Online marketing is a great way to reach out to customers worldwide and if used to perfection, can really boost your company’s sales. The most important task in hand is thus, to Generate Sales Leads.

Below are the 11 techniques to generate sales leads

1. Create the best website

There are many ways one can go to generate Sales Leads online but eventually people are going to visit your website and therefore, it is necessary to have one. Things can become a lot easier if the people come to you rather than you seeking them out. For this to happen, your website should be the best website a user can visit, it should have the right amount of features, and it should be really easy to use and must be self-explanatory.

All the necessary information about your company, its services and products must be mentioned clearly in order to make the customers fully understand your company. You can also improvise to provide better customer experience. For example, when the customer signs up for your website, ask them a few questions about what are their needs and expectations and that way, dynamically adjusting your website to give the customers what they need.

Also, using new techniques like email responders can help enormously with generation of sales leads. Simply asking the customer to enter their email address and notifying them by sending them emails about product recommendations or responses based on their activities on your website will keep the customers hooked to your company.

2. Conducting Online Discussions/Webinars

Your company might have customers spread out across the country or even outside the country. We all are well aware that communicating personally with your customers is the best way to build trust, but how can you reach out to your customers who are located in different parts of the world?

Using tools like Google+, Hangouts and Skype to hold online discussions or webinars is the best way to personalize with your customers. These are better techniques to use when it comes to generating sales leads because the visitors are left with a personal, trustworthy experience. Conducting such webinars over the phone or using Hangouts to share screen engages the customers and creates interest in what you have to say. Having a question and answer session in the end can help clear all the doubts your customers might have and even help you identify the common issues which you can then work on.

Webinars can actually convert the participants into potential buyers if you provide them with satisfying information and solutions. Online discussions/Webinars are the best opportunities for you to share the vision of your company with your potential customers and also know about the people on which the future of your company depends on. You will soon realize that there is a huge difference when it comes to writing about your company and actually talking about it.

3. Content for the Targeted Audience

Now, that you have a website, you must now pay attention on the content you post on the website. Many websites have blogs that discuss topics related to the services their company has to offer. Writing content specific to what your customers want to read can be a great way to satisfy your customers and generate sales leads.

The content marketing technique, though well known, is not used by many companies because it is not as easy as it seems. Creating content that solves the problems of potential customers, is targeted for a specific audience and is interesting and visually appealing is difficult and outsourcing the content or creating an automated system doesn’t seem to do the job. This can also be very time consuming. There is no quick guide to achieve success in this but a series of trials and errors can help you do the required analysis and do the task of content marketing adequately.

The task of content marketing doesn’t end with just writing the content and posting it on your website, you must be able to draw readers to it. Some ways to draw traffic on your content is by distributing your content to the influencers of your company who have large social following. Podcasting, guest blogging and social groups on Facebook or LinkedIn can be other mediums you can adopt.

4. Promote your business on social networking sites

Social Networking sites are a great way to reach out to people all over the world. You can very easily track which social networking site your customers favor and use those sites to advertise your company. Some Social Networking sites go a step ahead and offer you Ad campaigns that fit your goals. You can use these Ad campaigns to gather followers, increase the number of clicks on your website or gather emails.

But building relations on Twitter and other sites can also be challenging at times. You can track whether your Ads are being viewed or not but following up with those sales leads is important as you can never know if they were converted into purchase or not. It is always useful to drive the conversations from these sites to emails or hone calls for more genuine and engaging conversations.

5. Two heavy Terms- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Just like you need to draw traffic to the content of your website, in the same way, your website must draw traffic as well. The website will not be able to generate sales leads if there are not customers visiting it. So how do you draw traffic to your website?

Search Engine Marketing is the mechanism available to do so. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is basically marketing online to promote your website using advertisements in order to increase its visibility when searched using a particular search engine. The higher your website’s position in the search engine result pages, higher the chances of your website being viewed.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is incorporated in the SEM. It is a process that adjusts and changes the content of the website and its architecture such that it is ranked higher in the result pages of the search engines. There are tools available online to make your website or specific web pages search engine optimized. The generation of leads depends a lot on how many people your website can reach and Search Engine Marketing is the best way to achieve that.

6. Track your traffic on all your web platforms

Once you have managed to make your website search engine optimized, it is going to draw traffic, but how can you be sure of it? Tracking the traffic on your website will not only tell you about how many people visit your website but also the pages which are visited the most. Thus helps you analyze the content the visitors show most of their interest in and you can work to enhance it and provide more services in that field.

Most social-media sites have their own tracking mechanisms but you can also make use of other tools like Google Analytics, Alexa, etc. to track your website traffic and take the required actions. You might also be paying for using specific AdWords. Track the traffic being drawn because of those ad words.

Tracking the website traffic can also help you recognize trends and patterns. For example, a particular time of the day, your website has more visitors than usual or after going through your home page, one particular web page attracts more viewers. This can also help you identify the weak spots on which you can work on to improve the website’s performance.

7. Make use of news sites

Have an acquaintance in a news center or a newsletter organization? You are in luck. Making press releases of your company’s events or other business related news can really help your company get the recognition. Any newsworthy activity like a product launch, a special event, charity work, anything can be distributed to news sites to gain recognition.

Sharing your contact information like your email address or the company’s website address or phone number in these press releases should be done to shift your customer’s attention online. Once you get the desired response because of the press releases, you can brag about it. Mention the success of your campaigns on your website or newsletters to gather even more responses.

Have a press tab that includes either the articles of your company printed in esteemed newspapers or links to the online videos or articles available. Print media can still be a useful methodology to gain potential customers.

8. Landing pages

Making your customers click on your website link is the most important job in hand. Once you have achieved that, the most difficult job is done. The remaining part is just to make the customers stay on your website long enough to make them go through most of your website and convert their interest into a potential purchase.

Tracking your website traffic helps you identify the point of interest of your customers. This helps you direct your efforts and concentration on the interests that can be converted easily. Conversion can only occur if the landing pages are to-the-point, informative and easy to navigate.

Once the customer clicks on your website link, the page that they land on should have everything that the customer needs. It should be visually appealing and must hook your customers. The result of a negative impact can be the customer retreating from your website and never coming back. Everything from the loading time of the web page and its architecture will play a role and you must make sure to keep it simple.

9. Hosting and Participating in Events

There will be many events you will be attending as a representative of your company. These events can be the best way to promote your company’s services. If you are attending trade shows, put up a booth where people can come and have a hands-on personal experience with your company’s business. Going further, you can ask interested customers to enter their details on a list or card so you can get a feedback and follow up later.

Other events like local, national and international meet ups can also be very beneficial. You can find potential customers that might be interested in your products as their previous indulgence indicate. Apart from that, you can take the matter into your own hands and host your own events or co-sponsor in other events.

10. Email Marketing

Now you know about all the efforts you will have to take in order to generate leads. But generating leads is only half the task. What if you lose customers just because you didn’t care enough after they had registered their interests? It is very important to communicate with your customers until these are converted into purchase. The best way to do this is by using emails.

Emails cannot just be used to communicate regarding the purchase but also can be used as a tool for marketing to ensure future purchases. Gathering new sales leads is important but it is equally important to retain the previous ones. Periodically sharing your company’s new launches and offers will not only bring the old customers back but also, their network with which they can share the news.

You can also create relevant email list using the email addresses used to log in to your website and ask them to subscribe to your company’s online newsletter (if you have one). Give them enough reasons to join you.

11. Using Surveys

Using emails to follow up is a good technique, but so is conducting surveys. Surveys can be very effective to rate your services. Conduct an online survey by asking a set of simple yet important questions to the customers in your mailing lists.

Using a dedicated survey tool indicates that you are taking efforts to satisfy the customers. These tools are helpful in ways such as aggregating and analyzing the result of the survey and coming up with suggestions for the questions that might not cross your mind. Your survey should be based on a particular product or service and the questions must be developed around it. Make sure to ask the important ones first so that you know the answers even if the customer decided to skip the rest of the survey.

Yes-no questions or asking them to rate your services on a scale of 10 can be a great way to introduce variety. These surveys can help you identify what the customers really value and also, the points where you are falling behind.

There is no definitive technique to generate sales leads online. One technique can work for a company while it might not for the other. It all depends on what online marketing strategy you incorporate and use the technique that best suits the strategy. Eventually, you will find what works best for you!

The post 11 Best Techniques to Generate Sales Leads Online (Useful) appeared first on eduCBA.