If you’re working in a business without dedicated marketing support, you’ll love our 7 simple lead generation strategies. Even if you do have access to marketing resource, these lead generation tips and techniques can really help in generating valuable converting sales leads.

So here’s our list of the 7 simple ways to generate more leads…

1. Get referrals from existing or previous customers
2. Use Social Media to find potential customers you can help
3. Network, network, network – face to face is better than cold calling or emails
4. Post blog articles on LinkedIn etc. offering a limited free 15min consultancy calls
5. Revisit previous contacts, closed or lost opportunities
6. Create relevant blog content highlighting your skills and benefits
7. Develop a sequence of emails to prospects pointing to your blogs/social media pages

Let’s get behind these headings to find out what you needs to do.

1. Get referrals from existing or previous customers

This is probably the most under-rated and under-used method of generating leads. It’s also one of the most effective.

For some reason people think that they shouldn’t ask for referrals from current or previous customers. In actual fact, satisfied customers are generally more than willing to introduce you to suitable contacts of theirs and potential new clients for you. It’s a really good idea to get your contact to get involved in the lead generation process and set up an intro with the prospective new client. That way the relationship is already reinforced by the conversation between them before you get directly introduced.

Sending a personalised note and/or thank you gift to your contact is a great way to say thank you. Alternatively you can make this arrangement a bit more commercialised by offering a 5 or 10% reduction in your next monthly fee for 3 introductions.

2. Use social media to find potential customers you can help

If you’re not on LinkedIn then you should set up a profile and put down all of your relevant experience that gives credence to your skills and experience that you’re currently providing (or wanting to provide). Make connections and post and share relevant articles that prove your knowledge.

You should also get people you’ve worked with and current and previous clients to write recommendations, not just endorsements of skills you’ve selected as having.

Further afield than LinkedIn is Facebook. Many people think Facebook is just for fluffy kitten videos and holiday snaps but it’s a serious business development platform, one of the few that allows you to actively define and fine-tune your target audience to maximise lead generation conversion.

After all business owners and buyers don’t just switch off that side of their brains when they login to Facebook…

Creating custom audiences in Facebook is really for a whole new blog post but if you want to find out more in the meantime I’m happy to help – either call me or drop me a line.

3. Network, network, network

From experience there really is nothing like face to face meetings and conversations to build rapport and start to get to know people and the businesses they represent. 

Remember it’s not just the people you meet you’re networking with it’s the people those people know too! If you make a good enough impression and have the right skills you’re likely to get recommendations.

Don’t forget to have business cards to hand out. Also make sure you have a system of recording the details of the business cards you collect too and have a means of following up to develop the relationships further. You can also connect on LinkedIn too but don’t forget about Facebook business pages – get your new contacts or prospects to contact you there via the Messenger app as well, it’s instant and the response rate by people via IM apps is far far higher than emails.

4. Post blog articles on LinkedIn etc. offering a limited free 15min consultancy calls

Blog content is more about a conversation and sharing your ideas and knowledge than creating a masterpiece or a dissertation. People are looking for ‘best practice’ or ‘how to’ ideas that will help them be better at what they do. Sharing this knowledge isn’t all one-way. Often people find they don’t have the expertise, experience of time to do what you’re suggesting so will start to look for someone to do it for them. 

It’s another example of social proof, letting people see that you have the knowledge to help them.

The blog post itself may not be the best lead generation tool, but it sets out your expertise and forms part of the persuasion, empathy and trust about what it is you do. It also builds the framework for the main lead generation ‘hook’ which would be the additional offer of a quick 15min consultancy call. This does 2 things, it allows you to find out if the prospect is a good one and provides you with their contact details,  business info etc. and it gives the prospect a reason to call you.

5. Revisit previous contacts, closed or lost opportunities

Often the hard part about lead generation is the time it takes to get what you do understood by prospects and getting them to see that you could provide a valuable service to them. Previous contacts that you’ve engaged with already know what your business does and hopefully have a positive view of your business.

It’s highly likely that the reason why they didn’t buy from you first time round was because the timing wasn’t right for them. So a good lead generation strategy is to keep in contact every few months to find out if their priorities or circumstances have changed and to keep your name in their potential suppliers list . That can give you the ‘in’. It’s also good to understand what their challenges are and whether these have changed since you last spoke too.

6. Create relevant blog content highlighting your skills and benefits

Blogging is good as it gives you a reason to keep contacts you’ve made aware of your business and the skills you can bring to the table.

Focus on what you’re an expert in and share it on your company’s blog page, your social media channels (business and personal), as well as to your contacts list. This should include existing/previous customers, prospects or closed/lost opportunities (this forms part of tip no. 5 above). NB: you should make sure you have the relevant permissions to contact them this way, but always include an opt-out mechanism.

Be visible as an expert in your field, but share this knowledge too. If it’s useful content people will link to it and this can only help you rise higher in the search rankings and recommendations league.

7. Develop a sequence of emails to prospects pointing to your blogs/social media pages

It goes without saying that if you’ve spent the time to create great content to generate more leads you need to invest in a way to share it and get it more widely read. Be creative in what you say and how you say it. Also pay close attention to the words you use in the subject line. Stay alert for key words or phrases that are likely to get yourself in the spam folder.

It’s best to use a dedicated email delivery system that can automate a lot of the work for you (like unsubscribes or follow-ups). Many people use MailChimp, ActiveCampaign or GetResponse. It’s worth looking around to see what other options are available too.

When you create your email sequence think about what each email in the series is designed to do.

For example:

• address pain points
• explain a value message,
• talk about benefits you’ve achieved for other clients (NB: be careful not reveal sensitive info unless authorised, use generic claims like A-B% increase in performance for clients like X, Y, Z),
• qualify your message,
• talk about a product that’s relevant to the target audience,
• lastly try a last message and then remove to a separate long-burner list until they either unsubscribe or stop opening the emails. You can never tell if what you send out is useful in some way to your audience until they stop reading or opening your emails.

I hope this list has been useful, if it has I’d love to hear what you did and how it helped.

If you’d like to know more about lead generation get in touch, we’re here to help.