Lead Generation

Lead Generation For Local Business

A reliable lead generation strategy is arguably THE most needed resource for a local business. If you don’t have plentiful, warm leads that convert to sales, then you don’t have a business – you have an expensive hobby.

Not all leads are created equal. The right kind of leads turn into sales. And sales are what propels a business to success. The lack of good leads that convert to sales are the downfall of most local businesses, especially in the critical start-up years.

About half of all new establishments survive five years or more and about one-third survive 10 years or more. As one would expect, the probability of survival increases with a firm’s age. Survival rates have changed little over time.”
– Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, www.bls.com

The wrong kind of leads wastes your time and money, while making your business even more dependent on getting good leads as time passes. If a business doesn’t get enough good leads (a good lead is defined as a lead that turns into a sale) then the business may fail.

Business leads come in several ways.

Advertising

Advertising to get leads for your business can be one of the easiest ways to get paying customers and clients to your business. Although there are many ways a business can advertise including television, radio, newspapers, monthly sales magazines, direct mail, etc. we’ll concentrate on advertising your business on the internet.

For local business advertising, we suggest Google Adwords (pay per click or PPC) and, in some cases, Facebook Advertising.

Adwords can be a great source of business but you must follow some basic steps to help ensure success.

Research. Using the keyword planner inside of Adwords, find the appropriate keywords for your business niche and use them in your campaigns.

Budget. Keyword planner will also give you estimated cost per click so you can set up a realistic daily budget for ad spend.

Target your city – stay local. Also make sure you target your city or area of town where you want your ads to appear.

Use a Lead Generation Page. Send the traffic to a lead generation page designed to get them to call you or contact you by email. This is one of the biggest mistakes I see – expensive clicks are sent to a bland website for a specific keyword with nothing relating to that keyword on the page.

Use a tracking phone number. Use a tracking phone number to help give you some useful statistics on the traffic you generate. The calls and other data can be recorded for review later.

Monitor results. Adwords collects lots of data you can use to fine-tune your campaigns and make the most from each dollar spent.

If done well, Adwords advertising can be a huge boost to your local business.

Use the same hints above for Facebook advertising. Once again Facebook can give you tons of data for your advertising campaigns and you can target your advertising even sharper that with Adwords – right down to a particular person if you want!

Monitor your results and fine-tune your campaigns to make the most of your advertising spend.

Word of mouth

By far one of the best ways to grow your business, word of mouth advertising is a happy customer or client telling others what a great product or service you delver. The leads from those folks are the warmest you can get – a personal recommendation from a trusted source.

The biggest problem with word of mouth advertising is that it takes time to develop. The business has to have some time delivering great results in order to earn these trusted and valuable accolades.

Organic (internet)

The internet is now one of THE top resources for leads and sales for local business. One method of getting these leads is working towards good organic rankings for the business’s best internet resources – their website and select review sites such as Google My Business and Facebook.

Organic search results are the Web page listings that most closely match the user’s search query based on relevance. Also called “natural” search results, ranking high in the organic results is what SEO is all about. Source: www.dummies.com

Organic rankings for the right business keywords should be part of a lead generation strategy for any local business. More of a long-term strategy, working towards great organic ranking is difficult to accomplish but the rewards can be dramatic and game-changing for most any local business.

Like any strategy, organic ranking has its ups and downs.

Downs include;

  • Takes time (sometimes years depending on competition)
  • May never be possible
  • Generally expensive to fulfill
  • Business must provide superior products and service

Some ups include;

  • Successful implementation can be a game-changer for the good
  • Generally a long-lasting placement
  • Snowball effect for the business
  • Can add value to the business at sale time

We’ve discussed some of the more practical and doable methods a local business can use to get leads. All the above are practical and straightforward methods that can be used to great effect if applied with some elbow grease and some care. Above all, your local business needs to place as priority wildly happy customers who will positively review and recommend you to their friends and neighbors. If you can do that, the other marketing strategies will be that much more effective.

If you’d like some help with your local business lead generation, give us a call at (719) 761-4862 or contact us HERE.