Before you can turn local community members into repeat, loyal customers, you need to entice them to give your small business a try. This process is known as lead generation, and it’s essential to growing your customer base and boosting your bottom line.
But, what is lead generation exactly, and how can you leverage it to benefit your business?
Put simply, lead generation is all about drumming up interest in your products and services and then converting that interest into contracts, sales, and revenue. From individually-owned startups to multinational conglomerates, companies of all sizes rely on lead generation to attract customers, bolster future growth, and maintain profitability.
Let's explore the essentials of lead generation so that you can benefit, too.
Anyone with the potential to patronize your business can be thought of as a lead. In essence, a lead is any person who’s:
Leads are essential to continued success as they help you attract more customers and allow your business to grow. There are various types of leads, however, and each requires a different kind of lead nurturing strategy to drive a conversion.
The four main types of leads include:
The types of leads you generate for your business depend on the strategies you use to attract more community members. For example, Casper, a nationally-recognized mattress supplier, generated a variety of lead types by leveraging a mix of video messages, local targeting, and large scale Nextdoor newsfeed ads to reach a broader audience.
Attracting potential customers to your small business takes planning and tact. Generate more leads for your company with these lead generation strategies:
For most local businesses, the internet is the quickest and most common means of generating leads. You can use it to tell more community members about your brand with:
Even though the vast majority of Americans are online, the internet isn’t the only way to connect with members of your local community. Reach individuals who don’t spend much time online or don’t rely on internet advertising through:
Plumber John Consigli, for instance, combined traditional billboard advertising with his Nextdoor Business Page to significantly boost his company to the point where he “couldn’t keep up with the amount of work he was receiving.”
Whatever tactics you decide on to attract more clientele, every potential customer who learns about your brand goes through three steps in the lead generation process:
Once your leads follow these three steps, they’re no longer potential customers—instead, they become an established part of your base.
When you start putting effort into attracting more customers, you’ll likely want to know that your hard work is paying off. Use these techniques to track the success of your lead generation campaigns:
A few Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to keep track of to gauge your lead generation’s efficacy include:
Calculating KPIs and these other metrics can be time-consuming and tedious, but the right analytical tools can do much of the work for you. Thomasville furnishers, for instance, leveraged Nextdoor to better understand their lead acquisition costs and spend their advertising budget more effectively.
By connecting with local homeowners on Nextdoor, Thomasville reduced the amount needed to attract customers into their stores to just $0.14 to $0.17 per visit. With Nextdoor’s powerful analytics at your fingertips, you too can refine your lead generation campaigns to minimize costs and improve your B2B growth strategy.
The market you operate in—and the neighbors who make up your customer base—are constantly evolving. In turn, you must consistently update your lead generation strategies to match the demands of your industry and area.
Conduct research into ongoing market trends, learn about your target audience, and use this information to refine your techniques as your small business grows.
Lead generation is essential for continued growth—but it isn’t without its obstacles. A few of the most common lead generation challenges facing small businesses include:
Low website traffic is a reality for far too many small businesses. Without a consistent stream of visitors to your page, it’s difficult to tell if your neighbors even know that you’re in operation. To drive more traffic to your website:
Website traffic is a major marker of success in the modern, digital era. Drive neighbors to your page and qualified, high-quality leads will follow.
Generally speaking, your neighbors want to find the right products and services to solve their issues. But if your onboarding process is confusing or difficult, they may skip over your company in favor of your competitors.
To reduce friction in lead capture, make sure to:
When your marketing department qualifies a lead, they generally hand the prospect off to your sales team to close the deal and score a conversion. Ease the transition between these two teams with:
When your marketing and sales team work hand-in-hand, fewer leads fall off before becoming conversions.
Nextdoor users are real people living in the same area where you do business. Because they’re your neighbors, reaching out to them is essential to grow your small business and expand your customer base.
By promoting your business on Nextdoor, you can generate high-quality, local leads from individuals already interested in your products and services. Interacting with your neighbors on Nextdoor also helps you maintain community relationships and build your brand’s reputation beyond your immediate vicinity.
Register your Nextdoor Business Page to start generating the leads you need to expand your small business into a locally recognized brand.
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