How to Generate Leads Online and Turn Them into Customers

After all the effort you have put into your business, are you still not making enough sales?

The number one reason why businesses fail to generate sufficient sales is that they don’t nurture their leads. It doesn’t matter if your business is small or big; lead generation and conversion are among the most successful strategies to increase sales.

Some of you may think of it as impossible because of your tight budget? It is a misconception that you need to have a high budget for the generation of online leads. You can attract hundreds of clients in a month just by doing one thing right, i.e., generating online leads for your business.

If your leads are qualified, you can gain the attention of the people who need your product.

WHAT IS A LEAD?

A lead is any person that shows an interest in your brand. How do you know that a person is showing interest? It could be by any of the following actions:

1. Liking or engaging with your brand on social media platforms
2. Visiting your website
3. Subscribing to your newsletter
4. Submitting personal information to receive an offer such as a free trial or discount

In short, leads are people that are not yet your customer but can be if treated correctly. They are your potential customers.

WHAT IS LEAD GENERATION? 

Lead generation is a method of digital marketing used to attract and engage leads, i.e., people that are most likely to buy your product.

Examples of lead generation include email marketing, sale offers, job advertisements, and online content.

WHAT IS THE NEED FOR LEAD GENERATION? 

Yesterday I was going on a picnic with my family. I was running around finding my hiking shoes while holding my fussy nephew in my arms while my dad honked impatiently when my phone rang.

I picked up thinking it might be a work call, and this girl asked me whether I had the time to answer some questions about a new telephone service. She said that it would only take 8 – 10 minutes.

Rather shortly, I told her, no, I don’t have 8 – 10 minutes, I don’t even have one!

For me, the phone call was a mild frustration, but for the phone company, it was one less customer.

This is why online lead generation is important.

When a person shows an interest in your brand organically, then the journey from lead to a consumer is more natural.

Imagine if I had looked up the new telephone company myself and then they would have called me to tell me about their service, I would have been more receptive.

Moreover, having more leads for your business leads to more information about the behavior of your customers. Based on this information, you can put forward a strong marketing strategy to target the content and offers that are most suitable to your ideal customers.

HOW TO GENERATE LEADS?

The next question that might come to your mind is how to generate leads. If you ask your fellow business people, they may tell you a strategy that is the best suitable to create leads for them, but that might or might not work for you.

Therefore, you need first to identify which lead is ideal for your content and your business type. For example, for carpet cleaning London a more suitable incentive would be bundle discounts. On the other hand, a book publishing company may give free page previews.

Testing and analyzing data is one of the best ways to find out whether a lead generation strategy will work for your business or not.

1. Optimize Your Site

Optimizing your entire website is one of the most successful lead generation and conversion strategies. You must consider both on-page and off-page SEO to optimize your site. You can do it in the following ways:

• Add a contact form in the sidebar of your website page.
• Add a live chat icon so that the visitors may contact you quickly.
• Make your webpage as interactive as possible.
• Make sure that your website is easy to navigate and that visitors find what they are looking for quickly.

By optimizing your website, you can increase the number of leads two to three times the original leads.

2. Email Marketing

Not many visitors buy products from your website on their first visit. Therefore, it is important to create a strategy to make customers visit the website again and again. One of the best strategies for this purpose is email marketing.

If you have the visitors’ email addresses, you can approach them with informational content, promotional offers, and visually appealing content for conversion.

For example, an app displays a contest on the website to every new visitor on that website. Next to the context, an instruction box leads the new visitors to enter their email address before they enter the lucky draw and get a discount.

When the visitors put in their email addresses, the website owners get email addresses. Using this information, they can send emails to visitors, which will bring back the customers to their website, which increases sales.

3. Use Lead Generation Software

Just like you use productivity apps and software for other business functions, you must use them for lead generation as well. Lead generation software help you find, nurture, and convert your leads more easily as compared to the manual option.

Since you can generate leads from multiple online and offline sources, it makes sense to use software to manage all leads. Hubspot, Unbounce, and Leadpages are some excellent examples.

You can also use complimentary software like Clickmeter to target, monitor, track, and share your links for your lead generation content. Such software help you monitor the effectiveness and consumer response of your strategies easily.

4. A Healthy Relationship with Consumers

Giving value to customers leads to more significant leads and customer satisfaction. To be friendly with your consumers is not a difficult task. When you think about your favorite brand, what draws you towards them, why do you follow them on their social media accounts, and why do you interact with them?

The thought that came to your mind just by reading this is the same for your customers. Give a reason to your customers to come back to your website. Presenting your content in an engaging way, sharing informative videos that might attract your customers, offering some discounts or coupons, etc., can help you gain your customers’ attention.

5. Unique Content and Active Social Media

Since there is so much competition in the market, you need to come up with unique content ideas. Your content should be thought-provoking and should be exciting.

The best way to find out this is to dig deep into the customer support of your website. The questions that arise there are the ones in which the customers are most interested.

Active social media accounts are a need of the time as social media presence increases lead generation leading to more customers and more sales. Brands that respond to their customers quickly get more sales.

6. Imply Urgency

Humans are naturally drawn towards unique and limited items. We see phrases like limited stock, act now, only one day left, etc., and they naturally make us want to buy the item at once. Sometimes even when we don’t need it!

Therefore, you may use urgency to convert your leads. You can use flash sales, limited-time discounts, discounts on limited stock, and limited-time giveaways to avail of this marketing strategy.

Keep in mind that every business and its customers are different. Therefore, analyze the consumer behavior of your target audience before implementing this strategy for effective results.

TAKEAWAY – GENERATING LEADS INTO CUSTOMERS TAKES TIME BUT PAYS WELL

Lead generation done right can help increase your website leads and boost the business. But the key to success lies in patience and consistency. It is not possible to obtain millions of customers and followers by days or months. Therefore, keep working on your website, content, SEO, lead generation, and anything that can help you boost your business.

Author’s Bio:

Nouman provides ghostwriting and copywriting services. His educational background in the technical field and business studies helps him in tackling topics ranging from career and business productivity to web development and digital marketing. He occasionally writes articles for carpet cleaning.