Generating quality leads is essential for any startup, but it’s something that many startups fail to implement. Many reasons abound, but three things immediately come to mind—lack of budget to invest in effective lead generation strategies, lack of knowledge and experience to start campaigns, and low prioritization.
Most startups primarily focus on product development and fundraising activities, which leaves little time and resources available for their lead generation process. Ignoring this crucial part of the marketing strategy can be disastrous because you’re essentially disregarding the opportunity to acquire new customers.
Want to make sure you’re not leaving money on the table? Then keep reading because this article discusses seven effective lead generation strategies that you can use to grow your startup and expand your customer base.
7 Lead Generation Strategies Startups Should Start Doing
1. Solidify Your Brand
Branding is the process of building a name and a good reputation for your startup. It involves creating a unique identity for your product in the consumer’s mind.
Through branding, you can differentiate your product from your competitors. It also helps customers identify more with your brand, making them more likely to buy from you.
There’s little to no awareness of your brand when you’re first starting out. The following tips can help put your product in front of your target audience and ideal customers.
- Create a clear and consistent message. What is it that you want people to know about your company? Be sure to communicate a message that will resonate with your audience. Present your brand as the most viable solution to their problems.
- Ensure your branding is consistent across all platforms. This includes your logo, website, social media profiles, and marketing materials. Consistent branding must be unique and recognizable to help customers remember who you are and what you stand for.
- Stand out from the competition. Make sure your branding reflects what makes you different and why people should choose you over the other options available. Make sure your branding is relevant to your target audience and must reflect the values and mission of your startup.
- Actively promote your brand. Use social media, blog posts, and other marketing channels to tell your story and explain what makes your company unique. This will keep your audience engaged.
- Keep evolving. As your startup grows and changes, so should your branding strategy. This will enable you to keep up with the changing needs of your customers.
A strong brand will help enhance your startup’s ability to generate high-quality leads and convert them into customers. Keeping a solid brand across all platforms and marketing activities can increase your startup’s revenue by 23%.
2. Focus on Helping Before Selling
Here’s the truth: customers want solutions to their problems. That’s why they search for products and services on the internet.
Many startups make the mistake of jumping immediately to selling, which can drive away potential customers.
Too often, businesses focus on the sale and not on the customer. While it’s essential to make a sale, it’s even more important to solve the customer’s problem.
Providing a solution shows that you care about your customers and their satisfaction. It also builds trust, which is essential for any business relationship.
When you solve a customer’s problem, they will likely recommend your business to others. In fact, providing solutions is one of the best ways to generate word-of-mouth marketing, which facilitates lead generation. So, focus on helping before selling, and you’ll be rewarded with satisfied customers and increased sales.
Take the case of GrowMyAds below. On their agency’s landing page, you’ll find the necessary information to increase your conversions from Google Ads.
Instead of outright selling, the company provides helpful information in their blog posts and even offers a free e-book visitors can download.
This strategy works so well because you get to make a good impression with your leads and potential customers.
They see your startup as an expert in your field, and they’ll be more likely to sign up or buy your services with less friction.
3. Qualify Leads Using Chatbots
Lead qualification is essential to an effective lead generation strategy. It’s crucial now more than ever to qualify leads before spending time and energy marketing to them.
By qualifying leads through a chatbot, you can weed out unqualified prospects and focus your efforts on those most likely to buy from you.
A chatbot can help by asking qualifying questions and detecting buying signals from the customer’s conversation, which can help you decide whether to contact the lead or not. A chatbot can help you determine whether a lead is worth pursuing by asking the right questions.
If you don’t qualify leads, you could waste a lot of time and money on marketing and lead generation campaigns that don’t produce results. By using a chatbot to qualify leads, you can save yourself a lot of hassle and ensure that your marketing efforts are more effective.
To set up a chatbot for effective lead generation, follow these best practices:
- Have preset questions and answers for FAQs. These work to help qualify leads and facilitate your qualifying processes better.
- Use personalization. Whenever possible, make sure you refer to leads by name, company name, and the like.
- Train your sales team for effective follow-ups. Make sure your sales team checks the conversation history before they follow up with leads. Get them to understand the context of the conversation to close sales more efficiently.
4. Create Lead Generation Forms in Social Media
Forms are an essential part of lead generation campaigns. By having potential customers fill out a form, you can collect their information, qualify them, and begin marketing to them.
While forms can be created in many ways, social media provides a unique opportunity to connect with potential customers.
Social media is one of the most effective places to put your form because social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn have a massive reach.
With over 4.62 billion social media users globally, it’s hard to ignore the power of the different platforms in generating high-quality leads.
When creating a form for lead generation on social media, make sure to keep it short and easy to fill out. People generally don’t like filling out lengthy forms, so make sure to place the essential information at the top.
As more and more people use their phones and tablets to check on their social media accounts, make sure that your form works on mobile devices. Including a call-to-action (CTA) button on your form is a great way to encourage people to fill out the form and submit their information.
5. Use Exit Pop-Ups
An exit pop-up is an effective lead generation tool to capture website visitors’ email addresses or other contact information.
Exit pop-ups catch people when they’re already thinking about leaving your website. Think of it as a last-ditch effort to persuade site visitors to give your product or service a chance.
When creating an exit pop-up, you have to make sure that the offer is relevant to the page that the visitor is leaving like this example from Optinmonster. Also, design a form that’s easy to fill out and doesn’t require too much information. For this step, you might only need their name, email, and, optionally, their phone number.
Make your exit pop-up form relate to the page that users land on so that you can offer them something relevant to their needs.
Finally, test different pop-up versions to see which one generates the most leads.
6. Invest in the Right Tools
An effective lead generation strategy requires investing in the right tools to help you succeed in customer acquisition and retention. You must first identify your goals. Before choosing the right tool, you need to know what you’re trying to achieve.
Typically, lead generation for startups is to get more qualified leads and increase conversions. Once you know your goals, you can start looking for tools to help you achieve them.
Leadfuze is an example of a lead generation and prospecting tool that can help you scale your lead generation efforts. The tool allows you to get access to hyper-targeted lead searches.
You can have detailed information about leads, including contact info, company size, and other vital data. With detailed customer data, you can personalize your pitch and increase your chances of success.
7. Combine Outbound with Inbound Strategies
Inbound and outbound lead generation strategies can be used together to create a comprehensive marketing strategy. Outbound lead generation involves reaching out to potential customers through advertising, telemarketing, or email marketing.
On the other hand, inbound lead generation involves creating content that attracts potential customers to your website. Once they are on your website or social media, you can use lead capture forms or pop-ups to collect contact information from your prospects.
Combining inbound and outbound lead generation strategies can be a great way to reach more potential customers.
Outbound lead generation can help you reach people who may not be aware of your company or product, while inbound lead generation can help you convert those people into leads once they are interested in what you have to offer.
Key Takeaways/Conclusion
There are many effective lead generation strategies that startups can use. The most important thing is to invest in a method that will work best for your business. You may need to try a few different strategies before you find one that is successful.
Many startups tend to do too much themselves instead of outsourcing lead generation to a specialist company that will introduce you to fresh strategies and practical tools that will level up your lead generation efforts.
Implementing all the recommended lead generation strategies in this article can help you build a more extensive customer base quickly as a startup company.