Here’s the one thing anyone in business can agree on: landing a good lead is invaluable. A hot lead lies behind every sale, and everyone wants to get those delivered as effecient as possible. Fortunately, we have more tools and technology available to generate leads more effectively than ever before.
Start with who you know
Take time to create deep profiles of your top 5-10 customers. Look at their location, size, and average sale, how long they’ve been in business, number of employees and so on. Ask as many questions as you can think of about them and create a spreadsheet with the answers.
Look at those profiles and find other businesses that share the characteristics. Sometimes, these are your customers’ competitors (makes sense, right?) By compiling this information, you can gain significant insight into who your next best customers could be.
Put your website to work
Your own business website offers proven options for learning more about your customer base and converting visitors to sales.
Are you tracking which companies visit your site? You should be, by installing anonymous visitor tracking software. Once you have the name of the company that has visited, you can follow up on a social media site such as LinkedIn to determine how well they fit your buyer profile. If they seem like a good fit, start a conversation with them about their needs.
The online chat stands out as another highly productive sales channel. Because these chats take place in real time, you can communicate with a live person at the moment they’re looking for a solution. Easy lead, right?
Implement calls to action (CTAs) on your site. A CTA can be a line of text, an image, or a slide-in window that asks user to take action, such as downloading a whitepaper, signing up for free trial or event. Make the CTA easy to act upon, don´t ask for to much information and you’ll almost certainly generate viable leads.
Leverage social media
The options for using social media tools are vast. Obviously, your social media networks are great pools for generating contacts, since people are already interested in your product. Think about these easy ways to further leverage those social media contacts.
Run a contest that lets people win something from your business – discounted services, an ebook, a consultation. Have people complete a form with their email address. Then follow up.
Take advantage of the services that social media offers, such as Twitter’s lead-generating cards or Facebook’s ads. These can be especially effective when you’re trying to build an email or newsletter list, and it’s easy to calculate CPM or CPA for each campaign.
Use tools such as ProductHunt or Quora, where you can follow conversations related to your product or to similar products. You can also see what kinds of problems people are trying to solve. If your business has a solution, jump into the conversation and see whether you can spread you knowledge and that will in the long run develop leads, trust me .
The key to generating the best leads is to implement strategies and approaches that work best for you. Every business is different, with different needs and consumer bases. Experiment with some of these approaches to hone your hot-lead strategies and land successful sales.
Good luck and remember. You can never give to much expertis and never get to many hot leads.
