Generating leads is vital for almost any business, including those that generate leads for other businesses. By generating your own leads rather than relying on clients to bring you a constant supply of new business, you have the power to keep generating income — even when you’re not currently working on any projects. Here’s how to get leads and get sales leads for free so you can continue doing business no matter what.
If you aren’t sure how to get paid for lead generation, you’re not alone. It’s a confusing concept and the reality is nothing is really free. You will often pay with a combination of time and money whether you sell directly or through lead generation companies like ours that work with you to create effective sales funnels based on your expertise. That being said, there are ways to cut out some of the costs of lead generation and casting a wide net so it doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor.
If you are looking at lead generation blogs on the internet, then chances are you’re looking for useful information. Unfortunately, there are so many lead generation articles out there that contain rehashed information that’s not even accurate. And if that’s not bad enough, a lot of lead generation advice is either completely misleading or completely wrong. So we compiled this guide to give you some effective ways to increase your lead generation efforts!
To consistently find new leads for your business, you might need to start thinking outside the box and be open to evolving your strategy. Stepping away from standard practices to try new approaches can help you generate leads in unexpected ways.
What’s a quality social media lead?
How you define a quality lead depends on your industry, campaign, and goals. Generally speaking, a quality lead will include useful information and clear signs of intent engage with your business.
It’s worthwhile to remember that when it comes to generating social media leads, quality often matters more than quantity.
Those with the most leads win. Simple.
If you generate more leads, but have an average product – you still win.
Because leads means more revenue. And revenue means more profit (most of the time).
Tip: Jeff uses LeadPages to generate more leads. Start a free trial here.
Let’s unpack 21 smart ways you can generate more leads for your business right now
1. Create Your Digital Footprint
Creating your digital footprint is a multifaceted way to generate leads. This includes using social media channels, creating content such as opinion pieces, thought leadership and comments on third-party posts, engaging with the right focus groups through hashtags, upping your credibility through various associations, memberships and connections—the list can be a long one. Draw an action plan and go for it. – Arthi Rabikrisson, Prerna Advisory
2. Conduct A LinkedIn Lead Program
I think it really depends on the industry you are in and also the speed at which you need to turn leads into sales. For a longer game, I would suggest using content marketing, as this will draw people into your funnel by delivering value, potentially leading to sales in the long term. Otherwise, online is where everything is happening at the moment, so I would look at conducting a LinkedIn lead program. – Andrew Constable, Visualise Solutions MORE FROMFORBES ADVISOR
3. Create Value-Based, Human-Focused Content
Create value-based, human-focused content in various mediums based on your unique buyer’s journey. Companies spend far too much time being product-focused in their content and not enough time correlating their products with how a client’s problems can be fixed. By taking a value-based approach to content marketing, companies will be able to bridge the trust gap and shorten the sales cycle. – Yunche Wilson, SolomonBell Consulting
4. Ask Satisfied Clients For Referrals
Your best way of finding great leads is always referrals from satisfied clients. Don’t be afraid to ask these folks for their ideas or for video testimonials, which you can put on your website or in short email links. Nothing is better for business than having happy customers talk positively about you and tell stories that will resonate with your prospects. – Jay McDonald, Middleton McDonald Group, Inc.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
5. Lead From A Place Of Passion
How do you attract those who would value having a relationship with you? Most will lead with a sales mindset. To differentiate yourself, start with understanding your “why” and lead with a passion for what you can contribute to an organization. When you lead from a place of passion, it will be accepted as genuine and can lead to trusted relationships. – Bryan Powell, Invite Change
6. Focus On Delivering Differentiated Value
“Go-givers” get more. The best leads are the ones that your current customers proactively generate for you. Therefore, a focus on making sure your customers gain differentiated value will be the key to generating leads at the lowest cost. – Venkataraman Subramanyan, Tripura Multinational
7. Host Educational Webinars
Webinars are wonderful, “one-to-many” marketing vehicles that allow you to share ideas, educate and demonstrate your skill for your target audience. Those who click on your invitation have an interest in your subject; those who attend likely have a real need and are worthy of follow-up. And webinar invitations sent via email and social media also serve as great branding tools. – Jennifer Wilson, ConvergenceCoaching, LLC
8. Write Blog Posts About Current Or Ideal Clients
Write blog posts, each profiling one of your clients or someone who is a good match for your target market. You’ll not only be helping them build awareness of their businesses, but the subjects of each post will also share the pieces with their respective networks. Their reputation and their trust in you will encourage others to get in touch with you. – Lee Eisenstaedt, Leading with Courage Academy
9. Position Yourself As A Thought Leader On LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a powerful tool to authentically generate high-quality leads. A third of my business comes by way of LinkedIn. The key to using LinkedIn is to position yourself as a thought leader. You can do this by delivering content that allows prospective clients to see your value. Clients will naturally seek you out as a result. – Kyle Elliott, MPA, CHES , CaffeinatedKyle.com
10. Know Where Your Target Market Spends Time Online
First, you need to know where your target market is and where they visit frequently. In the old days, it would be a physical location. Today, it’s a virtual location. Are they on Facebook or LinkedIn? What websites do they frequent? Once you know their hangout spots, you can narrow down your marketing to target those specific sites, locations or publications. – Cory Swain, Advisors Excel
11. Leverage Social Media Hashtags
It sounds quirky, but I had a third party generate a hashtag list for me. The hashtags were relevant to the clients I was seeking to attract. I found that every post was reaching more potential clients, as opposed to me just dropping information with my fingers crossed. Hashtags can be strategic and targeted, offering a great way to leverage your current social media exposure and attract new clients. – Amera McCoy, McCoy Consulting LLC
12. Ask For Testimonials
One of the best ways to generate leads is to ask for them. Testimonial advertising through word of mouth (face-to-face interaction) is the most valuable form of marketing. Asking your clients to share the work you do for them and the value it brings to their business is a great way to generate leads. Start asking your clients to refer names of people they know who could benefit from your services. – Jon Dwoskin, The Jon Dwoskin Experience
13. Talk To Your Ideal Clients About Your Offering
Combine the modern (technology) with the timeless (connection). Before launching a new program or service, think about five ideal clients you would like to work with. Reach out and just have a virtual conversation with them about your offering: How many times a week would they ideally like it? How much would they feel comfortable investing? How long would they prefer the duration to be? – Kyla Mitsunaga, WITH Warriors LLC
14. Get Crystal Clear On Your Brand Story
The easiest way to take the stress out of dealing with changing algorithms, updates on platforms, tools coming and going and comparing yourself to your competition is to get crystal clear about your secret sauce (aka your brand). What’s your story? What value can you provide? How do you do it? Who benefits the most from it? That fact is, your story is the only thing no one can compete with. A job can be done by anyone. – Petra Zink, impaCCCt
15. Don’t forget your signature
Make your email signature effective by embedding a link that redirects the reader to relevant content. With the help of link integration, the chance of maximum web traffic flow towards your content will be higher.
If you implement HTML coding in your emails, make sure to test it on all the platforms to make sure that everything is working fine.
16. Create a game app
Depending on your audience, but many statistics suggest that people spend more time on game apps rather than reading blogs. Seeing people are active, it may be possible to use a game app to bring leads to your business. But, it can only be possible, if you build a creative game that can directly shift the web traffic towards your business.
This can be quite an expensive adventure especially if you are offering the app for free – but it will definitely add a unique element to your marketing efforts.
17. Participate in forums
Forums are the perfect place to get to know your customers more intimately. The better you know your customers, the easier it is to contact them with a potential offer.
Be active on forums, share your views with the members and answer their questions.
18. Interview influencers
Reach out to influencers who your customers respect and interview them for your blog or social channels.
Keep it as simple as possible by asking short/sharp questions, and then ask them to share the final product.
Your potential customers will see this as proof of your credibility and increase your chance of attracting new leads.
19. Share videos on YouTube
YouTube is not just a video hosting service, it’s a massive search engine. It is more popular than any other social media platform like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.
As compared to other social networking platforms, all the posts remain there for a very long time. Thus, this is the best channel for sending referral web traffic in the long-term.
This platform enables the you to create and maintain your own channel where you can share videos regarding particular events, imperative tutorials and other things. This will help you standout from your competitors and attract more leads to your business.
20. Offer a free software tool on your site
If you can offer an easy-to-use software tool on your site, for free, it will build trust with your audience.
One example is the website analyzer available on Neil Patel’s blog Quick Sprout. Or for another example, check out Agorapulse’s free social media marketing tools for Facebook and Twitter:
More trust inevitably means more leads.
21. Add a Quiz to your blog
Posting a quiz to your blog can make your content engaging and draw more attention from an online audience. In fact, it can easily entice the readers to share their feedback about your blog and article. This will also help you establish a stronger relationship with your audience and get more leads in the long term.
What is the best social media platform for generating leads?
The best platform for generating leads is the platform your customers use. That said, most agree that Facebook is the best site for social media lead generation.
Why? For starters, more than 2.45 billion people use Facebook every month—making it the social media platform with the largest population. Facebook also offers some of the sharpest tools to collect leads on its platform.
This doesn’t mean that marketers should feel compelled to use Facebook or rule out other social media sites. For example, according to LinkedIn, 89% of B2B marketers turn to LinkedIn for lead generation. These marketers say LinkedIn generates more than two times as many leads than other social channels.
Before starting a social media lead campaign, make sure you are familiar with the demographics of the different platforms. If they line up with your target market, it’s probably a good fit.
Conclusion
Lead generation…oh how I love you. We’re clearly interested in learning from each other. And that’s what lead generation does: both parties walk away with different information, usually on the topic of money (or, rather, the lack of money, or the lack of getting paid). This is how the sales process starts. Lead generation is not just selling in the very beginning. It happens at any point during the path to sale. In fact, it can be said that lead generation is an art form when done correctly
Increase your sales leads with the best lead generation firms. While you can use social media for lead generation, traditional marketing channels like cold calling and trade shows are still necessary to grow your business. This is why many businesses turn to lead generation firms to find new leads in a very efficient manner.