6 Surefire Ways To Get High-Quality Leads For Your Business

Photo by Obie Fernandez on Unsplash

A sales lead is an individual or company that could purchase your company’s goods or services. A lead becomes a prospect once you’ve identified their level of interest and fit as a customer for your business. You can use different methods to identify sales leads, including advertising and marketing, cold calling, social media, referrals, outreach and networking, consultations, and product/service trials.

Most businesses depend on adding to their customer base to grow their business. One major way to accomplish this goal is to ensure that your business receives a regular stream of quality leads.

If you run a small business, maybe you have an idea of your target market, however, an ambiguous idea is not enough to compete in today’s ruthless business environment. Without detailed knowledge of your target market, you could be losing business to your competitors or missing out on great opportunities to increase sales.

Here’s how to drum up more high-quality sales lead for your business.

• Identify Your Target Audience
• Determine What Needs Your Product Fulfils And Make It Obvious
• Leverage On Social Media To Engage
• Post High-value Content
• Leverage On Quality Driven Promotions
• Track Customer Engagement On Your Website

1. IDENTIFY YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

A target market is a specific group of people you have decided to target with your products or services. Depending on your niche, it could be a large pool of customers. Target markets can be affected by several factors such as buying cycles, product shelf life and other elements that may not be driven by people who might be interested in buying what you’re selling.

The concept of target markets can become much more complicated if you offer a product or service with wide appeal, or you have a diverse customer base. If you sell to “everybody,” then how are you supposed to define your target market?

For example, you can use gender as a starting point when conducting research into your existing customer base. However, gender isn’t always binary and some people, such as transgender individuals, may not be easily categorized into the study of humans.

It’s important to be as inclusionary as possible when looking at potentially sensitive demographics, especially in the imagery and language used in your messaging, otherwise, you risk isolating members of your community and prospective customers.

For example, I want to sell fresh tomatoes and I eventually venture into that.

The important questions are:

• Where do I sell my product?
• Which gender will buy it more?
• What age-group people are going to be involved?
• What does my target market want and what is their pain point?
• Where do I market this to get more customers?
• What is the buying force in a particular geographical area?

It won’t be idealistic if I take my product (tomatoes) which I’m supposed to sell in the market to an office right?

If your business offers a product or services similar to those already on the market, do as much homework as possible. What demographic groups are buying these products? When do they buy them? Which specific product in the entire line up is the most popular? If there is a data that you can find online to gather a detailed view of the type of customers who are purchasing product similar to what you will offer, then

Surveys could also play a role in defining your market. Get contacts details of your potential customers to ask if they would purchase your own product or service.

This whole point of the exercise is to know who and when to market your product or services — rather than relying on blind marketing tactics.

2. DETERMINE WHAT NEEDS YOUR PRODUCT FULFILS AND MAKE IT OBVIOUS

Who is most likely to use your product? As you answer this question, consider factors we just discussed. Take for instance, a recent college graduate who has just started her life job — she will have different needs than a mother of four teenage children.

Both women require food and shelter, but at the same time, they might choose to spend their discretionary income in different ways. Almost 50% of millennial women, for instance, shop for clothes more than twice a month, compared to only 36% of women from older generations. Millennial men, meanwhile, spend twice as much on clothing as non-millennials do.

What does this mean in a business context? If you are a clothing retailer, whether you are offering $15 t-shirts or $500 coats will lead you to different target markets. T-shirts that retail for $15 can be bought multiple times each year, while a $500 coat might be a once-in-a-lifetime purchase. If you plan to sell $15 t-shirts, here is your target market: millennials who want variety at a lower cost.

3. LEVERAGE ON SOCIAL MEDIA TO ENGAGE

Social media was initially created with the idea of connecting people in the digital world. However, over the years, its purpose has diversified to a great extent. Today, it is one of the most powerful tools for businesses to connect and engage with their audiences. But, why is it so important to leverage social media for business?

Well, look at the numbers. A study by social Sprouts found that 60% of millennials are likely to purchase from a brand they follow online. The numbers are favourable even for other generations using social media. 67% of Gen X and 51% of baby boomers are likely to do the same.

By leveraging social media, you can also get more word-of-mouth recommendations and more traffic to your website. It can drive your profits too. However, the results will depend on how effective your social media marketing strategy is.

The good news is that leveraging social media for business is really not rocket science. You just need to know a few basic tricks. To help you with it, we’ve listed a few tips that will ensure you’re moving in the right direction. Be patient and follow these pointers consistently and results will soon follow.

• Figure Out Your Audience Preference. Be it LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, your business needs to have a presence on one or more social channels. However, before you create your business accounts, think about where you are most likely to find your target audience.
• If you are a B2B brand, you definitely need to be active on LinkedIn because it’s your best chance of engaging with decision-makers. On the other hand, if your products are more visually-stimulating, Instagram is definitely a great option. In general, platforms like Instagram or Snapchat are frequented by younger audiences. And Facebook is preferred by older ones.

So get to know your audience. Google Analytics can help you with this. You can get insights into age groups, locations, and other demographic data about your audiences using it.

• Once you know your target market well, choose a suitable social media platform. Opt for the one which your target market uses the most
• Once you start posting, analyse which groups in your target audiences are responding well. Also, analyse which social media platforms are giving you the most engagement. Keep a tab on the kind of content you’re getting the most engagement from.
• You can use Facebook and Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, and other such tools for this analysis. You’ll be able to see your users’ genders, locations, ages, interests, and a lot more. It’s a goldmine of information that you can use to your advantage.
• Pictures and videos may do well on Instagram, while long blog posts may perform better on LinkedIn. Experiment a little and see what works.
• Accordingly, tweak your content to suit the platform that you’re posting on. If you want to leverage social media for your business, you’ll need to get creative. Also, think of multiple ways of posting the same content in different formats, this is called content repurposing.

4. POST HIGH-VALUE CONTENT

Of course, your goal is to sell. However, you can’t be blatant about it on social media.

Show, don’t tell.

Weave a visual story around your brand, but don’t aggressively sell your products or services. Good storytelling will help you connect better with your target audiences.

Take some inspiration from Airbnb’s Instagram posts. They have beautiful pictures, and each post is accompanied by an engaging caption. They describe the place and the experience it provides. They even capture the lives of the locals.

Each of their posts beautifully supports their core value — “Embrace the adventure.” Instead of directly selling their brand, they publish posts that resonate with their values. Their tone is natural, so it helps them connect better with their audiences.

When you leverage social media for business, make sure that your posts aren’t too pushy or promotional. Instead, create informative and engaging stories so that they resonate better with your audience

Value-added content is any unique, original, or exclusive content or information that your audience cannot get anywhere else.

Examples of this added value content include video content, case studies, research studies, white papers, promotional offers, tutorials, and blog posts.

And here’s where I let you in on a little marketing secret. Providing high-value content doesn’t mean you need to be perfect, it means you need to be consistent with what you have.

You can create the most spectacular blog post, but if you only publish one spectacular blog post every few months it’s not going to do anything for you. The same goes for promoting content. If people don’t know it’s out there, then they don’t know you provide high-value content.

5. LEVERAGE ON QUALITY DRIVEN PROMOTIONS

Sales promotion is the process of persuading a potential customer to buy your product, it is designed to be used as a short-term tactic to boost sales so, therefore, it is not really created for the purpose of building long-term customer loyalty.

Some sales promotions are aimed at consumers, others are targeted at intermediaries (such as agents, JVs and wholesalers) or at the business’s sales force.

There are different ways to promote your business in such a way that it may not just gain sales but also boost the name and trust of your business.

When undertaking a sales promotion, there are several factors that a business should consider.

Here are a few suggestions to consider:

• Vouchers — Vouchers are being received by customers and can be cut off from magazines, product packaging or via digital media that enables them to buy the product next time at a lower price.
• Free Gift — Have you ever heard of buy 3 and get one free? Or get a free memory card plus charger when you buy a phone gadget? That’s how it works.
• Fun Fair Trips — Giving your customers the opportunity to stand a chance to win a raffle draw tickets or a treat to places like Dubai is really another strong tactic to use and to promote sales
• Loyalty Cards or Store Credits — Loyalty cards have recently become an essential form of sales promotion. They encourage the customer to return to the retailer by giving them discounts based on spending from the previous visit.

6. TRACK VISITOR ENGAGEMENT ON YOUR WEBSITE

There is a lot of information that can be gotten from tracking your customer behaviour. There is a pattern that will show you what your audience wants.

This means using tracking pixels that show you actions taken by your visitors and this will be a huge indication of what you are looking for.

Tracking will help you discover who is a high-quality lead and who is looking for the solution you provide and is willing to pay for it.

These steps can be simple but sometimes overwhelming so if you need some help get targeted leads for your business send me an email via hello@nicktony.com