The business universe has become so overwhelming that it requires a lot of work and investments just to reach the targeted prospects and present them your offer.
- 85% of marketers believe that lead generation is their most important content marketing goal.
- More than 50% of marketing executives say the majority of their budget is allocated to lead generation techniques.
- Almost half of businesses claim that most of their leads require “long cycle” nurturing.
Companies highlight the importance of lead generation because it’s the only way to convert and win over fresh customers. However, most marketers forget that the existing leads can also attract new prospects. In this article, we will show you how to do that. Let’s take a look!
The Power of Word of Mouth Marketing
You might be wondering now, how come my leads can bring even more leads into play? The answer is very simple – it’s because of the immense power of word of mouth marketing.
By definition, word of mouth marketing represents an oral or written recommendation by a satisfied customer to the prospective customers of a good or service. It’s one of the most productive marketing tactics due to the variety of reasons.
First of all, people don’t really like digital advertising. According to the study, some 30% of all Internet users already installed ad blockers. Secondly, over 90% of consumers prefer suggestions from their friends and family rather than paid advertising.
In such circumstances, it is not surprising to learn that word of mouth marketing drives $6 trillion of annual consumer spending. The only question here is – how can I take advantage of such a powerful marketing technique? Keep reading to discover the most effective tricks in this field.
Six Ways to Impress the Current Leads and Generate New Ones
Customer experience is an anchor of word of mouth marketing. If you provide consumers with a premium experience, you can expect them to share their impressions with their family, friends, colleagues, or social followers. Six tactics can improve customer satisfaction significantly:
1 Sell Quality Products
The first and the most important strategy is to design products that correspond with the customers’ expectations. As long as you keep the highest level of product quality, you won’t have to worry about keeping your customers satisfied and attracting new leads.
The first and the most important strategy is to design products that correspond with the customers’ expectations. Share on XBut it doesn’t mean that only premium brands can count on fresh prospects based on product quality. On the contrary, you might as well sell medium-level items or even cheap products. However, it is critical to handle customers’ expectations precisely and avoid the eventual disappointment.
2 Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a basic precondition of lead generation. If you want to keep the website traffic consistent or even improve it, you need to apply state of the art SEO tricks. This is extremely important since 75% of users never click past the first page of search results.
As a business person, we guess you’ve probably heard of the term “keywords” already. It’s the essential element of SEO that suggests using the right words or phrases to target potential customers in your niche.
For instance, if you sell raincoats, you must use this keyword throughout the content to maximize the SEO potential of your website. Besides that, you need to add more expressions that describe your product such as colors (grey or black), brand name (ABC or XYZ), or materials (leather). If you do it properly, Google and other search engines will rank your website much higher than competitors.
You need to do two things here:
- Analyze the target audience
Make sure to understand how your average leads think and behave online. Who are they? What do they do for a living? What is their average income? Each detail can help you to optimize website content according to their preferences.
- Use online tools
The Internet is flooded with digital tools that search and analyze keywords or help you improve your rankings. Google’s Keyword Planner and other tools such as Linkio are good places to start, but you can find many other solutions online.
3 Create Superb Content
Now, this is where things get tougher and more exciting! Website content is one of those things that can distinguish you from the crowd of competitors, mostly because 84% of people expect brands to provide posts that entertain, tell stories, provide solutions, and create experiences and events.
This is something that makes the existing leads thrilled about your work, so they become willing to share your ideas with their peers.
- Blogging: Prospects love reading quality posts because they want to learn more about brands, products, or services before conducting the purchase. However, content creators at the cheap writing services told us a very important thing: “Keep in mind that modern buyers don’t accept short and superficial articles. On the contrary, you have to offer them highly analytical posts that cover topics from all angles.”
- Visual content: Images and infographics are the next step in the content creation race. According to the study, consumers can remember only 10% of the plain text, while the percentage goes up to 65% in case you add images. It’s your chance to tell a lot using only a few words, so be ready to design some serious visual content to generate new leads.
- Videos: Video content is the ultimate level of digital marketing. Forrester research shows that one minute of video is worth as much as 8 million words. We don’t have to say anything else but- go out there and shoot some great niche-related videos!
4 Offer freebies and giveaways
The human nature is rather simple: if you give people free stuff, they will hardly ever decline the offer. But here comes the twist – most people are willing to do something in return, and that is exactly why marketers often use freebies and giveaways as the means of acquiring new prospects.
If you give people free stuff, they will hardly ever decline the offer. Share on XIt’s the principle of reciprocity in which you give to get. It’s just the basic human need (and tendency) to want to give something back when something is received. You can exploit this psychological trick to raise brand awareness and attract new leads with the help of the existing prospects. The only thing you need to do is to invite customers to share the news with their friends and peers.
If you think this tactic is costly, you are making a mistake. Most freebies and giveaways are very cheap, particularly if you order or produce hundreds or thousands of items. Besides that, it’s an investment that will earn you new customers relatively soon.
Furthermore, you don’t even have to buy anything – you can always think of discounts, coupons, or special offers for the first time buyers. That way, you don’t have to spend a dime to make your leads happy, while they will return the favor by sharing the experience with other people both offline and online.
5 Organize contests
Contests represent another way to inspire user engagement and spread the word about your brand. You just need to invite people to create brand-related content such as images or videos and share it online along with the corresponding hashtag. In the end, participants who prove the highest level of creativity will be rewarded. It’s a win-win situation for both parties.
On the one hand, your brand gains extra exposure and hopefully attracts new leads. On the other hand, the most successful content creators receive their prizes, while all participants experience the same feeling of belonging to the wider online community. At the same time, contests encourage followers to compete, which is a big motive for most people to take part in a given activity.
6 Use social media channels
With more than 2.5 billion daily active users, social networks are the world’s most comprehensive source of potential leads. You just need to rearrange digital content so as to match the requirements of each platform individually because Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social media nurture different styles and attract different audiences.
There are many ways to engage followers through social media channels. Asking content-related questions is one of the surefire solutions, but there are other tactics like emojis, GIFs, live videos, etc. No matter what you post online, you should keep one thing in mind – always add a link to your website or a landing page.
Doing so, you will inspire part of your followers to visit the company website and take further action, thus increasing the odds of turning new leads into full-time conversions.
Conclusion
Lead generation techniques are some of the most powerful sales mechanisms. Although it takes a lot of planning and work, you don’t have to do the whole job by yourself. On the contrary, you can use the current leads as the means of attracting new prospects.