How to generate sales leads

While your business may have an established customer base, it’s important to constantly look for new customers. Generating sales leads is essential to securing new customers, and there are multiple strategies you can use to acquire those leads. 

How to generate sales leads

If you need to generate new sales leads, these tried-and-true strategies can help.

Create and leverage gated content

Consider creating gated content that you offer to potential customers in exchange for their email addresses. Products like white papers, case studies, podcasts, and webinars can not only help establish your authority among your target audience, but they can also help build your email database.

It’s important to invest time in making these products valuable to your audience. Think about your audience’s pain points and the questions they have, then create content that fulfills those needs.

Invest in content marketing

Content marketing can help drive traffic to your site, and when paired with gated content offers, it can be an effective way to build your email marketing lists.

Implement a blogging strategy for your business. Optimize all of your content for search engines, and focus on building backlinks to build your blog’s authority as well. That SEO content will appear in searches, potentially bringing new leads to your business website.

Build your social media platforms

Social media marketing can also help generate sales leads, but you’ll need to find ways to capture email addresses so you can reach out to those leads outside of social media.

You can build your social media following by posting quality content and engaging with your audience. It’s also a good idea to consider using offers like giveaways or gated content to encourage your followers to subscribe to your email marketing lists.

Use email marketing effectively

Email marketing is a low-cost but highly effective element of any marketing campaign. If you’ve already built a base of current customers, you can quickly reach them with new product offerings.

Current customers can be a source of valuable referrals. Consider establishing a referral program to incentivize customers to reach out to friends and family about products and services they feel would be a good fit. Referrals often generate highly qualified leads, making it easier to close the deal.

Design a high-quality landing page

While all of the above lead generation strategies can be effective, you need a way to capture information for new leads. Your landing page will usually be that device, but a poor-quality landing page can cause leads to fall off before their information ever gets into your sales pipeline.

You can drive leads to your landing page from your blog, your social media, and more. You can also use a landing page to capture contact information before giving leads access to your gated content.

The landing page needs to be easy to use and visually appealing. Include only the fields that you need — like a first name and email address — so leads can easily and quickly complete the form. Make sure that the submission button is big and easy to see and that the landing page is optimized for mobile users.

Jotform’s direct sales lead form is a good example of a way to easily capture lead information. The form collects important information — such as a phone number and company name — ensuring marketers will be well informed when they follow up with the lead. 

It also includes two fields where the lead can provide extra information or ask questions. That helps facilitate an engaging follow-up where your business could provide the lead with important information or advice, adding value to the call.

Follow up with those leads

Generating sales leads is just the first part of the equation. You also need to effectively organize those leads, and your sales team needs to promptly follow up with them.

To capture and organize leads, consider using a customer relationship management (CRM) system. Your CRM might be an Excel sheet shared in the cloud for easy editing, or it could be a platform like HubSpot or Salesforce. Whatever you use, make sure that your entire marketing team can access it so that all team members stay updated and work together to follow up with leads.

Developing a marketing strategy that continuously generates sales leads is an effective way to continue growing your business. Remember that lead follow-up is essential in converting those leads into sales. With a well-designed sales funnel and proper follow-up, you can grow your customer base and your business profits.

AUTHOR
A journalist and digital consultant, John Boitnott has worked for TV, newspapers, radio, and Internet companies for 25 years. He’s written for Inc.com, Fast Company, NBC, Entrepreneur, USA Today, and Business Insider, among others.

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