9 Ways To Generate Leads Online For Beginners

The widely-adopted digital way of conducting business has raised the roof on market competition. A very natural consequence is that the old chestnut of lead generation has never been more critical for online business success.

However, generating leads can be challenging for beginners for a few reasons. For one, knowing where to start and what methods to use can be difficult. Creating effective marketing & sales strategy to attract and convert web visitors into leads can also be a tall order — more so as a beginner with not enough time or resources to spare.

From enlisting professional SEO services to leveraging social media to creating content that attracts leads, there’s a sea of online marketing tactics you can use to increase your online reach and generate leads. 

Email marketing, Google and Facebook ads, and referral programs, among others, are all tools that have been proven to produce results across audience types. These are just a few of the many ways you can generate leads online. 

Here, we’ll drill down to 9 of the most beginner-friendly and effective methods. Whether you’re just starting out in your business or you’re looking to improve your current lead-generation efforts, this post has something for you:

How to generate leads

Generating leads is an essential part of any successful marketing strategy. Here are some helpful tips for generating new leads:

1. Website Optimization

Optimizing your website for lead generation involves designing your website to make it easy for visitors to contact your business, purchase your products or services or sign up for your newsletters or other offers. This includes adding contact forms and optimizing website navigation.

Also, it’s not just enough that you create these features, they have to be obvious enough to attract the attention of visitors almost immediately after they get on your website. One time-tested method is to employ ample use of pop-ups. However, you must be careful to not overdo it, as that might leave your users rather frustrated in their experience.

2Use Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is another great method that you could explore for generating leads online. 

PPC ads are typically small, text-based ads that appear on the top or sides of Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) when someone searches for a keyword phrase related to your business. When someone clicks on your ad, they are directed to your website, where they can learn more about your business and get in contact with you.

About 20% of marketers surveyed in a Statista study claimed that PPC ads had the highest ROI of all digital marketing strategies that they tried. This method is particularly effective because it puts your business in front of people already seeking your product or service, leaving you with significantly shorter lead conversion timelines.

3.Leverage social media platforms

Source: Sprout social

Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, are another great set of tools for online lead generation. You can use these platforms to build relationships with potential customers, share content, and engage with your target audience. You can also use them to target specific audiences with ads that link to specific landing pages on your website.

The best thing about social media marketing is this: the possibilities are boundless, and at a relatively little cost too! A simple tweet going viral might just be enough to more than double your sales in less than a week.

4.Reach out to influencers

You can reach out to influencers in your industry who have a large following and invite them to share your content, review your products or services, or promote your business in some way. This can be a great way to build brand awareness, reach a broader audience, and generate more leads.

However, in searching for suitable influencers, make sure that you look out for influencers who can prove that they have earned their audience and engagements organically. With the many tools available today, anyone can spoof a large following on social media. Hence, the true marker of influence is not the size of the audience/following, but the quality of engagements.

5.Deploy content marketing

Content marketing is another great way to generate leads online. This content can be in the form of blog posts, videos,  infographics, tutorials, or other content forms that provide value to leads. The primary motive of content marketing is to produce content that users and potential leads will find helpful. 

That’ll help build the trust needed to forge a meaningful relationship with potential customers. You can then leverage these relationships to convert members of your audience into high-value leads.

Source: OCP Academy

— What is the Content Marketing Cycle?

The content marketing cycle is a process for creating, distributing, and measuring the effectiveness of content. It entails four main steps: planning, creation, promotion, and analysis. 

The cycle begins with planning by researching the target audience and defining goals for the content to achieve. This helps guide the creation of relevant, engaging content that resonates with the audience. 

Once the content is created, it needs to be distributed and promoted through multiple channels such as social media, email newsletters, and paid ads. The success of the campaign can be measured by analyzing how users interact with the content.

Identifying what works and what doesn’t can help refine content for better results in future campaigns. The cycle can then be repeated, making adjustments as needed.

In summary, the content marketing cycle consists of four key steps: planning, creation, promotion, and analysis. Following this cycle helps ensure that content is created with a purpose in mind and distributed to the right audience for maximum impact.

6. SEO

The key to generating leads with SEO is to focus on optimizing your website for search engines. This includes ensuring that your content is keyword-rich, relevant, and up-to-date. 

This will help you capture the attention of leads already actively searching for what you offer as your business appears in organic search results. Additionally, it’s important to ensure that the design of your site is user-friendly and mobile-responsive to boost engagement from users who find your website. 

You can also use SEO to create content that is specifically tailored to target lead groups and use backlinks from other websites or influencers in order to boost your rankings even further. 

For beginners, SEO may come across as some sort of complex concept that requires expert knowledge, but that is really not the case. The entire crux of it is that your website and its contents have to be identified by the search engine as useful resources in your niche.

With simple tools like Google Adwords, you can identify the keywords most associated with your niche. And then, all you have to do is plug those keywords here and there in your landing page and blog posts, which should come naturally anyway.

Also, you can simply engage a specialist local SEO Company; with their professional expertise and experience, they are better positioned to deliver the results that you want.

7.Email marketing

Source: Optinmonster

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with leads and nurture them through the sales funnel. By creating engaging emails with helpful content and offers, you can ensure that your business stays top of mind with leads and encourages them to take action.

8.A/B Testing

Source: SEObility

A/B testing is another one of those things that sound like you need an expensive degree and extensive experience in digital marketing to understand what they are about. But, again, that isn’t the case. It really just means testing two versions of web content to figure out which one scores the most lead generation metrics.

This is vital since it enables you to gain insight into the preferences of your audience. With this insight, you can finetune your content strategy to include content that’s backed by the available data as the most likely to elicit enagagement, positive responses to CTAs, and significantly increase lead generation figures.

9.Explore webinars

Source: Green Country Federal Credit Union

Another top option that you can try is to create webinars on topics in your niche. The fact is that there are quite a lot of people who are looking for answers for cheap online. 

They will gladly jump at free webinars that appear to provide those answers. Although it might come off as a loss-making venture, you really would be getting the rapt attention of a wide audience in a world where attention spans are shorter than ever. 

You can then take the opportunity to pitch your business to your already-captive audience, as they are more likely to respond positively.

Wrap up

Generating leads online is vital if you want to expand your customer base and grow your business. There are many strategies and tools available that can help you reach your target audience and get your message out. 

Overall, lead generation is a complex process that requires a lot of time and effort. However, with the right strategies and tools, you can build a system that delivers an unending pipeline of leads and potential customers for your business. 

Additionally, it’s vital to track your lead generation efforts to ensure that you are getting the highest return on your investment. By taking these steps, you can ensure that you are taking the right steps to generate leads online and grow your business.

Using tips we’ve outlined in this article, we hope that you are now better positioned as to how to find leads online. If you are ready to take a step forward in optimizing your business and website to generate more leads, why don’t you reach out to us? We provide exceptional SEO services that are guaranteed to get the leads flooding in no time.