You’ve poured your heart and soul into creating an awesome content marketing strategy. You’ve started blogging, you’ve shared promotional content on Facebook and Twitter and even tried to directly engage with your audience.
And then…crickets.
In spite of your best efforts, you’re still not getting the lead flow you need in order to turn your small business into the next million-dollar brand.
Taking a small business from brick-and-mortar to cyberspace involves plenty of pitfalls, but having someone along the way who’s been there before and knows the path can become an incredibly valuable asset. We’ve gathered up some expert wisdom about mistakes to avoid when putting your small business onto the World Wide Web.
If you don’t trust someone, would you be likely to do business with them?
Of course not. This is why a small business needs to establish itself as a legitimate company, delivering on the promises made to its customers.
Trust signals play a key role in the lead generation landscape and, as strong evidence suggests, these subliminal cues have the power to improve the initial value judgment of your website.
When it comes to taking your offline business online, the technology may be different but the basic foundations of sales and customer connection stay the same. In order to reach the ideal audience, you need to know who they are and what they need first.
The best possible way to define your target market and make the most sales is to have a clear, detailed customer profile.
There’s a photo that’s been circulating on Facebook for quite some time. It depicts a monkey carrying a small dog, and the accompanying story tells a tale of true heroism. Shortly after a factory explosion in China, the monkey grabbed the pup, and the two escaped a gruesome fate. The photo also reminds readers to be compassionate. After all, if a monkey can do it, why can’t we? It’s truly a heart-warming story, but it’s also completely false.
Wouldn’t it be great if everyone could afford to give away cars and diamond jewelry like Oprah did? While it’s certainly something to strive for, small businesses have to make a single penny work as hard as a corporate dollar does. Let’s face it, most of us are on a shoestring budget, and generating leads is tough. Giveaways work a certain magic when it comes to getting people to give up their info. If your gift is something meaningful and worthwhile, people can’t fill in your online form quick enough, and they’ll share their great find with everyone they know. So, what free items could you possibly give to people that will help you turn them into leads? Here are five, for starters.