How To Get Sales Leads Online
Ever since 2006, inbound marketing has been one of the most effective way of marketing for businesses. Inbound marketing is promoting a company with the use of content like blogs, videos, eBooks, email marketing, whitepapers, SEO, Social Media, podcasts and more.
Inbound marketing is a way to draw in customers who are interested in your business naturally rather than selling to any Tom, Dick and Harry. It consists of four stages, Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. This is exactly what you should be doing to get more customers to buy your product or service.
Attract
Attracting customers can be a little more difficult than you first think. You need something to entice your customers to go to your website. The easiest way to attract customers is to help them rather than selling to them.
Blogs (like this one!) are amazing for generating traffic to your website- but they should never be just about yourself and your business.
Notice how none of the blogs are the company talking about themselves, but instead are focused on informative, educational or entertaining content.[/caption]
People do not want to read content that is just “me, me, me”. Create content that your customers will enjoy, make it informative, educational or entertaining. Don’t get me wrong, it should always be related to your industry but it shouldn’t be all about you.
For example, a car sales business could write blogs or create videos aimed at those buying cars, so advice on buying a used car would be a great starter point as well as videos on how to take care of a car. You should want to become the one stop shop for car advice in your area.
Search Engine Optimization is a great way to attract customers to your business and can generate 1000’s of leads when done currently. Google is your friend guys, they don’t want to penalise you but if you are using bad practices then it is rightly so. With SEO done correctly, there’s a high chance that your content will be seen on the first page of Google thus making your content more visible. Google changes it’s algorithm regularly so I would recommend going with a company who really knows their stuff and keeps up to date with the industry – if you are stuck then I can help point you in the right direction.
Social Media is a fantastic way to attract people to your business, as pretty much everyone in the world has at least one Social Media account. When using Social Media, you should relate to your potential customers and create conversation, after all, it is called SOCIAL Media. The content you have created – whether that’s blogs, videos or something else – should be posted onto your account to make more people aware of it. Always make sure to upload content natively where possible as the algorithm’s of networks like Facebook favour this immensely.
Engaging posts are more likely to be shared so make sure to ask questions and start a conversation with your audiences
Convert
Converting website visitors into potential leads for your business is one of the most important parts of the cycle. Forms should be used to gather your potential clients information so you can reach out to them on other mediums, though you should never ever spam them. Create a lead magnet (a fantastic piece of content that people would be willing to give their email address away for) to get visitors details, and make sure you follow up. Create a conversation with your lead as this will build a relationship with them. People buy from people, not from a computer screen.
Landing pages play a big role in converting visitors to leads, they cannot go anywhere apart from this page to complete the intended action.
Call-to-action buttons like “Call Us Now” or “Download Free eBook” should always be directed to a specific form so your sales team can gather information about them. If you find that your landing page is not converting as much as you hope (the average is approximately 2.35% however the top 10% have a convertion rate of 11.45% and above) then considering using a Social Sign In tool where people can use their Social Media accounts to fill in your form.
I can’t recommend Clickfunnels enough for landing pages, they have a 14 day free trial 🙂
Make sure to keep track of every lead in a CRM so you can keep in touch with them and convert them into customers. You can connect with them on Social Media, via email or by phone depending on what your preference is – there are a ton of ways to keep in touch with your customers.
Close
Close is the part where you make the sale, you close the deal and change them from lead to paying customer. Make sure to keep track of all customers in your chosen CRM (Podio is free!) as this makes it much easier to manage communications with your lead. This will allow you to find the correct information for them whenever they get in contact and will make them feel like a valued person, thus making them more likely to make a purchase.
Has your lead been communicating on Social Media, showing interest in certain products or services but has not yet bought? Why not reach out with a special deal just for them? If you’re sending an email, share your content with them or perhaps a link to a video letting people know what you’ve been up to. Don’t fill your emails with lines and lines of text, keep it brief and make sure it’s clear what action they want to take with a clear call-to-action button that directs to a specific landing page.
Remember to never pester your leads as this can drive them away and cause them to resent your brand. Close the deal with the lead and change them into a paying customer.
Delight
Now you’ve made the sale, this is not the end of the Inbound Marketing cycle! Now you should be focusing on making your customers happy so they become brand ambassadors (promote your company at will). Send out follow up surveys to get customers honest feedback so you know where you may need to improve. If you do need to make any improvements, let everyone know when you’ve done it! Make your customers so happy they will promote your company of their own free will, word-of-mouth is still the most powerful form of marketing.
Monitor your Social Media carefully (and even the sites you’re not on) to see what customers are saying about you. This can be a great insight into how people really feel about your brand, and also opens up the opportunity to speak to your customers.
Notice how Muscle Food have their own hashtag to receive feedback from their customers. At the same time, this also makes them spread the word about their brand.
Persuade them to review or rate your company and share your content. However, never beg for shares or retweets as this will often be ignored.
Take a look into your website, email Social Media analytics to see what pages and posts are performing best. Schedule your content for the most popular times so you can have more potential leads visiting your website. If one type of content is out-performing others, focus more on producing that type of content.
Inbound marketing is not about pestering people to buy your product or use your service, quite the opposite actually! It’s about creating exceptional content for your visitors and connecting with them on a personal level. It’s about raising awareness of your brand and to attract potential customers, converting them into leads, convincing them they need your product or service and then keeping them happy as Larry! With the use of interactive tools like landing pages, lead magnets, call-to-action’s and SEO, it can make a large difference to the conversions of your visitors. Basically, you want your customers to spread the word about your brand as essentially, your business will get “free” marketing.