to get tons of traffic to your website through your promoted content for very little financial investment.
If Facebook recognises that you’re providing useful and valuable content, then they won’t charge the earth – and it will be cheaper still if you produce video content.
Facebook Ads are an incredible way of driving customers to your website and gathering a following on your Page. And once we start creating offers, we can use Facebook Ads to inspire people to sign up.
Click here for my beginners guide to setting up your first Facebook campaign if you’re new to Facebook advertising. Here’s a specific guide on how Chiropractors can use Facebook ads.
Step Four – Create a Free Offer
Creating a reason for people to visit your site (or visit your physical premises) is imperative in local lead generation.
Free offers help you to get people through the door. I don’t mean that literally (although, sometimes, people do step foot through your door).
“Stepping through the door” can mean:
- Someone calling you
- Sending you an email
- Filling in a contact form
- Signing up to a workshop/seminar/webinar
Stepping through the door is an indication that your potential customer has a problem that you can solve. It’s the all-important lead that we’re looking for.
So:
To get more leads online, create more free offers.
- If you’re a dentist, you could offer free whitening
- Chiropractors could offer a free 10-minute back massage
- Personal trainers might offer a free session
Whatever your business, consider what you might be able to give away to get your potential customers to step through the door. Offer them something that they’re going to value, and they’re very likely to come back and pay for it the second time around.
You’re introducing strangers into your funnel, and converting them into potential revenue-generating customers.
Consider how competitive advertising is: it’s not enough to just offer 10% off, because that might still represent a considerable investment for a product or service they’re not sure about.
Give them something for free to show them what they’re missing – then you’re likely to see them stepping through the door on their own accord, armed with cash or a credit card.
Step Five – Start Building Your List
Once you start gathering customer details from local leads, you need somewhere to store them so that you can continue to communicate with those people.
When somebody signs up for the free offer, it’s only the start of the journey; it’s absolutely not the end.
As a business, we need to keep communicating.
If you don’t continue that line of communication, you’re wasting the opportunity that’s been given to you. You don’t want them to forget who you are because they might go to your competitor.
Keep communicating and – most importantly – keep your content interesting and useful.
You’ve probably heard that it takes seven touchpoints before someone is prepared to buy from you. Email marketing allows us to continue and develop through those touchpoints until they’re finally ready to buy,
Step Six – Have A Process to Turn Leads Into Sales
One of the problems I see frequently is that people get leads through free offers and content marketing, but they fail to turn those leads into customers – basically, because they don’t have a process in place.
Consider:
How do you turn a lead into a customer?
If someone gives you their email address, how do you get their phone number so that you can speak to them? If you get them on the phone, how do you structure the conversation to get them to come into the office and buy?
Different businesses need different things. Dig into people’s pain points and try and nurture them towards the end at which they might buy.
Perfect your sales funnel over time and you’ll get more takers.
It’s time to move away from “luck marketing” and develop processes that work, producing positive outcomes for the growth of our businesses.
Get your communications online, get well-known in our area, and have an effective sales funnel that helps you guide leads into customers.
Predictable and consistent.
That’s the way to really move forward – keeping control of your business growth.
Go and get those local leads!
So there you have it: the five best high-impact local lead generation strategies you can start using today.
To recap:
- Use targeted Facebook lead ads to reach your local area
- Create a localized lead magnet relevant exclusively to your target market
- Run a local contest or giveaway which gets people excited
- Create a localized landing page for your brand’s branches
- Go offline to generate local leads face-to-face
Sometimes it can feel like digital marketing strategies apply only to the international, cloud-based tech firms in Silicon Valley.
Conclusion
It’s not just the big guys who can benefit from online lead generation. Even if you’re running a small business, whether it’s landscaping or auto repair, you absolutely can benefit by attracting more leads to your business—this is an area where local businesses are really coming up short. Thanks to the Internet, you no longer have to rely solely on word of mouth or newspaper ads. You can now reach far more people in a lot less time and at a fraction of the cost.
Generating leads for local businesses can be challenging. A good lead generation campaign offers a way to make connections with potential clients while engaging with your audience, and ultimately becoming a trusted source of relevant information. This is why it’s important to track your lead generation campaigns and tailor future campaigns based on the data you’ve learned.