In these tough and truly competitive times, small businesses are “big” in terms of popularity and influence. The SBA, or Small Business Association in the US defines small business as “an enterprise having fewer than 500 employees”. In the United States alone, there are almost 28 million small business-to-businesses, with over 22 million being self-employed with no additional payroll or employees. And of course, small businesses have generated over 65% of the net new jobs since 1995! And to succeed in a competitive, web-based era, a couple of potent, yet budget-friendly strategies like generating the right leads is important.
One of the best small business lead generation services and strategies is to provide potential customers with helpful and refreshing content, as well as resource guides and whitepapers. Whether in the form of blogs or via distribution in content directories, feature articles, blog articles, resource guides and whitepapers work in the same way as webinars and demos, as they provide information for free.
However, the only difference is that these resources are far more detailed or comprehensive, and they can exist forever too, instead of just being limited in a certain time and place.
One great way for offering these helpful resources is by setting up a dedicated landing page for them, which details the guide or article’s benefits. And like webinars or video demos, the small business owner can slowly build up a collection of people who have downloaded the material, to use as fodder for their future sales efforts.
One of the oldest, but still one of the most reliable way of generating leads, is email marketing. Email marketing remains a wonderful option because it can be used in combination with other strategies like social media campaigns, content marketing etc., or they can be used independently too.
For example, small business owners can collect all the email addresses that they gathered from trade fairs or shows, or from webinars and whitepapers, and enter them in a “drip” email campaign which periodically sends new offers and deals or updates to prospects. Email can also be used to syndicate and promote the publication of a current newsletter or whitepaper.
Before embarking on a social media campaign, small business owners are reminded of the 3 C’s of a social media plan – content, content, content! Always have a fresh supply of content, and make it updated or current to the topics, season, conversations or news.
Sharing stories, insights, tips, lessons and learnings in a friendly tone is an effective method in making this work. You could also share content, images, videos and guides from complimentary third-party sources, to shore up your own content library. The truth is that readers value quality content, regardless of the source, and they too recognize the person posting it as a valued contributor to the online community.
And of course, social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others are to be used for healthy engagement, and not for pushing one-sided or blatant sales promos. Social media platforms should be used in a way that expert social media lead generation services providers like us do, by doing the following steps – Awareness, Consideration, Nurture and Development! To know more about the ways to expand your clientele, connect with us today.
