If you’re a business that thrives on leads, you might feel all your old techniques have stopped working. It’s always good to refresh you methods to find new leads. Try these five strategies to grow your business and find new prospects this year.
1. Build Up a Professional Website
Your website works as your digital calling card. Wherever a potential new client hears about your business – either from a referral, an advertisement, or a Google search – they are going to go to your website first. Your site should be clean, contemporary, and easy to navigate. If your website uses outdated technology, if it’s not mobile responsive, or doesn’t feel like it’s been updated recently, prospects may get the impression that your business is also outdated.
At the very least, your website should include basic information about the services you offer and updated contact information. Make sure it lists your most updated address, phone number, and email so prospects can follow up. At the very least, a website puts you on the map as a business that is open and available.
2. Blog Regularly and Gather Readers’ Emails
Unfortunately, it’s not enough to just have a website to get leads for your business. If you want visitors to keep coming back, your site also needs to be updated consistently with new content via a customized blog. Not only does maintaining a blog help engage clients and prospects, but it also boosts SEO, as Google prefers sites that are regularly publishing new, original content.
Whatever you decide to publish (updates about your business, answering common questions, employee or client spotlights, community events, or anything else), just make sure it’s a mix of both original and curated from other sources.
At the bottom of each page, through a pop-up, or on a sidebar, you should include a request that readers join your email newsletter. Many who end up on your site to read a blog or watch a video might not know you have a newsletter if you don’t ask them to sign up. By publishing interesting, helpful content, you’ll encourage readers to sign up to receive more communication from you. This simple call to action can help drive new leads to your list every month.
3. Use Page-Gating for Important Content
If you have a great piece of content on your website, such as a whitepaper, longer video, or downloadable template, consider page gating it. When you gate your content, someone who wants to access that content needs to provide their contact information in order to unlock it.
By gating a piece of content, you ensure that you receive email addresses and information from all interested parties. This turns a casual reader into a lead for your business. Once someone enters their email or phone number to read the white paper, you can send them more similar content, or give them a call to see if they’re interested in learning about your business. Be sure to add these new contacts to the list of emails that receive your newsletter, so you can build up a rapport and keep them engaged if they aren’t yet ready to become a client.
4. Use Facebook Advertising
Increasingly, Facebook is a “pay to play” platform, meaning that if you want to see significant results, you’ll need to pay for them. But luckily, Facebook offers an extremely robust paid advertising feature, which makes it easy to target your specific clients with information catered directly to them. You can send an ad to a specific age group, in a certain income bracket, who live within 30 miles of one zip code, and who have kids. It’s truly amazing how targeted you can get, and you can get started with as little as $10.
If you’re already seeing traffic to your website, you can integrate that data with Facebook via what they call a “Pixel.” Once you have that setup, you can target Facebook advertising directly to people who visited your site. By using a lead generation advertisement, you can re-engage those visitors and gather their contact information.
5. Encourage Online Reviews
When was the last time you went to a new business WITHOUT first looking them up to read reviews? Whether it’s a restaurant, hair salon, mechanic, or, even a financial advisor, people are flocking to Yelp and Google reviews to get insights on a new business. Do you have these pages set up for your business? If not, it’s time to do it. If pages already exist, make sure they have your latest contact information.
Once they’re up, you can ask your current clients to log on and give you a review. Including a small note at the end of your email newsletter, with a link to your Yelp or Google pages, is a good way to encourage reviews.
When a prospective new client looks up your business online and sees that you have a number of positive reviews, they’re more likely to visit your site or contact you.