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Over the last couple of years, customers have come to hold high expectations from businesses they interact with. Before committing to a brand and making a purchase, they compare alternatives, look for reviews online, and ask those around them for recommendations.

As such, it is becoming increasingly difficult to acquire new customers. Brands must, therefore, adopt effective generation strategies to bring in relevant leads and ultimately convert them into paying customers. Incessant and flashy advertising no longer works. You need to focus on the quality of your content, personalization, optimization, visibility, and value.

Your product could be revolutionary, best in class, and it may deliver excellent value for money, but if your business does not have a well-thought-out lead generation strategy in place, it is bound to fail. Another business with a better lead generation strategy in place could easily outperform you even if it happens to have an inferior product or service. 

Given below are six foolproof lead generation strategies you can adopt to widen your reach and acquire new customers.

Create Quality Blog Content

By creating high-quality, detailed, and engaging blog content, your business can establish itself as an expert in its niche. To create the desired impact, make sure your blogs include focus keywords, strong calls-to-action, and links to other important landing pages and social media channels. To ensure a steady flow of traffic, post new blogs consistently, ideally twice or thrice a week. Also, optimize your blogs for search engines so that they rank higher in the Google search result pages, directing new leads to your business.

Allowing users to access premium blog content such as eBooks or eGuides in exchange for their email address or other contact information is also an effective way of generating leads. The contact information should then be placed into the CRM and sales database so that sales representatives can reach out to users later through other communication channels and try to convert them into paying customers.

If there are any older blogs that proved successful in driving traffic to your website in the past, you should update or repurpose them. But you should remember that content is not limited to blog posts. Focus on creating white papers, in-depth studies, podcasts, graphics, and videos too.

This is a great way for you to generate new leads, but even existing customers will find the content useful. If existing customers find your blog content informative, they are more likely to share it with their peers, generating more leads for your business.

Referral Partnerships

This method works best for small businesses, particularly in the SaaS space. Two small businesses offering complementary products or services can help each other with lead generation through referral partnerships. To determine who to integrate with to enhance the overall experience for your customer, you can ask your customer base for insight about which products or services they use regularly that are complementary to yours.

Offer Discount Coupons

Potential customers will readily sign up for your mailing list if you offer them an incentive for doing so, such as an assured discount coupon for their first order. Once you get prospects to sign up, you establish direct communication with them. You can then offer them rewards such as coupons for seasonal discount offers, coupons for free trials, and free samples, etc. This will make purchase and product adoption much more likely.

Offer Free Trials

If your business offers services on a subscription basis, free trials can be a very effective lead generation strategy. In this limited duration, usually a week or a month, users can understand how your service works, and determine the value add. Also, whenever users sign up for a free trial, they have to provide relevant information including their contact details. When the free trial expires, you can use this information to convince customers to upgrade.

Offer Limited-Time Deals

We have already discussed how discounts can be used as incentives to generate leads. But this strategy can be made more effective if you offer these discounts for a limited time or as part of a flash sale. If possible, give users a timer where they can see exactly how long they have to sign up before the offer expires. With the added urgency, users are far more likely to sign up instantly to claim their discount. 

Personalize Email Marketing Campaigns

Personalized emails generate more leads and substantially higher revenue than non-personalized emails. You should group prospects by name, expressed interest, and purchase history.  Include the recipient’s name in the greeting line of your email. To increase the total number of clicks, make sure multiple links are present throughout the email.

Tracking the success of email campaigns is important if you intend to drive more leads with each ‘send’. You can do this by comparing your open and click rates with industry averages. By monitoring to check which links within the email are being clicked more often, you can learn the habits of your prospective customers, which will allow you to be more effective.

If you want to grow your business, lead generation should be a focus. To facilitate higher conversion and retention rates, make sure the leads generated are relevant and genuine. Relevant leads will prevent your business from spending more than necessary on its marketing and ad campaigns. 

The lead generation strategies discussed above can be used by businesses of all sizes and across all industries. But for best results, you should test them out and make modifications wherever necessary, to make them work for your business and its particular product/service and customer base.

Even with the most effective strategies in place, you cannot generate leads instantly. But you should not be discouraged. Dedicating time and resources to acquire genuine and relevant leads will pay off in the long run.