11 Digital Marketing Tips to Increase Your Client Leads (For Beginners)
Did you know an average online user is swarmed with 11,250 ads every month? That’s a huge number! With a stiff competition going around, finding fresh, smart and creative ways for lead generation can be challenging.
Lead generation boosts a company’s survival in the long run. And failing to do so may lead to serious trouble.
How will you tackle this challenge and increase leads?
Well! Here are the tricks. Follow these 11 digital marketing hacks that will grow your leads exponentially.
1. Review & adjust your homepage
The first lesson of lead generation begins at home. Look at your website design, especially the homepage. Since it receives a tremendous amount of traffic, reassessing and adjusting it may help you boost leads.
Pay close attention to the load time of your website or images, or else 39% of people will stop engaging with it. If your home page takes longer to load, you need to optimize it well before any marketing plan. In case you have an offer (it could be anything, software, e-book, case study) on your homepage, make sure to sync it with your messaging or ad copy.
Once the optimization of the page is done, compel your audience to take action. Place CTAs (call-to-action) buttons for that purpose. Make sure the headline message and CTA text are in sync.
Remember, the first impressions are 94% design related; so be sure to fix design issues on your homepage, if any.
The same goes for landing pages. Once someone clicks your advertisement, the page you send them to has a significant impact on your digital marketing campaign. A landing page is one of the many things your prospects will notice about your company. Optimizing your website design and other landing page elements are of great importance.
2. Create a referral program
Do you have a database of happy and loyal customers? Do they share any piece of information about your company within their network?
Introduce a referral program to generate new leads. About 92% of consumers prefer recommendations coming from a reliable source. About 82% of loyal customers show interest in referring your company to others; however, the average of customers who do so is only 29%. (Source: Nielsen)
Feeling discouraged? Don’t be! You can generate new leads by offering cash back, freebie, or special discount to the referrers.
You can take inspiration from Google's mobile payment app, TEZ, launched in 2017. They started a powerful cash back referral program that led to 8.5 million app installs in just 37 days. They even introduced a scratch card cash back offer on every transaction.
This shows us that a value-added product or service, backed by a referral program, is the best hack for lead generation. According to the Deloitte Consumer Review, 26% of customers are loyal to a company because of the loyalty programs they offer.
Refersion is one of the best apps to give your customers referral links, offer benefits for successful referrals, and track success rates.
3. Create informative gated content
Gated content is another effective lead generation method. Creating powerful resources that offer something valuable to your prospects behind the credential form is a smart strategy.
If you do it in the right way, an informative e-book or whitepaper can disrupt the lead generation strategy. However, the perfect recipe is to add a punch of “FREE” spice.
You can take inspiration from the Copyblogger's free report, created in 2007. This report was a persuasive argument (an integral part of a sales process) that methodically removed people’s doubts and objections resulting in paid product purchases.
Consider these tips to make the most out of your gated content:
- Create convincing, valuable and informative content that will compel your users to provide their personal information.
- Supplement your content with visuals created by your graphic design team.
- Don’t ask for too much information. Instead, keep your credential form short and request minimum details.
- Clarify what your customers are getting and how it will be valuable for them.
4. Offer free audits
In the B2B sphere, providing potential clients with free audits is the best lead generation strategy. Chances are, they might have a great website design, but it’s not optimized.
Ask your prospects to provide you with their details so that your experts can analyze their digital strategy and campaign. Prove your worth by auditing their link structure, content, and traffic. Send your findings in the form of a report.
This will help your business to propose solutions to their problems and generate leads.
A good example is Neil Patel’s site analyzer tool. Whoever visits this site is asked to enter their website URL. The tool then analyzes the website in real-time and generates a detailed analysis report in minutes.
5. Create paid lead campaigns
As the name implies, the objective here is to generate leads through paid campaigns. According to Unbounce, “PPC (Pay-Per-Click) visitors are 50% more likely to buy something than organic visitors.” As per HubSpot, “65% of B2B companies have obtained a customer via LinkedIn paid ads.”
And, according to Google, “Businesses earn an average of $2 in income for every $1 spent in AdWords.” This is how paid campaigns help businesses generate leads and boost sales.
There are various channels through which you can run your campaigns. But first, find out the answers to the below questions:
- Is your website design user-friendly?
- What are the different channels to run your campaign?
- Where do your prospects spend their time?
- What are the keywords you would be targeting?
- What is your prospect’s purchase behavior?
- Do you have a dedicated landing page for conversion purposes?
- Do you have a graphic design team to create stunning graphics for ads?
Once you have the answers to the above questions, you will find a list of digital media channels where you can run your campaigns. You will also have an idea about your prospects.
6. Write a guest post
Another digital marketing hack to attract new leads is writing guest posts. It’s one of the best inbound marketing practices. Guest blogging gets you powerful linkbacks, a bigger audience, and an opportunity for personal branding.
It also gives you the right to mention the platform’s name (where you’ve published your guest post) right at the bottom of your site. The list of more prominent names on your landing page lends a sense of cachet and credibility.
And, according to HubSpot, guest posting not only helps you generate leads but also doubles your revenue.
Before doing that, you need to choose high authority sites. Offer valuable but actionable advice with a post that would interest your target audience.
Create a post with relevant images and videos. You can also use graphic design tools to create stunning images and videos.
7. Advertise your brand with influencer marketing
This is one of the most clever hacks to attract an audience. The most credible advertising comes from people we are familiar with and trust.
Influencer marketing does the same. It utilizes a familiar face or personality to influence the masses for a particular product or service. By 2019, the number of brand-sponsored influencer posts on Instagram is expected to grow to over 30 million per year.
This shows the power of influencer marketing and marketers’ trust in it. You can devise your strategy and choose a face or name that your customers will identify to advertise your brand. However, it’s essential that you find the right influencer for your customers.
For example, if you are into cosmetics, a celebrity could be a convincing influencer.
8. Create tools that your potential customers need
It may sound challenging, but if it's something that your audience truly needs, it is indeed worth the effort. Take the example of HubSpot's Website Grader Tool. It helps businesses discover opportunities in search engine optimization.
Users only need to enter their website URL and their email address on the form. The tool then analyses the site in terms of SEO, performance, security, and mobile traffic. It also helps users with suggestions on how to improve their website.
You can also create such a tool for your website and start attracting your potential customers. But make sure it has some value propositions, or else you may drive your customers away. It should match the exact needs of your prospects and should be relevant to your industry.
9. Target dream 100
This is one of the most tried and trusted sales strategies. This strategy encourages businesses to create a list of the top 100 prospects that they would want as regular clients.
Once the list is prepared, start strategizing to build relationships with these prospects. Follow their social media pages, comment, like their posts, and participate in their events.
Achieving the desired result with this tactic takes time, but it will give your brand the visibility it needs.
10. Focus on online word-of-mouth marketing
Once a customer posts a positive review of your business on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, people in their network notice your brand, too.
But, it's not only people who follow this process! Google also sees things the same way. It gives priority to content with more shares, and ranks it better.
That’s how word of mouth marketing (WOM) works. Tell two friends, and they tell another two, and it goes on and on.
That’s why every marketer should focus on unleashing the power of WOM. A recent study found that 64% of marketing executives specified that WOM is the most effective form of marketing. However, only 6% have mastered it.
In short, focus on an online word-of-mouth marketing strategy to increase lead generation.
11. Stay updated with the latest marketing trends
Staying up to date with the latest marketing trends is yet another digital marketing hack. Have you heard about mobilfication or programmatic advertising? How about Amazon advertising?
A lot happens fast in the digital marketing sphere. It keeps evolving, which simply means that one has to keep devising their marketing strategy as well.
Take the example of Facebook’s organic reach that has dropped to just 2%. The digital marketing sphere needs marketers to prioritize quality, use audience optimization, and bring in a lot of changes to their marketing strategy.
If you don't keep an eye on what's going around, you will lag behind those who keep updating their strategies with market trends.
While there are many resources out there, we have picked a few names, such as Kissmetrics, Search Engine Land, Marketing Land, Moz and Social Media Examiner, that regularly share valuable and latest updates in marketing. Visit them regularly to know about the latest ins and outs in the world of marketing.
Conclusion
These are growth hacking examples that are trending. Each is helpful to create an effective strategy that will help you generate leads.
Businesses are currently eyeing these digital marketing trends to stay on top. Keep an eye on these trends if you don’t want to miss out on an opportunity that may help you attract potential customers, generate leads, and boost conversions.
As you can see, there are many ways to generate leads. These 11 lead generation hacks are just the beginning.
Want more sales? Download my 11-Point Perfect Sales Funnel Checklist or invest in Sales Funnel Blueprint.
About the author: Alice Jackson is a business consultant, blogger, social media enthusiast, online market analyst, amateur designer and an avid author at Designhill. She has written on several topics including social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, startup strategies and e-commerce. When she's not writing, she loves spending her time reading romantic novels, creating new t-shirt designs. Connect with her on Twitter: @jackson_alice1
