How to Generate More leads for Small Businesses

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.

Lead Generation Ideas for Small Business

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, City search, and other local directories.
• Encourage customers to post reviews about your business. When asked, the majority of satisfied customers do oblige.

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.

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.

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.

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.

9. Run events

• Host webinars.
• Speak at conferences and local events.
• Participate in expos and give attendees a reason to engage.

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).
• Send newsletters and meaningful emails that inform recipients of helpful content you’ve published on your site.

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.

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.

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.