Imagine this: it’s a Friday night and you finally have the three-cheese pizza you’ve been dreaming about all week in front of you, and you’ve just picked up a slice when your phone starts to ring. “Hello? I’m calling from so-and-so to discuss your preference for iOs over Android.”

You politely decline the offer, but your pizza party moment is effectively ruined by the cold call.

Today’s buying process has been completely revolutionised. Buyers are getting better at filtering out noise, researching what they want to see on their own, and banking on social proof before moving on a decision. Instead of finding customers with mass advertising, marketers should now focus on being found and building relations with their potential buyers.

That’s where lead generation comes in.

Lead generation is a way of warming up potential customers to your business through personalised interactions, and getting them on the track of buying. We’ve emphasised 20 lead generation hacks to boost your business and attract new clients.

1. Create Urgency In Your CTAs (Call-to-action)

An effective action trigger, this prompts people to act quickly when you say things like “Only 39 copies of this free e-book left”, “70 other people are looking at this flight”. This boosts the perceived value of your offer or services.

2. Employ Video Marketing

Videos add a human touch to your business communication, and convey more in less time: Videos generate 70% more conversions. With the rise of vertical mobile videos such as IGTV, TikTok, and Instagram Stories, video content has the highest social reach, trigger action that can be viewed and consumed quickly.

3. Host Webinars

Webinars unite two tactics: video + interactivity. People love that you’re giving away something valuable for free. Keep it short, simple, and focused- usually, people want to have an interactive Q&A session right after.

4. Create (And Maintain) A Smart Website

It isn’t just media and tech companies that need to focus on design. Regardless of what you’re building, your website needs to combine efficiency and elegance, and show your visitor a definite who, what, why, and what of your company.

5. Use Google/Facebook/Yahoo As Your Login

People are getting tired of making a new account for every website they visit. You can optimise the user experience by allowing your customers to sign in to your website using their existing Google and/or Facebook logins.

6. Link Your CTAs To A Targeted Landing Page

CTAs are meant to send people to a page where they can receive a specific offer, not your homepage. Even if the CTA is about your product/brand rather than an offer, sending them to  a targeted landing page that’s relevant to what they’re looking for generates more leads for you.

7. Rely On “Influencers”

Depending on your business, you might want to use the help of well-known people in the field with a large social following and a relevant image. They help bring attention to your company as a trusted third party, and help reach more specific audiences.

8. Construct Incentive-based Referral Programs

The modern version of word-of-mouth, if you’re selling something online, create customised referral codes. It can be a discount for a new customer, and a referral discount for your loyal clients.

9. Publish Superior Content

Creating high-quality content that is simple and answers questions quickly makes search engines give your page preference and a higher search ranking. This means making posts that explain the four W’s – who, what, why, and what – of a topic your company is an expert on.

10. Run Social Media Contests

Maybe cliché, but it brings visibility and participation, as they might require people to follow, or tag their friends.   

11. Create Irresistible, But Focused Offers

What do your leads want most? You can offer e-books or whitepapers as a thank-you for signing up. If your audience doesn’t like reading, utilise a video/audio recording instead.

12. Use Strong Verbs To Make Powerful Headlines

A compelling headline entices both search engines and people. Grab a thesaurus, and replace that “increase” with “boost”.

13. Tweak Your Forms

Keep your contact or sign-up forms short and relevant. Provide optional/required fields for those who want to provide more information. Using things like radio buttons instead of drop-down menus also encourages people to complete your forms.

14. Generate Brand Advocates

Brand advocates are people who spread good reviews about your brand. They can be customers that you impress, who then spread your brand to their circles, or experts in the field.

15. Encourage Your Advocates To Make Testimonials

Alongside these testimonials, you can include a link that promotes posts and drives traffic to your landing page. Seeing testimonials creates trust, and people to convert to leads.

16. Repurpose Old Content

This means reusing old, but popular, content with a different purpose or targeting a new audience. You can even use the content to advertise, and showcase it to a completely new audience. High engagement means more leads.  

17. Go Live

Set off live-streaming to showcase the launch of your new products and services. It should be short, and have a link to your landing page, if possible. It’s even better if your post has a direct CTA for immediate lead conversion.

18. Know Platform-Specific Strengths

Utilise each social media platform’s unique features to get the most out of them. For example, maintain an active presence on LinkedIn. For Facebook campaigns, use your links as much as you can. Instagram requires creative content, and should use hashtags appropriately. You can even add a link to your landing page in your bio.

19. Start A Newsletter

To make the most of this, provide convincing reasons for people to sign up: promise exclusive sales, knowledge, or experiences. But make sure to keep the content coming, or you’ll be left with disappointed clients.

20. Use Exit-Intent Pop Ups

As a last-ditch strategy, unobtrusive pop-ups appear when the user moves their cursor over to close a browser tab. They help entice users to provide an email address at the offer of something like a discount code.

But why can’t I just purchase leads?

Despite being more expensive, buying leads, instead of organically generating them, is easier, and saves time and effort. But resist that temptation for a minute.

Leads you’ve purchased via various databases and email lists don’t actually know your company, and probably signed up for something else. The messages you’re sending are thus unwanted and intrusive (like getting cold calls in the middle of a pizza session). This puts you in danger of being marked as spam, and potentially put on a “blacklist” that’s shared with other email providers, and isn’t easy to get out of.

This is just the beginning of the lead generation process. Keep promoting great offers, improving your CTAs and landing page, and staying in touch with your sales team. Never be afraid to experiment, the more you test and build on your lead generation process, the more you’ll generate revenue for your company.

The Tribe of Brands team can help you stay on top of trends to effectively navigates the complex waters of the internet. Our marketing agency can help you with further ideas to ensure seamless user journeys and design digital marketing campaigns.