Lead Generation Online for Local Businesses

Using Your Website for Lead Generation

Generating leads for your local business is something every business owner knows he must do. Whether you do it through the local newspaper, radio or TV, creating buzz about your product and your shop are essential to get feet through the door to buy your product.

Now that the internet is accepted as a source of information about local businesses, you have a less expensive lead generation vehicle available through your website. Creating leads from the various parts of your website, landing pages, your blog, etc. will allow you to collect email addresses and contact your prospects to build an interest in your product and business.

Let’s take a look at some methods for lead generation online to help your local business!

Create a product video

65% of us are visual learners. Why not explain your offering in a way that speaks to the majority? According to this case study, product explainer videos can generate leads at a rate of up to 33%.

When done right, videos keep us engaged and can inspire us to take action. Product videos don’t need to be long or complex, and with tools like Animoto, they’re increasingly easy to make.

Don’t mention spam!

 

A test run by Michael Aagard showed that including the phrase “100% privacy – we will never spam you!” on a signup form reduced conversions by a full 18%.

It’s okay to reassure privacy, but try doing it in a fun way that doesn’t include the word “spam.” When in doubt, run A/B tests to be sure your signup forms are optimized for conversion.

Give fewer choices

Hick’s Law carries the principle that fewer choices means less confusion – and less confusion means more leads. This is why you should limit confusion by having a single CTA.

MySiteAuditor decreased the options on a free trial signup page from six to one and saw a 25% jump in their conversion rate.

Blog consistently (actually do it)

This one’s old – we know by now that blogging is effective for generating leads.

In spite of this, not many companies have strong and consistent content calendars (many give up when no results come in the first month or two).

Goodbye Crutches is an online shop for knee scooters and other accessories to help eliminate the need for crutches. They were struggling to drive traffic and sales through traditional advertising.

They put together a content schedule for six months, blogging every single day. Six months later, organic traffic had doubled.

But remember that once you’ve built up the traffic to your blog, your job isn’t done. Your readers have self-selected as being interested in what you have to offer, but they’re not yet on your list.

Make the next step easy for them by adding relevant CTAs to your blog posts. Unbounce does this well, with CTAs targeted to each of their blog categories. If a reader is interested in a PPC blog post, chances are they’ll be interested in the ebook as well – and willing to enter their email address in exchange for it.
– via Unbounce

Advice from the Pros on Lead Generation

It’s always a good idea to listen to people who have gone down a road before you. Here are some ideas from people who are successful with online lead generation. These are proven principles that any local business can apply to their online presence and increase their leads and sales.

Michael Brenner –  SAP and B2B Marketing Insider, @BrennerMichael The most effective way for marketing to drive stellar leads for sales is to deliver the right content to the right prospect at the right time. Mapping content to the buyer journey and then delivering it to the right prospects is the best way to drive effective sales-ready leads without wasting your sales’ teams time and your company’s money.

Heidi Cohen – Actionable Marketing Guide, @HeidiCohen Today’s customers are social media and content marketing savvy. Whether they’re making a purchase for themselves or their business, they’ve at least started their research before they ever contact you.
Andy Crestodina – Orbit Media, author of Content Chemistry, @Crestodina Find your super fans (online in social media or offline as clients) and put their voice on your website. Put it everywhere. Don’t make a page of testimonials. Make every page a testimonials page. This “social proof” will increase the percentage of people who convert from visitor into leads.

If you haven’t optimized your site to convert visitors into leads, your efforts increasing traffic are partly wasted. Remember, traffic times your conversion rate equals leads, so you can generate more leads by affecting either number. Simple site fixes are often one-time efforts. They’re less work than the ongoing efforts required to drive more traffic.

Think of it this way: a small change that increases the conversion rate from 1% to 1.2% is better for your lead generation than a 10% boost in traffic. Make sense? First fix your conversion rate, then work on increasing traffic.

Jeffrey L. Cohen –  Ball State University and Social Media B2B, Co-author of The B2B Social Media Book,  @JeffreyLCohen You must include calls-to-action on blog posts to give visitors the opportunity to raise their hand and express interest in your company and its ideas. Too many blogs do nothing to try to convert their hard-earned blog visitors to leads.
– via Heidi Cohen

What are the most important parts of your lead generation strategy for your local business?