Lead generation is the process of attracting and converting lead prospects into individuals with interest in your products or services. Creating a good lead generation strategy is essential for the success of any business—regardless of its size or shape. Today, there are numerous lead generation strategies that local businesses can use to attract potential customers. However, most of these businesses prefer using the strategies that work best for them since lead generation differs depending on the industry.
In this post, we shall discuss the top lead generation strategies for local businesses. Read on for more information.
Concentrate your efforts on lead capture
Create a regular process for your local business to capture any lead information whenever you interact with potential customers. Also, you should train your employees on this process, and stress its importance for the growth of your business.
Now, you need to ask the right questions whenever you are interested in getting direct responses. Moreover, you should gather useful information that makes it easier for you to make decisions that benefit your business. Things like trials, discounts, and coupons are very effective when it comes to capturing lead information physically.
Also, demos, white papers, and forms are effective strategies for engaging with your online audience and capturing their useful information.
If you use LinkedIn for online business or marketing and provide several promotional offers to your customer to make profit it is very obvious. You may also try out automation services for LinkedIn to engage with more people and make more profit for your business.
Use an incentive-based referral method
Today, word-of-mouth advertising has become more important than ever when it comes to generating leads for local businesses. Besides, how customers spread the word about their preferred businesses continues to change with technology. With that said, most businesses continue to adopt customer referral programs in their lead generation strategies because they are easier to track and quantify.
So, if you own a local business, you can choose to have an incentive-based customer referral program to help you in generating leads. For example, if you sell your products online, you can create customized referral codes for your clients and prospects—so, all your new clients get a discount after their first purchase, while your local customers get referral discounts.
While you can use this strategy for your physical store, it works perfectly for online businesses since your customers can text or email referral codes to their friends.
Implement local SEO
Establishing a strong web presence for your local business and optimizing the website can go a long way to attract leads for your local business. Certain tools such as Google Places can help to get your local business listed and found by online customers. Also, you can use the Google Keyword Tool to search the common terms used by local customers to find your services or products.
Finding and engaging with the most influential local bloggers can help your lead generation strategies. Build a strong relationship with them, and offer to create blog posts regularly. Besides, you can use different social media platforms to drive traffic to your website—don’t forget to use lead magnets on all your social media platforms to capture information.
Direct mail
While direct mail marketing looks like an outdated strategy, implementing this tactic on your lead generation strategies can prove to be beneficial for your local business. Rather than sending out unsolicited coupons to your current clients, you can use the following tactics:
● Send compelling flyers with unbeatable offers
● Target smaller, more interested audiences
● Capitalize on data-driven referral codes
Now, becoming more selective with your direct mail lead generation strategies, it becomes easier to invest more in the items you are mailing to your prospective leads. Besides, this allows you to offer better coupons, discounts, and other incentives to attract new leads that can easily convert. Think of direct mail as the first step into attracting leads to visit your website or your physical store, instead of your final step attracting new clients.
Promote your business locally
Most local customers are willing to promote their local business. customers will purchase from your local businesses whenever it’s convenient for them, if they are informed about your local business, or if they have built a good relationship with you. Interestingly, they will be willing to pay more for what you are offering once they become loyal to your business.
Several organizations support local businesses since they believe that these businesses are the backbone of the economy. Joining any of these organizations can keep you updated and give you direct access to local leads.
Bottom Line
Please note that you don’t need to try all these strategies altogether. In fact, doing that can be a bad idea. And why is that? No two local businesses are the same. Although these lead generation strategies have proved to be successful for different local businesses, that might not be the same case with your business.
You might be surprised to realize that only two or three work for your local business. That’s perfectly fine—so long as your strategies are working. Take your time to evaluate each of these strategies in the context of your resources, revenue, competitive edge, and marketing goals before implementing them.
At the end of the day, however, you need to understand the B2B lead generation importance, but there isn’t any universal formula for growing your business.
