Achieve the growth and sales of your local business online through an established and thorough process of generating leads. This way, you can easily utilize different marketing strategies that will attract and drive your target market into the sales funnel. Hence, here’s an extensive guide that will teach you the process of lead generation for local businesses.
Lead Generation for Local Business
Generating leads is a fundamental aspect of your overall online marketing success.
When it comes to establishing a name online, local business owners tend to only use referrals as a way to generate more leads that could turn into sales. However, with new and cost-effective digital marketing strategies, referral marketing is not the only strategy that works.
Regardless of what platform you choose, there’s a specific strategy that you can use. For instance, you can use social media marketing to social networking platforms and if you want to reach broader audience through search engine platforms, then you can optimize your website and content for these networks.
Most of these strategies are already proven effective by businesses of all sizes. Even big brands that are known worldwide are still using these to increase their sales. However, this doesn’t mean that by just using these, you can already achieve what brands have made.
The key here is how a local business owner like you can convert your target market into loyal customers. Consumers these days prefer brands that are known to them.
Having an online platform isn’t enough for local business owners like you. You still need to efficiently connect with your target market and to effectively perform various digital marketing strategies in order to guide them into the sales funnel.
Besides, doing all of this doesn’t just submit more sales into your local business, this also increases your reputation into the local and global market.
Still, you should consider that lead generation is not just about getting brand awareness for this is the process of attracting and converting audience into someone who becomes interested with the products and services of your company.
Because of this, you need to put a ton of effort in personalizing your brand as a local business while performing all of your online marketing strategies. This way, you won’t have a hard time on generating leads that are qualified and can easily be converted into customers.
In planning and performing your lead generation strategy, there are a multitude number of things that you should consider. Starting with extensive research in order to present a thoroughly-organized content plan, you still need to market your products and services and continue on performing your different strategies and campaigns.
Apart from that, you also need to assess that your strategies are matched with your buyer’s journey so that you can gain better results. Lastly, you need to perform all of your strategies again after tracking and analyzing its results.
With all of this, you strongly need to have a great understanding on how to effectively perform this. Hence, read to learn more about this strategy as we unveil its key benefits, the tools, and the tips in performing lead generation for local business!
Advantages of Lead Generation for Local Business
Lead generation is a powerful strategy that you can use to improve your business. When you perform this strategy effectively, you gain more benefits that you might not have yet considered. The most visible advantage in performing this is that it increases your sales and revenue which mainly helps the growth of your local business. Still, there are other benefits that you can gain and for this reason, here are the advantages of implementing lead generation for local business.
Generate brand awareness
One of the most recognizable effects of delivering an effective lead generation strategy is increasing the popularity of your local business. The more you perform tactics that is aimed to a wider audience, the greater the chance of these people to recognize you. Besides, it is a fact that if you’re the first brand that your prospects think of when purchasing a product or service, it is most likely that these people will purchase from you. Hence, it is a must that you combine both strategic and informative content in order to present your local business as a brand and as an authority in the industry.
Target desired customers
Targeting is key as it provides you with the necessary details that will help you in getting better results. Besides, it is of utmost importance that before performing your strategies, you need to consider who your target market is. You can attain all of these with a thorough lead generation plan that provides you a better idea on the demographics and psychographics of the prospects that you want to target. This way you won’t have difficulty on personalizing your approach in order to get your forecasted results.
Gain audience insight
An effective strategy should give you both leads and insights about these people. Your main goal is to get leads that are qualified to be converted into customers. Still, these results won’t be useful if you don’t know how these leads know about your local business and what prompt them to buy your products and services. This is why a perfectly-planned lead generation strategy is most beneficial.
Because you have a strategy in performing all of your marketing strategies, you already have a plan on how to obtain your prospect’s information. For instance, you can use the insights that comes with building a business account on social media platforms or use analytics tools in order to know your website’s progress. Thereafter, you can use this to build a database that you can use in your future lead generation strategies.
Improve customer loyalty
Lead generation is important in your overall online marketing strategy as this help you better connect with your target market. In using this, you have better ways and strategies to speed up your online sales while interacting with your customers through different online platforms. For instance, you use social media to communicate and answer the queries of your past customers and prospects. Because of this, you already have a plan on what to do whenever a question regarding your business is asked. Hence, you make it easy for your customers to interact with you, which in return increases their loyalty towards your local business.
Strengthen marketing strategies
The most beneficial aspect of digital marketing is that all of your strategies are recorded on a database. Either you are performing lead generation in your website, in social media platforms, or in other networks, these will still provide you with appropriate data. Through this, you gain more insights on how your various lead generation strategies performed. Hence, this makes it easier for you to detect the positive and negative aspects of your strategies which you can use to optimize your current and future campaigns.
Tips on Lead Generation for Local Business
Lead generation is an important strategy that you must include in your online marketing requirements. In using this, you are able to gain a handful of benefits that takes your business towards success. Still, you need to invest your efforts in performing these. Hence, here is a list of the most effective tips in order to perform lead generation for local businesses.
Establish an optimized website.
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The central aspect of your overall digital marketing strategy is your website and this also serves as a starting point and the center of your lead generation campaigns. Apart from this, your website is also the main platform where you spread the message, branding, and campaigns of your company. This is also the best place to sell your products and services as this acts as the digital storefront of your local business. Due to all of this, you need to create a website that are perfectly optimized to all devices.
The first thing to consider in your website optimization is to buy a domain name and web hosting. As part of your online brand building, you should not rely on a free domain website as this negatively affect your business. Besides, these don’t even offer a ton of features which you can use in leading your target market in the sales funnel. This is why, instead of using free sites, buy a domain and hosting instead.
After that purchase, you still need to build your website. There are platforms such as WordPress and Squarespace which lets you beautify your site while these sites do the technical aspect. Still, you need to choose the perfect theme for your local business. Consider the branding of your business and the color that are recommended in your industry.
For instance, if you are an owner of a local restaurant, then it is perfect to choose the colors red and orange as this indulge your prospects into eating your specialties. Thereafter, you can add additional templates and plugins that offer more functionalities for your website.
Other than that, there are still parts of your site that you need to do and this is to present your business perfectly. When people visit your business website, they want to know more about your local business. Due to this, you need to provide them with the necessary details about your business. Add your location, contact numbers and others.
Then, don’t forget that you want to generate more leads that can be easily converted into customers, so represent your business perfectly. Add your company logo and other pictures about your business. Highlight past events through different visual media and add descriptions that carefully describes it.
Ultimately, optimize your website to all digital devices. It is best to choose a responsive theme for your website. Apart from this, you should also check the ease of use and the response time of your site. Make sure that the results for these three criteria are positive as this strongly the experience of your customers and target market.
Doing all of these is of utmost importance as your website becomes the second place where your prospects know more about your business. This sets up the first impression for your target market and with this, you should build your brand’s credibility and improve your relations with them. However, if you haven’t checked your site’s responsiveness and design, your website visitors will surely bounce off of your platform. Hence, check if your site is optimized, this way you can use this platform to better connect with your prospects, generate them into qualified leads, and convert them into loyal customers.
Maximize reach through local SEO.
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As a local business owner, you should utilize what is most accessible to your business and in this instance, these are your local market or the people who are nearest to your location.
In doing this, you are already maximizing your reach through local search engine optimization (SEO). With most search engine users search for businesses near them using keywords such as ‘near me,’ this triggers search engines to provide the most appropriate businesses on the results page.
Ranking high on this page should always be your main goal for this means that you are the most searchable. Hence, you will be recommended to people who are searching for businesses in specific locations.
Still, you should make sure that your local listing on platforms such as Google My Business and Yelp is optimized. There are key metrics that you should prioritize as search engine platforms only provide the best results according to the searcher’s intent. This is why you must consider checking the consistency of your listings.
The most important aspect that you should check are the details that you have added. Be certain that you have added the accurate and up-to-date name, address, phone numbers, and other contact details of your local business. Also, entice your target market into visiting your physical by uploading your logo, the interiors of your physical store, and some images from past events that happened in your location. Lastly, don’t forget to utilize Google My Business’ special feature which lets you post various content like offers and announcements with CTAs.
Most importantly, don’t just let these listings come to waste. Use these local listing platforms to improve your customer’s experience. Ask past and current customers to rate your products and services and let them post their reviews and pictures. Aside from this, use local listing sites as a platform for you to communicate with your prospects and customers. Answer questions and queries about your business and use these to let your target market decide what to do next.
Keep in mind that these platforms are helping the searchability of your business so use these to directly communicate with your prospects and customers and use their insights to improve your products, services, and key aspects of your business.
Create effective blogs.
Content grabs the attention of your target market and with your optimized website on-hand, you can utilize this platform to start a blog. With other visual content dominating the Internet by storm, blogging is still not yet defeated as one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience.
Consider that although blogging is not that popular as vlogging, this lead generation tactic is still a perfect method in drawing attention towards your business. Still, there are various things to consider such as making your content effective and ensuring that its reach is maximized.
Firstly, make your content educational, engaging, and SEO-ready. “Content is king,” as what Bill Gates had said in his 1996 essay, and this certainly a fact. This is why you really need to focus on making the content worthy enough for your target market to read.
Also, you should make your blog balanced in terms of making it informative and inviting so that you are really ensuring your target market that whenever they click your content, it is definitely worth the read.
Lastly, you must make sure that your content will be seen by your prospects and customers and the perfect way to do this is by incorporating SEO tactics such as providing more time on semantic search and structuring your website’s content.
Write blog content that focuses on action queries and provides answers using a natural and conversational voice. Also, carefully place your long-tail keywords all over your blog content as online searchers use keywords to ask questions on the search engine platform.
Apart from this, your blog structure strongly matters. This is why it is a must that you make it organized by properly using heading tags. Then, as data matters the most, make sure that all of your data are properly crawled, organized, categorized, and displayed by using a structured data markup in the backend of your website. This way, you are letting search engines understand your content better.
Doing all of this is absolutely necessary as this helps you increase the authority and online visibility of your website. Besides, this helps you better connect with your past and future customers as a brand. Hence, create a blog right now and incorporate the latest trends in content marketing with it.
Invest in multimedia content.
Other than blogging, there are other types of content such as images, videos, and other visual content that you should also incorporate into your lead generation tactics.
Text, alone, bores readers, this is why you should add images in your long-form content. You can easily add images in your content but take into consideration if its relevant to the overall content.
Also, be certain on optimizing these images as other people search for products visually. Make sure that the size of your images is not too big so it does not affect your website’s loading speed. Then, check if it is appropriate to the platform that you intend to publish it, especially on social media. Then, if you are posting these as part of your blog, add a long-tail keyword in your image alt-text, title, and description so that search engines can read what your images are all about. Lastly, include a caption that carefully describes what your images are so that your audience will have an idea of what it is about.
Apart from images, videos are by far the top visual content these days. According to Cisco Visual Networking Index Complete Forecast, it was predicted that nearly 1.9 billion Web video users will be watching 3 trillion minutes of videos per month in 2021. This only means that people now consume more videos than normal content.
Still, you should make sure that your videos are effective and have a purpose in generating leads. Whether it is something about your brand or your audience, these should have a goal in your marketing strategy. Besides, this is also a perfect way to repurpose your blogs into a video so that other audiences can still have an idea of what your content is.
Other than that, make sure to check if your audio is audible so that your message will perfectly be sent without distortion. Then, include a closed caption as this helps both of you are the hearing-impaired audience and your SEO ranking.
Keep in mind that there are also other types of multimedia content such as podcasts, interactive content, and animations. You can utilize all of these to perfectly send your message but make sure that you take into consideration your budget as some of these require a huge amount of investment. Still, the key here is to create content. So, whether what type of content you aim to use in order to generate qualified leads, remember that what matters is it provides value for your target market.
Build an optimized social media account.
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Social media platforms are one of the networks that have the highest number of users worldwide. Besides, there are already 3.484 billion social media users worldwide, according to Global Digital Report 2019. Still, there are millions of business owners who are not maximizing the benefits of these platforms.
Take into account that social media are not just platforms for you to promote your products and services. With billions of its users worldwide, you can utilize this to increase the visibility of your local business may it be on the local and international scene. Apart from that, you should use these networks to build a community for your brand.
In order to maximize the advantages of using these platforms in generating better leads, you should consider the platform, your profile, and your audience.
Choose the perfect network
In terms of social networking platforms, the top four networks include Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Twitter. Although these have the same purpose of becoming a social network where people interact with one another, businesses of all sizes are already utilizing these to increase their reach. Still, there are some things that each network separates from one another. With this in mind, these are key aspects that you should consider in using these platforms.
Facebook – One of the regulations of this platform is for businesses to use Facebook Page instead of a personal account as the former provides more features for business owners to use in managing and promoting their business online. Apart from that, this also offers business pages to create a community by using Page Groups. Regardless of what marketing techniques you incorporate in your Facebook Page, just remember that the recommended voice in your posts is a conversational and often informal voice that playfully engages with your audience.
Instagram – This platform mainly focuses on visual content such as photos and videos as their main users are millennials. Due to this fact, it is recommended to post visual content with good aesthetics, quality, and captions that are mostly conversational and engaging. Other than that, you should optimize your content by using hashtags and tagging your locations as this mostly are key metrics on how people locate businesses on this platform.
YouTube – Unlike other social networks, this platform only caters to videos. But using this is still a big investment as billions of people prefer video over other types of visuals. Still, you need to optimize your video, add descriptions and use tags to reach your target market. Also, because this platform lets video viewers leave a comment, this is a perfect way to connect with them using a conversational voice. Apart from that, you can share the link of your videos on other platforms wherein you have a greater chance of increasing your reach.
Twitter – This platform doesn’t usually focus on visual media as this prefers messages, announcements, and information that are tweeted under the 140-character limit. In addition to this, you can use Twitter to research about ongoing trends in your industry and locality that you can use in your future campaigns.
There are still other platforms that you should consider but keep in mind that as you are still building the reputation of your local business, you should focus on one network first. Then, if you already have the necessary resources, you can already utilize all of these.
Optimize your platform.
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After choosing the appropriate network for your local business, you should perfectly present your local business into these. Take into account that you are using these networks to communicate with your target market and convert them into customers. Hence, instead of just creating a business account, leave a concrete and lasting impression into your prospects and customers by optimizing your account.
Utilize your branding on your social platform. Use your logo as your profile picture. Then, if you are using Facebook and Twitter, you can add your products, services, and contact details in your cover photo. Just make sure that you are adding your branding colors in your visual content. This way you are showcasing your business better by letting your prospects and customers have a beautiful experience when visiting your business profiles.
Other than your visuals, your details are also key in improving your searchability either on the platform or in search engines. Make sure that every detail from your brand name into your contact details are accurate and up-to-date.
Although other social networking platforms don’t have additional sections such as achievements and others, you can still sum up all of your business details in your account’s bio. Remember that your aim is to help your target market know more about you and by completely filling up all of your business details, you are helping these people to easily contact or visit your physical location.
Build a social community.
Considering that social media is named as it is, you should use this as a platform to build a community for your target market to interact with you. Besides, doing this is essential in lead generation and it significantly affects the sales and reputation of businesses. So, be more social and connect and engage with your audience, instead of just posting about your products and services and other aspects of your local business.
On Facebook, you can use their Page Group to provide a platform where you connect with your audience. However, this is not applicable to some social platforms. Still, there are a handful of ways that you can use to communicate with them such as creating surveys, polls, and others.
The only thing that matters on this part of your social media lead generation process is engagement. Achieve this by building your relationship with your prospects and audience and showing the human side of your brand through your visual content and social posts. Then, nurture them by answering their queries, comment on their shared post, check-ins, and other engagement styles so that it will open more conversations.
Lastly, immerse them about your local business so that they will visit your social platforms again. Hence, the more engaged your target prospects, the more likely they can be converted into customers.
Generate leads through email.
In lead generation, the most personal strategy is email marketing because this lets you send something to your target market through their email addresses. Besides, email is an essential channel that is key in keeping in touch with your prospects until they are ready to purchase your products and services. Hence, this gives you the opportunity to effectively convert your prospects into customers.
Create an effective lead magnet.
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Lead magnets are essential in email marketing because these are incentives in exchange for your prospect’s email address and other personal information. Some of the widely-used lead magnets that you can use in performing lead generation for local businesses are quizzes, discount codes, and raffle entries. There are still other lead magnets that you can offer to your prospects but do consider things such as value, ease of subscription, and privacy policy.
Regardless of what lead magnet you choose, these should provide value and relevance as well as click-worthy in order to be effective. Create a visual lead magnet and a deal that they cannot reject. Then, incorporate local events in your lead magnet as a way to entice your target market in becoming your customers.
For instance, if you’re an owner of a restaurant, then you can use events such as Valentine’s Day and birthdays to offer discounts to every person that will give their emails in return. Hence, offers like this can kickstart the growth of your email lists as no one can reject a special offer.
However, a good lead magnet will be of waste if your prospects cannot easily give their emails. Make it easy for them to subscribe in your email list by improving your sign-up process. Whether you are posting this in your social media accounts or in your website, include a call-to-action that prompts them to subscribe.
Also, reduce the sign-up boxes to a minimum by only asking their names and emails so that they can easily register within seconds. This way, they won’t have time to avoid your lead magnet. Hence, prompting them to sign up.
Still, keep in mind that your prospect’s information is personal, and with this, you should provide a privacy policy. Include in your legal requirement the action that you will be taking in using their email address and other personal information. Make it clear for them on what content you will send on their emails. Hence, let them know what to expect and include all of these details in your privacy policy and terms and conditions.
Segment your email list.
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One of the key in getting leads that are qualified on becoming customers is segmentation. In this process, you are grouping your subscribers into smaller groups based on various criteria like their demographics, interests, and others. This way, you will be sending email contents that are relevant to your target market. Thereby, this helps you more in personalizing your emails according to your audience’s buyer journey that in turn will give you a greater chance in generating leads.
In segmenting your audience, there are two things to consider and these are your audience’s demographics and psychographics. Firstly, check the location and background of your target market. Even when you are targeting a local market, you still need to be particular in your area of preference as different locations have different cultures and backgrounds.
Then, analyze them according to age, gender, and other demographic factors that you find suitable in your main goal. The next thing to consider are their interests, opinions, and lifestyles as these affect how your target market interacts with your business because different people have different core values that prompt them to buy or not to buy any products and services.
Besides, grouping your subscribers and your audience, in general, is a must in order to send them valuable and targeted content. If you are using an email marketing tool, these can provide you with the necessary details. But you can still achieve this information by interviewing existing clients, sending them a welcome email together with a survey form, or analyzing your website’s analytics. Just keep in mind that a careful assessment should be made so that these will provide you with better and qualified leads.
Subsequently, you should still segment your email list on a regular basis. Take into consideration that there might be people who have already unsubscribed while others are still new in your email lists. Also, not all campaigns and email content are effective. So, perform a segmentation again and ensure the success of your email campaigns.
Send an effective email.
The biggest factor that affects the results of your email lead generation strategy is your email itself. Bear in mind that an email is also a form of content that serves as a way to turn prospects into customers. This is why it is recommended to send valuable and optimized emails.
Firstly, choose the right email according to the purpose. Take into consideration that each circumstance needs an appropriate email. For instance, if you have a new subscriber, it is best to send a welcome message than an offer. Other than that, there are various emails that you can send to your email lists such as offers, announcements, and transactional emails.
Afterward, the structure of your email matters the most. Create a subject line that strongly grabs the attention of your subscribers and entice them to open your email. Then, personalize each content depending on its target segment. Keep in mind that your content should not feel like a robot talking to your prospects, instead use a friendly and conversational tone. Also, don’t forget to provide value in your content. Finally, optimize it by adding small-sized multimedia and keeping its format clean.
Increase reach through online advertising.
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Advertising is a marketing strategy that provides leads directly. Unlike the traditional way, online advertising relies on promotions on various platforms on the Internet. Because this network is used worldwide and has billions of active users, your ad can certainly be seen by a huge number of people regardless of what platform they use. However, in order for your advertisement to be effective, you need to make efforts to create your content in targeting your target market.
The most important aspect of your advertisement is your content. No matter how optimize your landing pages are, if your advertisement is not click-worthy, then it will still be ineffective. Remember that like your other strategies, advertising still need content that will make your target market click and this is your ad. Create an ad that is eye-catching, optimized, and click-worthy. This way, you will gain leads directly.
Apart from that, you should also keep in mind that there are different advertising techniques. These include display advertising, native advertising, search engine marketing, social media advertising, and Pay-Per-Click marketing. These advertising techniques cater to different platforms which means that your advertisement might work perfectly in one platform but not on the other. This is why you need to study this aspect of your advertising strategy as this also affects the success of your advertisement.
Also, keep in mind that targeting positively affects the results of your advertisement. It is of utmost importance that you have a clear idea of who your target market is according to their demographics and psychographics. This way, it will be easier for you to target them. Hence, you need to have a buyer persona or the semi-fictional representations of your ideal customers.
Lastly, provide an effective landing page. This web page is specifically designed to prompt visitors to take action and in this case, prompt your prospects into purchasing your products and services. Because of this, you need to make sure that your prospects are not bouncing off of your page.
Add all of the necessary details that are needed and maximize its advantage by including call-to-action buttons. Also, don’t overcrowd your landing page by adding only the necessary details that your prospects need. This way, you are effectively using this platform to convert these individuals into customers.
Top Lead Generation Tools for local businesses to Use
Performing lead generation requires a huge investment. You need to put a great deal of time and effort in performing all of these. Other than your time and efforts, this also require a handful of tools to perform effectively. However, as a local business owner, you don’t have much time on searching for the perfect tool. This is why we have curated these lists of top lead generation tools for local businesses to use.
OptinMonster
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OptinMonster is an online lead generation software that helps a ton of email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to easily capture, share, and manage leads.
With its advanced targeting, you can easily convert leads into customers. This technology will let you easily run campaigns on different pages that are targeted depending on your page’s content. Then, this also has an exit-intent trigger that gets your audience’s attention through pop-ups before they leave your site.
In terms of returning visitors, this tool also provides an onsite retargeting which lets you create special offers and promotions to these individuals. You can use all of these benefits while incorporating it into other tools such as Constant Contract. Hence, this is a perfect tool to target leads that are browsing your website.
Hootsuite
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Hootsuite is best if you have a handful of social media accounts for your local business as it offers social media management and automation. Even with a free version, you can already schedule 30 social media posts and monitor three networks at the same time.
Moreover, this also provides you a dashboard where you manage all of your engagements and analytics. You can easily respond and communicate to your audience without having to log into different accounts. Other than that, you can monitor the performance of your social media accounts by just using this tool. Thereby, you can easily manage your social networks, connect with your audience, improve social listening, and improve the performance of your business in terms of social media marketing.
LeadPages
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LeadPages will provide you an effective landing page for your advertisements or for your email campaigns. This tool offers a well-designed drag-and-drop or click and edit builder that is easy to use.
Moreover, this also lets you customize your landing page easily by choosing your desired template and adding widgets that act as a CTA. Thereafter, you can already set up your form, attach a lead magnet and a thank you page, and test it before publishing.
Other than that, Leadpages also allows two-step opt-in creation wherein you can gain leads through text messages. Hence, if you want an effective and perfectly optimized landing page, you can use LeadPages.
Constant Contact
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Constant Contract is perfect to use in email lead generation. This provides an easy to use and beginner-friendly service that provides more than just email lists, segmentation, and tracking. Moreover, this also lets you easily access a library of free images and use tools for event management and social networking for you to use in content creation and promotion.
Also, this provides a handful of different integrations that you can utilize in ads, e-commerce, and others. If you also plan on using their Email Plus Plan, you can access more features such as surveys and polls, perform an AB testing, and automate your emails to improve your open rate and send targeted emails. Hence, you can be assured that this tool provides world-class support to provide your more leads.
Hubspot
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Hubspot offers a free CRM tool that lets you organize, track, grow your contact list, and nurture your sales leads. The main advantage of this tool is that it is free to use and includes unlimited users wherein you can add your entire employees into these.
Moreover, this offers no customization limits and you don’t need to add other integrations to use this as a marketing platform. Hubspot also offers a live chat tool with the basic chatbot functionality that lets you communicate with your online visitors.
Other than that, you gain better insights into using this tool as it tracks your interactions with website visitors automatically that you can follow-up afterward. Thereby, this is really a perfect tool to increase your customer experience to the next level.
You may also want to read our Digital Marketing Strategy for Local Business: A Guide here.
Key Takeaway
Lead generation is a necessary aspect of your online marketing strategy as this helps you generate qualified leads and guide them throughout the sales funnels which in return help you increase your sales and reputation.
In performing this strategy, there are a handful of marketing tactics that you can perform. These include website design and development, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, and paid advertising. All of these are key in generating leads that can easily be converted into customers. Still, there are things to consider in making lead generation effective.
Firstly, check who your target audience. It is a must that you have an idea of who your target market is. These people won’t all be uninformed as each of these belongs to various demographics and has different psychographics. For instance, a group of teenage prospects thinks differently than your married customers. In this case, it is highly recommended to group them into segments. This way, it will be easier for you to market your products and services with a high return-on-investment.
Moreover, you should also think of the platform that you will be using. Each network is different from one another and for this reason each requires different strategies in order to be effective. Take into consideration that what might work on social networks won’t work on your website. Hence, for instances such as these, it is best to have thorough research on your desired platform and its required marketing strategy.
However, don’t be too overwhelmed by the handful of strategies that you want to use in your online marketing. It is best to first use the platform that you have already worked with and then incorporate a marketing strategy together with it.
For instance, you might want to use social media first while you are still building your website. This way you are maximizing the benefits of each platform using its needed strategy.
On top of all this, the key aspect is personalization. Regardless of the platform and strategy that you will be using, you must take into account that you must customize your marketing campaigns. Go back to the segments of your target market and assess what campaigns will be most effective in each segment.
Then, plan your campaigns thoroughly by keeping in mind your goal, the platforms, the marketing tactics, and the tools that you need in order to perform it. Afterward, monitor your progress and analyze your results. Lastly, create another campaign using the results of your past campaigns.
Keep in mind that lead generation is key to the success of your local business. Because of this, you need to strategically perform all of the necessary aspects above to achieve the benefits in getting qualified leads and increasing the reputation of your local business online. Hence, you can still achieve online success through this guide on lead generation for local businesses!