Magnet symbolising inbound marketing

Lead generation strategies for your business

by

The main purpose of your online lead generation strategy is to get people to visit your website. 

Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics and digital marketing campaigns depending on platform you choose to capture leads. So, we thought we’d take a closer look at some of the tools and the strategies you can employ to help increase website traffic and increase your chance of quality leads.  

PPC lead generation  

Pay Per Click or PPC is a way of advertising on Search Engine Results pages (SERPs). Google ads are generally the most popular. With Google getting 3.5 billion searches a day, you can see why. PPC is a great option for lead generation but it’s important to get the content of your ad right to entice a click in the first instance. 

We also recommend creating a specific landing page so that your web page reflects what people have clicked to see. This will help you avoid bounce rate as those clicks will be from warm leads.  

You then need to make sure you have good keywords targeted to your audience as well as negative keywords to help extend your budget further.  

Our blog what is PPC has further background detail on this lead generation tactic.  

LinkedIn lead generation  

LinkedIn is a great B2B social media networking platform. When attending events, even virtually, there’s always the networking opportunities to add contacts to your network post event. By messaging either prior to an event or post event, you have a great hook to personalise your message of introduction which is likely to get a connection made.  

With more remote working, LinkedIn has really come to the fore for networking and lead generation. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great asset to grow your network by being truly targeted to find the right prospects for your business. Learn more about how LinkedIn can help you grow you discover prospects.  

Facebook lead generation  

If you think of Facebook as a search engine, having your business present on this social media platform at the very least offers a place for you to be found with contact details, business hours and your latest updates. But most importantly it offers reassurance and brand awareness about your business services and products.  

For some businesses it may not necessarily be the primary social network platform but it’s always useful to post updates to help drive traffic organically back to your website. If anything, it’s important for increasing brand awareness and improving SEO (search engine optimisation). 

Facebook Ads was launched in 2007. Facebook Lead Ads are all about lead generation and the process is simplified to attract prospects. Pre-populated forms make it easy for people to fill out forms on their mobile. You can customise forms to improve the quality of the leads you attract.  

Your website and lead generation tools  

Eye-catching call to action buttons are essential on a website. It helps guide the visitor – your potential clients – and helps them navigate the web page. Also create pop-up boxes for email sign up forms to your website. This can be achieved with a lead generation tool such as Hubspot. 

A virtual tool such as Hotjar has a heatmap which represents how visitors to your website are navigating their way around your site. You can see where site visitors spend time and where they don’t.   

Tips for campaigns  

It’s important to organise leads so that you can make it a successful lead generation campaign. This is where lead generation tools and software can help. They can help you understand more about the people visiting your website and what pages they are interested in so that you can tailor information accordingly. It can help you capture email addresses simply. Or understand what they looked at on your website before completing a form.  

As a Hubspot partner, we can help you with marketing automation and CRM for your business to help make a really effective lead generation campaign. 

What’s important about any lead generation campaign is to continue to be insightful with your communication, providing answers to challenges that you know your customers face. Your ongoing content marketing plan should factor in where prospects are on their buyer’s journey. Someone at the beginning of the buyer’s journey might be interested in insight like an ebook, whilst someone who’s now familiar with your company might be more interested in a free trial or demo. 

Inbound marketing agency in Surrey

If you’re looking for qualified leads become a lead generation magnet with the help of Smart Cow. Take a closer look at our marketing services or book a consultation and we can discuss a digital marketing strategy that’s best for your business.

We specialise in digital marketing for accountants as well as providing digital marketing services and web design for local businesses within Croydon.

What to consider when embarking on your social media strategy

Guide to LinkedIn for business

by

LinkedIn, the social media platform that allows you to build and engage your professional network, has launched a comprehensive guide to LinkedIn for businesses. 

With over 30 million companies on LinkedIn and 675 million users, LinkedIn offers an influential social media platform for businesses to increase brand awareness with an interested audience.  

If you are a business that regularly engages on LinkedIn or you are looking to grow your network and enhance your lead generation strategy, this guide will help you get the most from the social media channel.   

The guide includes advice on how to tell your brand’s story on LinkedIn. It offers social media management tips, community management advice, information on paid social and ways on how you can drive business forward with your LinkedIn page.  

Understand your audience 

What’s key with using LinkedIn for your business, as with any marketing activity you embark on, it’s crucial that you know your target audience. This way you can create content that is relevant for them and ensures that your messaging will be of interest and ultimately lead to engagement.  

When using LinkedIn, it’s important to remember that it is a business focussed channel and to keep content tailored with this in mind. Thinking about how your business services or products will help your target audience will really help engagement and generation of quality leads.  

Now that many more people are working remotely and virtual events are the fashion for now, and probably for the foreseeable future, linking in with prospects is much more prevalent and somewhat expected.  

But you also need to remember that your employees are also on LinkedIn so encouraging them to share and like company content will help extend your reach. As the LinkedIn guide says: ‘your employees are your greatest asset and typically have 10x the reach of your LinkedIn page.’ 

Keep content fresh 

As we’ve mentioned before in our blog, by tailoring your content to your audience not only will this help position you as a thought leader in your field but also builds brand awareness and trust. But it’s not just about talking about your own products and services.  

The LinkedIn guide reminds readers to ‘mix up content’ and encourages platform users to follow a ‘4-1-1 rule.’ If you share one piece of content about your company/brand, then share ‘an update from another source and four pieces of content by others.’ This could be an interesting article from a publication, or a new report just launched. All of which should be relevant to your target audience and be from a credible source that has similar values to your brand or is perhaps a client, supplier or partner.  

Social media agency  

If you’ve been embarking on more digital marketing, including social media for your business, but need some guidance or support, we’re a social media agency in Croydon working with local businesses including accounting firms. We work closely with companies on their online lead generation which includes social media strategies.

So, if you’re looking to improve your social media presence as part of your overall marketing strategy book a FREE consultation with us. Let’s see what marketing avenues and social networks are right for your business and which tactics can help you reach potential clients and achieve business growth. Set up a time for a chat and let’s see if there’s anything we can do to support you with a social media campaign or other digital marketing services. 

SEO online shopping

Why investment in organic search can help in a crisis period

by

Increasing your online presence in organic search should be the top of any business inbound marketing strategy. If it wasn’t prior to 2020, then now more than ever it should be. As more people are relying on online search to shop, search for services and communicate, a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy is vital, especially to small businesses and start-ups, to help your website be seen in the noise.  

With marketing budgets for print advertising taking a hit due to COVID, many marketers shifted to organic search.  

The reason businesses opted for SEO is that it helps a business be seen online and helped maintain presence during the crisis. As many companies had to change business model, such as restaurants turning to takeaway services, if the online world wasn’t already important it became essential compared to a poster in an establishments window. The footfall had moved online therefore SEO provided the capability of helping businesses stand out.  

Local search rankings

With three in five (59%) consumers saying they have used more local services during lockdown, the importance of visibility online is crucial. The Deloitte report goes on to say one in three (32%) used new brands, products or services that they hadn’t heard of during the lockdown.

Therefore, it’s clear that having presence online opens up new opportunities with prospects and increased brand awareness.  By ensuring content on your website includes relevant local information ensures that you are targeted and can help you improve in local search engine rankings.

Organic search and your website  

When people search Google, SEO or local search is a way for businesses being seen by local potential customers. This is where companies that invested in organic search at early lockdown reaped the benefits as an SEO strategy is long-term as you need to keep up refreshing your site with mew, original content and keywords to maintain and increase your rankings in search engine results. 

This is because search engines look for triggers such as content on a website that is tailored for the area you’re targeting. 

Backlinks from referring domains including your Google My Business listing and your social media networks, help to identify your business as quality and trustworthy for the search engines to return in results pages.  

Search Engine Optimisation for increased online presence  

The crisis period may have subsided for the moment as businesses are opening and services resuming for most sectors, but now is not the time to draw back from your online presence.

Continued investment in organic search is a cost-effective digital marketing tactic ideal for SME’s to continue to grow their online market share even in these unprecedented times. 

Digital marketing and SEO company in Croydon

As an inbound marketing agency, we provide digital and inbound marketing for accountants and local businesses.

Marketing is all about building awareness of your products and services. With approximately 7 touch points needed for a sale or sign up to a service, it’s important to constantly get your message out there to increase brand awareness. That’s where digital marketing can help. From local SEO to blog page and social media engagement, there’s a mix of tactics to get your business out there – you just need to be targeted.

We work closely with local businesses in Croydon providing SEO services. Get in touch for a free consultation to see what digital marketing services are best for your business and how an SEO campaign could prove beneficial for your business.

Email marketing

How to use email as part of your marketing strategy

by

With a flurry of marketing activity and communication with existing clients when lockdown started, you could be forgiven for thinking that you can start to ease up on your communication. However, now is not the time to stop your marketing.

It’s so important to keep up the informative messages of support that you shared with clients and prospect at early lockdown stages. If your last email or social message was about closing your business or working remotely, you really need to start thinking about sharing up to date news to encourage client retention and new business.  

This is where email marketing can be so effective. With so many people working remotely, email acts as advertising for your virtual shop window. Rather than strolling down the street looking at a shop or business window, the billboard is coming to your email inbox.  

Here’s three tips when considering email marketing as part of your communications strategy.  

1. Targeted email marketing content  

When you write your emails always write to your target audience. It’s always a good idea to think that you are sending your email to one person so you can make content really personal. With relevant content it will help with open rate for a more successful email marketing campaign.  

Our blog on creating an online persona for your business can help you with getting your content really targeted to your audience.  

Remember to offer useful tips and advice, industry insight as well as highlight any relevant offers you are providing that may help their business. 

2. Cleanse your email lists 

With huge changes to businesses due to COVID, cleansing your email distribution list should be high on your agenda.  

If you’ve distributed emails during this time then you’ll be aware of a higher bounce rate then perhaps you have done previously, this will be due to businesses changing staff, furloughed staff and unfortunately companies having to reduce employees.  

Monitor the bounce rate and make changes accordingly. It’s better to have a smaller mailing list of qualified and quality contacts than a large list of emails that don’t reach their recipient.  

All the while you must make sure that your emails are GDPR compliant. Ensure that you have a visible and clear unsubscribe option in the footer when you distribute your email.

If you have a pop-up box on your website to gather email addresses then ensure that you are transparent in that you are using their email for your e-newsletter updates and nothing else.  

We can help you with adding this pop-up call-to-action function to your website to encourage potential customers to sign up to receive your e-shots.

3. Keep in regular contact  

As part of you content marketing plan factor in a weekly or monthly e-newsletter. However regular is up to you. It’s about what you think you can manage to ensure that you remain consistent. If you send a monthly round up of news, then make sure you send this on the first working day of every month.    

As part of this consistency ensure you have a branded email template that you can update each time, this helps with brand awareness, a professional look and recipients become more familiar with you.

A great time saver for content is to repurpose blogs that you write throughout the month. You can edit content down for your e-newsletter. Then add a link with a click through back to the full article to read more.  

Email marketing agency London

We’re a digital marketing company with offices in London and Croydon. We offer a range of inbound marketing tactics for businesses including email marketing for accountants, professional services firms and SMEs.

Book a free consultation with us to chat about your next email campaign, growing your email distribution list and using email as a lead generator.

Facebook Linkedin Instagram Youtube Envelope X-twitter