Recent studies show that roughly 20% of small businesses fail in the first year of operation. By year-five, more than half of all small business owners are forced to close down shop.
Why does this happen?
While no two businesses are exactly the same, business failures traditionally come down to one thing – not making enough money. So how do you make enough money to ensure you don’t join the ranks of all the failed businesses that have gone before you?
The simplest answer is to maximize your small business lead generation. Leads turn into interest, and interest turns into sales.
We’re here to teach you the most effective lead generation tactics for modern business owners. Keep reading for all the details.
Perfect the User’s Website Experience
Your primary source for lead generation is your business website. This is where prospective customers will come to learn more about your business and your products or services.
Your website will be the first impression consumers get of your brand – it needs to be a good one. Optimize your web design and performance.
User-Friendliness
To make a good impression on website visitors and ensure they stick around long enough to be influenced, your website must be user-friendly. It also needs to load quickly. If your website is slow, people will get frustrated or lose interest and leave before you have a chance to generate a solid lead.
Furthermore, your website needs to feel organic. It must be intuitive and easy to navigate. You don’t want users getting lost or having trouble finding the content they’re looking for.
Mobile Optimization
Over 81% of Americans own smartphones. We use them for everything from surfing Facebook to online shopping. Therefore, your website must be optimized for mobile devices like smartphones, tablets, iPods, etc.
If your website doesn’t load correctly, is slow, or poorly formatted for mobile device users, you’ll miss out on countless leads and potential sales.
Strive to Improve Your SEO Ranking
Search engine optimization is one of the most important factors in small business lead generation. SEO is the coding used by search engines to find the most relevant content based on keyword searches. This coding is found in the text, images, videos, headers, titles, and more.
Keywords
Research effective keywords pertaining to your business, niche, products, and services. Learn how to embed SEO keywords into multiple forms of media, like those listed above. Additionally, create a blog for your website full of articles containing these keywords.
As a local business, you also need to focus on localized keywords. These include geographic keywords such as your city and state as well as phrases like “near me.”
Credibility
Search engine sites like Google determine your website’s SEO ranking based on other SEO factors. It gauges how credible your website is to make sure they’re sending online traffic to the most relevant websites.
You can increase your SEO credibility by using internal links guiding website visitors all over your site. For example, using links in an article to guide readers to a product or contact page.
You also need external links linking to other credible websites. This is common for siting sources for statistics and other important information.
Finally, reach out to other blogs and business websites to get backlinks to your website. If other websites are linked to yours, it improves your SEO credibility.
If you don’t know much about SEO coding, we highly recommend hiring a digital marketing service that specializes in SEO and local SEO for small businesses.
Build a Presence on Social Media
Your online presence extends past your website. If you want to maximize your small business lead generation, you must be active on social media, one of the best lead generation tools available to entrepreneurs.
Create a business profile on Facebook and invite all of your personal friends and follows to follow your business account. This can all be done with a click of a button if the two profiles are linked.
Activity
Once your Facebook profile is active, you can’t just expect followers to come flocking to your page. Like the regular internet, social media is run by algorithms.
The more you actively post on your page, use the app, and engage, the more visible your profile will be. Respond to comments and messages from your followers and use the app to engage with other users.
Organic Marketing
You can use social media as a free lead generation strategy. You don’t have to pay to organically market to your followers and encourage them to spread your influence. When you post content, ask people to like, share, and comment on your posts, which will make them visible to people outside of your current followers.
Additionally, consider running competitions, raffles, and giveaways to build hype about your brand and promote interest in your products or services. This will also increase your visibility in the community.
Paid Advertising
Building a social media presence will take some time. There’s nothing wrong with paying to expand your influence faster and increase your visibility.
Social media has paid advertising services that allow you to choose the exact demographic of people you want to see your ads. Furthermore, you can dictate how much money you spend each day on advertising.
One of the most beneficial perks of this small business lead generation strategy is that it provides valuable feedback about your ad performance. This feedback tells you how many links clicks, likes, shares, and follows each ad receives. Feedback like this helps business owners streamline their marketing.
Want More Help With Your Small Business Lead Generation?
Learning how to increase your online or digital presence is a bit of a steep learning curve. We understand how overwhelming it can be trying to wrap your head around all of the technical complexities of increasing your small business lead generation.
That’s why companies like us exist – to assist entrepreneurs like you. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can help your business. We offer SEO services, social media marketing and management, campaign management, and more.
We look forward to working with you!