Are you looking to increase your sales leads but aren’t quite sure how to get started?
Increasing your sales leads can help you improve your bottom line, generate more awareness about your brand, and learn about your target audience. However, increasing your sales leads takes a multi-step approach. You need to implement several different strategies if you really want to see improvement.
Check out this guide to learn how to increase your sales leads.
What is a Sales Lead?
Before we talk about how to generate more sales leads, we first need to answer the question, “What is a sales lead?”
A sales lead is anyone who may be interested in purchasing your product or service. Typically, generating sales leads is the very first step of the sales process.
When someone says “generating a sales lead,” they’re not talking about making an actual sale. Generating a sales lead simply refers to the process in which you attract the interest of a potential buyer. There are many ways you can attract the interest of a potential buyer, and we’ll talk about those more below.
How to Increase Your Sales Leads
Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can increase your sales leads. Here are some of our top strategies:
1. Figure Out Your Target Audience
Without defining your target audience, you won’t be able to generate any qualified sales leads. A qualified sales lead is a lead that:
- Has a need for your product or service
- Can afford the product or service you’re offering
- Is in a position to make a purchase decision
This is different from an unqualified lead, which is a lead that has no use or money for your product. To go after the qualified leads, you need to define your target audience (or target market). Your target market is the group of consumers who are likely to buy your product or service. Data that defines a target market includes:
- Age
- Location
- Gender
- Income level
- Education level
- Consumption habits
- Social class
Here are some things you can do to identify your target market:
Check Out Your Current Customer Base
Turns out, your current customer base can tell you a lot about your target market. Look at your buyers and note any common interests they share. Which customers bring in the most business? Do these customers have anything in common?
Check out the Competition
If your business is new and you don’t yet have a strong customer base, then you should look at your competition. Who are their current customers? Who are they targeting? It’s likely that people like them could also benefit from your products and services.
Make a List of Benefits
To understand your target market, you need to understand who will likely benefit most from what you’re selling. For example, let’s say you sell home exercise equipment.
Home exercise equipment is beneficial because it’s convenient, and it saves you time and money, as you don’t need to go to the gym. Now that you’ve listed these benefits, think about the type of people who have a need that these benefits might fulfill.
For example, parents who work from home may find home exercise equipment to be extremely convenient for when they’re taking care of their kids.
Once you have a good understanding of your target market, it’ll be easier for you to create marketing materials that generate sales leads.
2. Create More Targeted Landing Pages
Creating targeted landing pages is another great way to generate more sales leads. A landing page is a standalone web page that’s specifically created for an advertising or marketing campaign. In other words, it’s where a user “lands” after clicking on an email link or ad from Google or another online search tool.
Unlike regular web pages, which typically have multiple goals and encourage general exploration, landing pages are designed with a single goal or focus. Because landing pages are so hyper-focused, they’re one of the best ways to generate more leads.
But you need to make sure you’re creating targeted landing pages. Otherwise, they won’t convert. Here are some tips will help you create targeted landing pages that convert:
Decide On Your Goal
First, you need to decide on the goal of your landing page. Obviously, your end goal is to generate more sales leads and increase your profits, but you need to be more specific than that.
Do you want people to sign up for an email list? Do you want them to click on a link that takes them to a web page? Or, maybe you want them to download an ebook? Whatever your goal is with your landing page, make sure you define it early on, as doing so will allow you to easily structure your content.
Keep It Short and Sweet
Remember, a landing page is different than a webpage. People aren’t supposed to spend a ton of time browsing landing pages. Instead, they’re meant to serve as a quick stop before moving onto other content.
For this reason, keep your landing pages short and sweet. Don’t bog them down with tons of images and paragraph after paragraph of text. Get to the point quickly. Otherwise, you’ll lose sales leads.
Create an Attention-Grabbing Header
When someone arrives at your landing page, they should have a very clear idea of what it’s all about thanks to the header. The header should align with the content in the main body of the page, and it should also align with the link that sent them to the landing page.
For example, let’s say a link that goes to a landing page says something along the lines of “Click here to learn about our at-home gym equipment.” If a user clicks on that link and it goes to a page detailing smoothie recipes, they’re going to be very confused and leave that page.
In this case, you’d want to use your header to ensure your readers that they’re in the right place. It could be something along the lines of “How Can Our Home Exercise Equipment Help You?”
Make Use of Visual Elements
While you don’t want to go overboard with the visuals, your landing page should have some visual elements to bring it to life. Try adding in an infographic, an image, or a short video clip to complement your text.
3. Improve Your Call-to-Actions
Whether it’s for a landing page, a marketing email, a Facebook ad or something else, you need to create stellar call-to-actions if you want to generate more leads.
There are three main aspects to a good CTA. It should be:
- Easy to spot
- Direct
- Tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do
Here are some tips to help you create killer CTAs:
- Use strong command verbs like “subscribe,” “download,” “order,” or “buy,”
- Use words that evoke enthusiasm and emotion
- Make your CTAs time-sensitive or exclusive (for example, you could say “click now to get 1 of the 50 free copies”)
To figure out which CTAs get the most clicks, we recommend doing some A/B testing.
4. Create Stellar Content
Creating stellar content will help you establish your brand as an expert in your industry. No matter what type of industry you work in, there are all kinds of topics you can explore through your blog content. For example, let’s say you own a company that sells rugs.
Here are some blog content ideas:
- How to Clean a Rug
- How to Choose an Area Rug for Your Living Room
- The Different Types of Rugs for Your Home
- The Top Signs You Need a New Rug
As you can see, the possibilities are endless. But creating great content isn’t just about writing a series of posts. You need to know how to write content that captures people’s attention. Here are some tips to keep in mind to create great blog posts:
Define Your Goals
In this case, your goal is to generate more sales leads. But your goals may differ from post to post, so it’s important to always define your goals before you begin writing. For example, it may be your goal to:
- Drive for foot traffic to your brick and mortar shop
- Inform customers about business updates
- Raise brand awareness
- Call attention to an event
Whatever the goal is, defining it before you start writing will help you shape your content.
Create Topic Ideas and Keywords
Once you’ve defined the goal of your content, it’s time to come up with topic ideas and keywords. Earlier, we gave some examples of topic ideas for rug companies. Obviously, your topics are going to vary depending on the industry you work in.
If you’re struggling to come up with topic ideas, check out your competition’s blog posts. Once you have a few ideas, research some keywords around these topics. You can use a keyword tool like Ahrefs to help you with your research.
Let’s look at the example of a rug company again. Let’s say you choose to write a blog post entitled, “How to Choose an Area Rug for Your Living Room.” Your keywords may be “area rug,” “living room rug,” “home rug,” or “new rug.”
Once you have a list of keywords, find ways to weave them into your content.
Know How to Structure Your Blog Posts
Blog posts follow a different format than newspaper articles and other types of writing. To gain more sales leads, you need structure your blog posts the right way.
It’s important to understand that most people don’t read blog posts word-for-word from beginning to end. Instead, most people tend to scan blog posts to find the most important information.
Creating a huge wall of text isn’t going to make the most important information easy to find. Instead, you should break up your content into shorter paragraphs- around 2 to 3 sentences each is ideal.
Headers, subheaders, bullet point lists, and bolded words can also help break up your content. You can also use images, videos, and infographics to create breaks in content.
Use Simple Language
A blog post isn’t a PhD dissertation. As we mentioned, most people are reading blog posts to glean some type of information. Keeping your language simple will make your blog posts readable, and your posts will attract a wider audience.
Don’t Forget the Call to Action
We discussed earlier how important it is to create an enticing call to action. Even if you’re creating a blog post that’s sole purpose. isto be educational or informative, you should still include a call to action.
The right CTA will entice readers to stay on your website and keep browsing.
5. Leverage the Power of Social Media
Social media is one of the best spaces for generating sales leads. Generally speaking, Facebook is the best platform for lead generation. However, every social media platform can be a valuable lead generation resource.
Whether you’re using Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn, here are some tips for leveraring social media to generate leads:
Optimize Your Social Profiles
First, you need to make sure everything is in place on your social media profiles. Make sure your contact information is correct, the link in your bio is working, and that your CTA buttons are easy to spot.
Create Clickable Content
The goal of social media is to get people to keep interacting with your brand so you can convert them to leads. If there isn’t anything to click on, users will just move onto the next social media profile.
Here are some things you can do to create clickable content:
- Add a “swipe up” option on your Instagram stories
- Tag products on your Instagram posts and Facebook shops
- Make use of Look Pins on Pinterest
As you can see, there are a lot of ways you can make your content more clickable.
Offer Incentives
Offering an incentive is a great way to get people to share information with you. There are different types of incentives you can offer depending on the lead you’re trying to collect. Here are some options:
Offer a Discount Code
In exchange for signing up for your newsletter, offer users a discount code for one of your products or services. Just make sure that once you offer a discount code, you have a strategy in place for nurturing and converting the lead.
Otherwise, the user will sign up for your newsletter and you’ll never hear from them again.
Host a Contest or Sweepstakes
Contests and sweepstakes are another great way to capture lead information. Plus, they help drum up some excitement about your brand. There are all kinds of “rules” you can create to allow entry into your contest.
For example, you can:
- Request that followers share a post with one of your products
- Request followers to tag friends in the comments section
- Request followers to post an Instagram story in which they tag your brand
You can also broaden your reach by teaming up with an influencer who will post about your contest on their social profile.
Create Gated Content
Gated content is another great way to capture leads through social media and drum up some excitement about your brand. Depending on the industry you work in, your gated content may be a live stream video, webinar, private Facebook group, or white paper.
Once a user interacts with your gated content, you can continue with your sales strategy.
6. Create Targeted Email Sequences
A targeted email sequence is a series of emails that’s sent automatically to a group of people on a mailing list. The goal with a targeted email sequence is to build people’s interest in your products and services.
There are two main types of targed email sequences:
- Time-Based Sequences: This email sequence focuses on sending emails at certain times, such as one week after the purchase of a product or right after opting into receive an email newsletter
- Trigger-Based Sequences: This email sequence is based on a user performing a specific action, such as buying a product, signing up for a newsletter, or browsing a web page
To attract sales leads effectively, you need to create your email sequences with a specific purpose in mind. Each email should build upon the previous email to build anticipation and grow the reader’s interest.
Here’s what your email sequence may look like:
First Email: You introduce yourself and your brand. You also mention a pain point that the reader may be experiencing. (For example, if you’re selling exercise equipment, you may mention that the reader is likely struggling to find time or motivation to workout in the new year.)
Second Email: In this email, you discuss the value of your product or service.
Third Email: In this email, you’ll discuss how a client solved a problem thanks to the help of your product. For example, if you’re selling home exercise equipment, you may choose to speak about your client “Heather.” You can explain how Heather coudln’t find time to work out because she was raising two kids and working part time. Then, you can talk about how purchasing your equipment helped Heather find time to exercise.
Fourth Email: You can use this email to describe what your products and services do for your clients.
Fifth Email: Offer a list of benefits about your product/service.
Sixth Email: Reach out to your email list with a special, time-sensitive offer.
This is just an example of an email sequence you can use. Depending on your customer base, your email sequence may be a lot longer or shorter.
7. Engage With Leads at Networking Events
Many people consider networking events to be “old school,” but they’re still a great way to pick up sales leads. Not only is networking a great way to meet new leads, but it’s also a great way to build relationships with those you’ve met in the past.
Plus, it gives you an opportunity to engage with your leads face-to-face, something most businesses rarely get to do in the digital age. Here are some tips that can help you make the most of in-person networking:
- Don’t immediately approach people from a sales perspective. Instead, focus on getting to know them on a personal level.
- Exchange business cards with people you meet at networking events, and immediately add their contact information to your customer relationship management system.
- After speaking with a potential lead at a networking event, ask if they’d like to connect on LinkedIn
Remember, networking gives you an opportunity to show your leads a side of you they may not normally see, so be yourself and have fun.
8. Ask for Referrals from Current Customers
Your current customers are an invaluable resource, as they’ve already made a purchase from you. They know how your products and services work, and many times, they’re more than willing to spread the word about your brand with just a little nudge.
However, many businesses don’t take the time to reach out to current customers beyond providing support when asked. If you spend some time nurturing your current customers, they’re more likely to offer a referral without any prompting.
This is known as a warm referral. This differs from a cold referral, in which you flat out ask a customer for a lead. Here are some ways to generate warm referrals:
- Set up a time to chat with a current customer, and thank them for their business
- Send a thoughtful gift or card to your customer to thank them for their business
- Ask your account manager to follow up with customers to ensure they’re satisfied with your product
Once you give your current customers some love, they’re more likely to offer up some leads.
Are You Ready to Generate More Sales Leads?
Now that you know how to generate more sales leads, it’s time to get started. As you can see, there are a lot of different ways to generate sales leads. All you need to do is pick a strategy and get to work!
If you’re looking for more ways to generate leads, check out Formtestr. Check out this guide to learn how to get started with Formtestr.