Lead Generation

What is Lead Generation?

As a small business owner, generating new leads is paramount to the longevity and success of your business. However, the term “lead generation” can often be thrown around without a proper understanding of what it entails and why it matters. Here, we explain what lead generation is, why it matters to small businesses, and provide some tips for successful lead generation so that you can start bringing more people into your sales funnel! 

Lead generation

Firstly, it’s important to define what lead generation is. At its core, lead generation is the practice of identifying, attracting and converting potential customers into actual buyers. Essentially, it encompasses all the strategies and tactics used to generate interest in your business, product or service to nurture them into becoming loyal customers. This can be achieved through various methods such as PPC advertising, referrals and search engine optimisation (SEO) through to email marketing and social media marketing.

The importance of lead generation for small businesses cannot be understated. The ability to acquire new customers will ultimately lead to an increase in sales revenue, which is crucial for the survival of small businesses. Without a dedicated focus on lead generation, businesses risk stagnation, or worse – failure. By implementing lead generation strategies, small businesses can begin to attract new prospective buyers, grow their customer base, and increase their overall profitability.

Tips for successful lead generation strategy

  1. Ensure that your website is optimised for lead capture by adding forms, CTAs, and landing pages throughout your website.
  2. Offer noticeable incentives such as discounts, ebooks, free trials, or exclusive content to incentivise potential customers.
  3. Develop a strong content marketing strategy that actively engages with potential customers and provides valuable content to position you as a thought leader.
  4. Leverage the power of SEO by publishing quality content on a regular basis, optimising your website for keywords, and building quality backlinks.
  5. Ensure you have social media presence as a channel to publish your content.
  6. Never underestimate the power of referrals; building relationships with your current customers can lead to valuable word-of-mouth marketing and long-lasting customer loyalty. 

Build your lead generation strategy

Understanding the importance of lead generation and implementing successful strategies is vital for small business growth. By defining what lead generation is, why it matters, and some effective strategies, you can begin to generate more leads, expand your customer base, and ultimately increase your revenue.

Remember that lead generation is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it’s important to continuously monitor and refine your strategies as consumer behaviours and market trends change. Don’t let a lack of leads hinder the success of your small business – start implementing lead generation tactics today. 

Contact Smart Cow Marketing to help plan your digital marketing strategy for 2024! 

content

Content for effective digital marketing

As a small business owner, you may be wondering how you can improve your website’s ranking on search engine result pages (SERPs) while also targeting your ideal audience. One effective strategy is to create different types of content that both engage your target audience and improve your search engine optimisation (SEO).

Here, we’ll go through some content ideas that digital marketing agencies use to improve website visibility and attract the right customers to your business.

Content tips to improve SEO and attract customers

Start with a blog: A blog or news webpage is one of the most effective ways to create sustainable SEO rankings for your website. Regular blog updates improve website visibility, attract and engage new visitors, and create opportunities for backlinks to your website. By updating your blog regularly with industry-specific content and targeting keywords relevant to your company, your website can boost your search engine ranking, ultimately driving traffic and leads.

Engage with visual content: Today, visual content such as videos, infographics and photos are increasingly becoming more popular, necessary and impactful. According to a recent study, visual content gets shared 40 times more on social media and is much more easily digested by the viewer. When creating visual content, ensure that it is relevant, high-quality and visually appealing. This will help boost your chances of it being shared, and it will attract viewers who are more likely to stay on your website longer, resulting in improved SEO.

Invest in SEO-optimised landing pages: Creating SEO-optimised landing pages is another key strategy for attracting quality website and organic traffic. Landing pages are an essential part of a digital marketing campaign that can help to improve search engine rankings and increase conversions.

Often used in partnership with a Google Ads PPC campaign, with appropriate and relevant content, high-quality images, and clear calls to action, landing pages provide a memorable means of engaging potential customers and growing visibility.

Publish case studies: Case studies are the ideal way to demonstrate your company’s credibility and expertise. The detailed analyses of successful projects, proven results and satisfied clients encourage prospects in choosing your business over your competitors. Since case studies are popular and can be well-optimised with targeted keywords, their content is an effective way of capturing long-tail search traffic and engaging ideal buyers.

Focus on creating quality social media posts: You may have a perfect website and professionally created content, but you need to promote it efficiently on social media. High-quality, visually attractive social media posts help attract visitors to your website and also inspire engagement and conversations about your brand. From curated content to customer testimonials, social posts should form a creative mix of content that resonate with your audience and help build audience relationships and loyalty.

High-quality SEO-optimised content

Creating high-quality content along with SEO-optimised copy is essential to remain competitive in today’s digital world. These were just some of the ideas of the several types of content that can help improve your website’s visibility and, as a result, attract the right customers to your business.

Investing in a combination of these content types, such as blogging, specific landing pages, visual content such as video, case studies, and social media posts, can certainly help you to effectively target the right audience, boost engagement, and strengthen your position in the search engine rankings.

Talk to us about your digital marketing requirements, our team of SEO experts are on hand to take you through the tactics that can help your business be seen online.  

Landing page

7 Website landing page tips

A landing page is a specific web page for targeted marketing campaigns in which website visitors are directed to. As content on this page is relevant to the offer that has interested the website visitor in the first place it’s an effective way of capturing leads.

These pages usually contain forms where you can collate contact information as a result of the visitor completing an action on your page – this is usually an offer or a download.

The link that led your web visitor to your website in the first place may have stemmed from a social media post, email marketing, a link from a third-party website and most commonly from a pay per click (PPC) ad campaign such as google ads or paid social such as Facebook ads.

Here’s our advice on what you should include on your landing page to help create a great lead generation marketing campaign.

1. Content

To keep visitors on your website as long as possible, your landing page needs a headline that tells the visitor what to expect.

Once you’ve sorted the headline, the content needs to be to the point, clear and engaging. By providing useful tips and advice builds brand awareness and builds trust with your prospects with insightful content with tips and advice.

2. Call to action

A key element of your landing page is the call to action.

Make a bold and colourful call to action with clear instructions about what you want the visitor to do.

To be able to gather information from a web visitor you need a compelling offer such as an ebook, templates or discounts.

3. Be image led

An image helps to convey your brand and to illustrate what the content of your landing page is about. It also helps to break up the page so that it is easy on the eye.

If you have video content then this is great for engagement place it above the fold.

4. Lead generation form

The ‘contact us’ form or rather the ‘lead’ form should be near the top of the page – above the fold. A name and email address should be enough information for a new lead.

5. Remove menu navigation

With a specific landing page for a focussed PPC campaign we advise to remove the main menu so that visitors are focussed on the call to action.

6. Be mobile optimised

Remember to optimise your specific landing page for mobile.  

7. Landing page layout

Best practice tips for the landing page layout is best:

  • Headline
  • Image
  • Lead capture form
  • Call to action
  • Relevant content

Digital marketing Croydon

If you need help with your landing pages contact us. We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon.

With many marketing tactics whether organic or paid search advertising, we can provide a tailored marketing package to help you generate leads for your business. We offer PPC services where we can help with your PPC strategy and set up your next google adwords campaign. Book a free consultation.

digital

Lead generation tips

Your website should be the main focus of all your digital marketing strategies. Everything you do online should lead back to your website and to the services or products you offer.

This not only improves your ranking in search engine results pages, it also supports your lead generation strategy. This is vital to consider when looking to grow your business and in gaining high quality leads.

What works for your business may be different to another, but we have rounded together a few tips to help your lead generation campaign.

Website landing pages

Firstly, a word about your website design. Whilst wanting to encourage website visitors, the aim is to keep them on your website as long as possible. So, make sure that your landing page is relevant to the links that people will be clicking on. So whether you distribute email marketing or social media posts, your landing page needs to be  relevant to the offer that has interested the website visitor in the first place which is an effective way of capturing leads.

A good landing page will include a clear headline and brief description of the offer (see our blog on creating compelling offers for more on this topic). You should have a relevant image and perhaps a bullet point summary.

What’s vital though is the inclusion of a form for your website visitor to complete. This will capture the information to convert your web visitors into leads.

Your content on the landing page should be consistent to the details of the call-to-action that people clicked on in the first place. Ideally your headlines should be the same.

Get your social on!

Utilise social media as much as you can but also be cautious as not all channels may be relevant to your business and target audience.

Create snappy engaging content with links back to your website. This helps with search engine optimisation (SEO) as the link is from a reputable source, as well as generating leads.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Just utilise snippets of content from your latest blog for a social media post with URL links to ‘Find out More’.

Gather quality data

Just because a website visitor does not choose your services or buy your products straight away, does not meant they never will. The fact they are on your website in the first place means thy are interested and so are a warm lead for future offers or insightful information.

So, set up a pop-up box on your website to ‘sign-up’ to the latest news. This means you can obtain their email address and be able to send future email marketing news and offers.

Keep testing

Keep tabs of what works and what does not. There is no point putting time and effort into something which does not reap rewards.

Check out more of our resources below which cover social media, email campaigns, and lead generation in more detail!

Digital Marketing Croydon

As a digital marketing agency, we specialise in helping Croydon business owners with a range of solutions to help improve online presence and generate leads. 

Whether it’s website development, SEO services including content marketing, organic social media management, Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, such as Google ads or email marketing, talk to us about your business needs and we’ll create a focussed online marketing campaign for you.

Resources for lead generation