With huge multinationals dominating the commercial market, both online and on the high street, local businesses are finding it increasingly hard to compete at attracting new customers and in retaining existing ones.
With less of a budget for marketing, these businesses need to regularly speak to their local customers in order to show that they care about their business and that their continued custom is both welcome and appreciated. And as for new customers, if a smaller company can offer something that large faceless corporations can’t – a unique selling point – then that could make it worthwhile for them to move their custom to them.
If your business is looking for new customers then one of your first objectives should be to build a high-quality pool of valuable leads that you can direct more targeted marketing to. The best way to do this is to develop a few effective lead generation strategies, which help you to reach and appeal to your exact target market.
In this article we look at some tried and tested methods that should assist you in finding and identifying those new customers your business needs to grow and prosper.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are one of the most popular and successful methods of lead generation online, allowing you to communicate a lot of information in one go. Your landing page is also something which you have complete control over, allowing you to optimise it for your audience, and hopefully generating high-quality local leads for your business.
Landing pages are best for producing leads from ads which are placed on sites like Facebook or Google. These sites offer high-traffic and a more open and engaged audience, and are thus excellent resources for any business.
How To Create A Winning Landing Page
Highlight Your Lead Magnet
A lead magnet is the incentive that you offer to make it worthwhile for the customer to convert. This could be a discount, a freebie or even a valuable resource or appointment. If your lead magnet is the focus of your landing page, the customer is first hit with what you can offer them, rather than what you want from them.
Keep It Simple
Although you do have the opportunity to provide a lot of information in a landing page, because it is under your control, you still don’t want to overwhelm the user with information.
Try to remember that you are trying to take leads from a largely uninterested pool of internet users, who would rather their regular browsing wasn’t interrupted. If you try to talk too much on your landing page, they will just navigate straight back to their original page. Stick to the most important points for your page, so that it can be scanned and understood quickly.
Don’t Ask Too Many Questions
Again, you want a potential lead to be struck by the value of what you are offering, and make certain that they don’t feel that they have to give you too much information straight away. Just ask as few questions as possible initially, such as what their email address and name is. Remember that you can always ask for more information later, when you already have the lead.
Targeted Facebook Ads
Facebook is a godsend for local businesses trying to reach a wide section of people. The platform has 2.41 billion users who have all provided detailed information about their ages, locations and so on, allowing companies to target potential customers on an almost individual level.
You will be able to filter who sees your ads by everything from their gender to their relationship status and ensure that these potential customers only see things which are entirely relevant to them. Facebook lead ads also allow users to fill out a contact form within their newsfeed, making it more likely that they will stick with it because their browsing experience isn’t interrupted too much.
The Process Of Running A Facebook Lead Ad
1.Set your ad’s objective as ‘Conversion’ and send everyone that clicks on it to a landing page on your website which allows them to enter their contact information for further information/to join your mailing list etc.
2.Your ad will pop up naturally in the News Feed of prospective leads, with a call to action that allows the user to click on it.
3.A form opens within the News Feed (so they are not directed away from the page that they want to be on, limiting your bounce rates) and the prospective lead fills out their details.
4.This information can then be sent directly to your own previously-integrated CRM (if you have one) for your marketing team to target more directly.
Competitions
One of the most effective lead generation tools is a competition or giveaway, which offers potential leads a relevant prize for getting in touch and leaving contact details. This offers your audience something of worth to them, meaning that they see your company as high value. If done correctly, it can generate a huge number of leads in a fairly short space of time.
How To Run An Effective Competition
Give Away Something Relevant
If you are a bridal store and you are giving away an iPad, for example, you are likely to get a huge number of leads. However, these will be very low value to you as people will sign up for the competition regardless of whether they are getting married or have any need for your business.
Giving away a free wedding dress consultation would be a far better competition idea, in this case, as everyone that applies is likely to have an interest in buying a wedding dress.
Make Sharing The Competition Worthwhile
One of the best ways to reach a wide target audience is to use the audience you already have. This is even more ideal for local businesses, as your existing customers and those who you have already engaged with are likely to know lots more people in your area who have similar interests.
Add a social sharing option to your competition to make it easy for those who get involved to share and offer extra entries into the competition as a reward for those who do share.
Follow Up With All Entries
Even for the people who entered your competition and didn’t win, you should get back in touch to offer them a follow up. Perhaps you could offer them a discount as a sort of ‘consolation prize’. Not only does this reignite their interest in your business, it also makes the customer feel valued by your brand, and more likely to re-engage in future.
About MaxWeb
Here at MaxWeb we pride ourselves on our ability to give local businesses a voice and presence online. Not only will your site look great, it will be built from the outset to drive enquiries and sales to your business. Why not give us a call on 0151 652 4777 or email info@maxwebsolutions.co.uk to find out more.
Posted on Tuesday, November 5th, 2019 in Digital Marketing.
