Small businesses face a whole range of obstacles and challenges, from obtaining capital to start off with, to creating a sustainable income to payroll. Of course, growing your B2B company into a larger one is the obvious solution, and also the main goal, but getting bigger requires obtaining leads.
Unfortunately, unless you are blessed with time and manpower, the traditional ways of lead generation just aren’t going to cut it. Here we outline some small business lead generation ideas to get you started.
Inbound marketing
Creating a marketing strategy is going to be one of your main focuses as a small business, after all, you won’t even have a business unless people buy into you, right? Inbound marketing is the easiest pick of all the strategies and allows your customers to come to you, rather than you going after them. You will, of course, have a web presence for your business in the form of a website. This presence needs to attract visitors to and to capture their names, email addresses and any other information which will enable you to market to them well. This can be as simple as putting a newsletter signup form on your site – anything which allows you to collect data on who uses your site and then send targeted emails out to them.
Buy leads
Sometimes it’s just not possible to spare time for marketing or social media, and for the busy business owner, there are also options. You can select curated B2B email lists on Lead Roster marketplace, which will allow you to concentrate on your product rather than spend time gathering emails. This is also great if you are just starting out and haven’t even got any data yet!
Content marketing
Great content will attract users to your website. This can be anything from memes, Gifs, articles of video – so long as it’s good, relevant and on point to your brand you will be onto a winner. Content can be funny, informative or sympathetic, so long as it targets the people you want to be attracting to your brand. Content marketing not only shows that you are creative and a thought-leader in your field, but it helps Google and other search engines to know that your site is active and that it is worth indexing.
Attend events
A great way of generating B2B leads is by attending business events in your area. Conferences and micro-events are excellent places to network, make contacts and meet potential new customers. If you can’t afford the cost of a ticket or pitch at one of these events, create your own in the area where you work – this will not only raise your profile as a business and put in front of new people but will mark you as a proactive business owner.
Email marketing
Email marketing can seem a bit old and dusty these days, but it still has its place when it comes to gaining clients and generating leads. Once people have come to your site, entered their details and clicked submit, you’ll begin to grow an email list of people who are interested in you and what you do. This email list can be a wealth of potential customers, so it’s worth learning how to automate an email program to send out targeted messages!