Lead generation

Magnet symbolising inbound marketing

Lead generation strategies for your business

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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.

Business man doing online marketing

Bounce back to business

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We’ve all been hit hard by coronavirus and now is the time to bounce back into business. UK government small business grants and loans have made it possible for firms to get back on their feet as quick as possible. Smart Cow is a digital marketing agency and we’re here to support businesses to help get them back on their feet and grow in these difficult times. 

If you haven’t already invested in online marketing for your business, or had to put activity on hold, it’s worth noting that research has shown that those businesses that invest in marketing during a recession grow significantly more than those who don’t. For example, insight from McGraw and Hill showed that firms who invested had 256% higher sales than those who did not invest in marketing during tough times. 

Here’s our four core steps to bouncing back to business. 

1. Strategy  

Your first step is to create a marketing strategy. Think about what you want to achieve and what are your business goals? If you had a plan in place for the beginning of the year, then it will need a review as we head into a new way of working and conducting business.  

Part of the strategy is to build a picture of your ideal target audience and start to build a campaign around them. 

2. Attract quality leads 

The next step is to create a digital marketing strategy based around your target audience that will truly attract quality leads for your business.  

Key to remember is that one size does not fit all. While there’s a host of digital marketing tactics to draw on such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), PPC or Pay Per Click advertising, social media marketing, video or blogs, this is where it’s important to think of your target audience and what digital channels are best for them. This can then help your form the right mix of digital marketing for your target audience.  

The core of your digital marketing campaign is about connecting with the right audience at the right time via the right platform. That’s where a content marketing strategy will help.  

You want to be answering your prospects and existing clients questions in your communication. So, when you write a blog, share messages on social media or send out email marketing it’s about offering advice. You want to position yourself as a thought leader in your field and provide insight that will help your customers with their business. The type of content you communicate is about building rapport and trust that you become the go to company for your services or products.  

By having a plan in place, you can schedule your content strategically and in a timely manner.  

3. Engage  

Once you attract leads, how do you convert them to become a client?  

Using marketing automation, you can build the trust and follow leads through the sales lifecycle. 

You can monitor leads through Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools to keep track and engage at the appropriate time to increase the likelihood of conversion. 

4. Delight  

By ensuring you solve your customer’s problems in your marketing communication, by being helpful, enthusiastic and part of a community will help increase engagement and client satisfaction.  

Marketing to current contacts and customers is far more cost effective than finding new customers. 

Make sure your customers are your biggest fans. Continue to keep them engaged and delighted with your service and content. 

Smart Cow digital agency can help you bounce back to business

We understand that all businesses need a unique approach to their inbound digital marketing which is why we offer a mix and match of digital marketing services to generating quality leads for your business.

We’ll research the keywords and conduct an SEO audit to focus on to give you a boost in search engine results. We’ll identify hurdles and competition that may impact the success and then assign accountability to reach these goals and metrics to measure. 

We’re a digital marketing agency in Croydon as well as a base in London. Talk to us about your business goals and let us propel your forward. Book a consultation.

Business growth with inbound marketing

Your inbound marketing guide for accounting firms

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Inbound marketing is focused on lead generation to attract quality clients from qualified leads interested in your accounting services.

An inbound marketing strategy is about building brand awareness and trust through thought leadership content. Certainly, in the current COVID-19 situation it’s about sharing insightful content that will help your potential customers.

Adding context to your marketing activity that’s relevant to your audience is key to success.

Inbound marketing strategy for accountants

We recommend that you take time to understand who you are selling to. An accounting practice will know from experience who their main clients are. Therefore, create an imaginary persona based on this. What are the challenges that your target audience faces? Empathise with their requirements and personalise your content.

It’s all about appealing to your relevant prospects to reach those quality leads interested in your accounting services.

Think of your overarching message and USP – why should someone come to your accounting firm as opposed to another? What are you offering that’s different and make is specific to your target audience?

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to help you create your marketing strategy.

What does inbound marketing include?

There’s no one size fits all to inbound marketing, even for an accountancy practice.

There’s a number of inbound marketing tactics that a digital agency will draw on to create a strategy to generate traffic for your accounting firm. Here’s an overview of digital marketing tools.

  1. Website design and development
  2. Search Engine Optimised website 
  3. Blogs
  4. Social Media Marketing
  5. Pay Per Click (PPC)
  6. Remarketing / Banner advertising
  7. Email Marketing
  8. Video
  9. CRM and marketing automation

What to do first with inbound marketing

  1. Your website is at the core of your business, it’s your shop window. So, a review of your current site is a key first step to take.
  2. Think of the keywords you want your accounting firm to be found for. If your expertise lies in outsourcing services such as bookkeeping, payroll and VAT returns, then make sure you have content that answers questions for your potential clients covering these topics.  
  3. Make sure your website is easy to navigate. A lot of websites these days are Content Managed Systems (CMS) so you can generally make quick fix updates yourself. If you have trouble updating anything then get in touch with a digital marketing agency that manages web design and development. We offer free consultations and can provide a proposal based on your requirements.
  4. Have you completed your Google My Business page? It’s free to do and is the ultimate directory to be on providing quality links back to your website.
  5. An ongoing content marketing plan is also key. This will help position your accounting firm as a thought leader in the sector. So, think of adding a blog to your website or more up to date articles as this provides great new content for a website. Having already implemented your keyword research, including relevant phrases in your new blogs will help search engines find your practice.   

Working with an inbound marketing agency in Surrey

As a digital agency for accountants, we would look at your business, understand your objectives to then tailor an inbound marketing campaign for your firm encompassing the tactics that are right for your goals. 

Why not contact us for a FREE consultation? If you’re looking to grow your business, talk us through your current position, where you would like to be, your target audience and objectives and we can work on a proposal for you.

In the meantime, Download The Beginner’s Guide to Generating Inbound Leads.

Business ruler

Attract the right online enquiry to convert leads

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Maintaining good quality leads through your website is key to business growth. For a professional services firm, such as accounting, this is vital to continue business through the current COVID-19 situation and ongoing service to your existing clients.

But to get quality leads to your sales funnel in the first place is the trick. So, here we give a little overview of some of the digital marketing tactics you can employ to help with online lead generation. 

Download The Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to help you create your inbound marketing strategy to attract quality leads. Read on for a quick summary to get you started.

Quality content 

You’ll be hearing quality quite a lot from us. If you want quality leads then you need to attract clients with quality, tailored content.  

During this time of uncertainty, your content needs to be offering advice to your clients. Keep them informed of legislation, company changes and support through your blog, email marketing, social media channels and webinars.  

Email marketing  

Whilst you may feel that new business is not happening right now, maintaining presence is vital to be certain you will be remembered in the coming weeks when society picks up its pace to the next stage of ‘normal’. 

So, if you don’t already have a newsletter sign up box on the homepage of your website then add that. Capture email addresses and keep in touch with these people who have opted in with regular email marketing campaigns. They clearly want to hear from you so make the most of it.  

Just remember to be GDPR compliant and ensure that you tell people what they are signing up to and make it easy for them to opt out of communication.   

Get quality leads in your sales funnel  

But what should you do to attract the right type of enquiry? 

Make sure you have created a positioning statement about your company, your goals and target audience.  

Create an online persona of your target audience. This simple document will give background to a typical client of yours and provide answers to their challenges.  

Through targeted and relevant content you attract your audience to your website through blogs, optimised website (SEO), social media marketing and Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. It’s worth noting that 89% of online consumers use search engines when making a purchase decision. 

Once a visitor reaches your website, it’s about engaging with your target audience. From the initial landing page with bold calls to action or forms to download ebooks. To close the deal, it’s again about relevant emails and nurturing contacts through a well-managed CRM system.  

Reviews 

Once you have secured a contract with your new client, asking for a testimonial to add to your website or to your Google My Business page can help with gaining further quality leads. With 88% of consumers having read reviews to determine the quality of a local business, it makes sense to add this action into your marketing plan. 

Smart Cow is a digital marketing agency in Croydon. Whether you’re looking for a complete digital marketing strategy or standalone PPC campaign with Google adwords management book a free consultation and we can discuss our marketing services with you.

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