Small businesses live and die on how much new business they can generate. Large companies have many ways to generate leads, what about small businesses?
Winning New Business, the Key to Expansion
Yesterday's businesses had to rely on word of mouth to win new customers. Although still an effective marketing method, it is a slower way of building a business. The Internet can accelerate your business significantly through the generation of fully qualified leads - customers with a need ready to fill! You can also learn to glean leads from existing customers more efficiently, leading to more rapid business expansion. Email and the Internet can also help you here. Are you ready to get started?
Using Internet Lead Generation Services
Many small businesses have ready-made lead generation services available to them, all you have to do is search. These are the quickest way to glean fully-qualified leads that are ready to go. For example, in our construction business, we use www.reliableremodeler.com and www.servicemagic.com. Service Magic also provides leads to realtors, and home cleaning services. More generalized lead generation services also exist, such as www.buyerzone.com, www.manageyourleads.com , and www.salesgenie.com.
The "catch" here is that you do pay per lead, and it pays to shop through the different services. For example, we will often see the same lead come up on three different services at different prices.
There is no better way to quickly generate leads if you are in a hurry to grow.
Free Leads from Your Website
The best source of free leads is your website. If you haven't had the time or don't have the skills to build one, I recommend finding an inexpensive designer from Craig's List or asking around. You can also learn to create a simple website using Netobjects Fusion, which is the easiest to learn web design program I have found. Make sure to include a guest book - this is the best way to get people to sign up. A form for rapid response to requests is also great, but requires a bit more coding. Netobjects Fusion has this capability built in, which makes it easier.
Now, promote your website. The best way to submit to the search engines is NOT by paying an expensive service, but by hand submitting. Or you can use WebCEO www.webceo.com, a great program that I highly recommend for managing your site as well.
Make sure you add relevant keywords in as MetaTags - there are many useful free keyword checkers on the web that help you generate new keywords from your business as well as check the traffic on Yahoo from the ones you have chosen. Using higher traffic keywords as metatags will generate more business.
Next, add your website address to your email signature. This guarantees that all your friends or anyone who forwards your email will see your site address.
Maximizing Existing Customer Contacts
Your existing happy customers are a tremendous source of new leads. Don't just wait for them to pass your name on - incentivize them to do so by offering discount coupons or giveaways for every lead they give you that turns into a customer. This has proven effective in many different types of businesses, and is a way to speed up the tried and true word-of-mouth marketing strategy.
Blog and Post your Services
Most small companies do not have huge advertising budgets. Blogging is usually free, and many blog sites have large membership rosters. Be sure to add the pertinent keywords to your blog, and include your email address so potential customers can contact you.
Craigslist is another great place to post your small business's products or services. We have recently found (through our awesome new Office Manager) that an HTML post to Craigslist provides twice the good leads that a text-only one does, so be sure to spice up your ad with pictures.
For every business type, there are customers just waiting to learn of you who are ready to buy. Try some of these tips to bring in more new customers, and grow your business.
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