Generate Inbound Leads - 7 Simple and Economical Ways

The customers are getting smarter nowadays and they won’t fall for the traditional methods of promoting products and boosting sales. They don’t believe in the aggregated TV commercial and most importantly they won’t fall for the honey talk of salesmen. Nowadays whenever we plan to buy any product, be it a bottle of shampoo or a car, our first instinct is to search for the information on the product over the internet. Today customers' purchasing decisions are more influenced by the facts written online and the social visibility of the product, and this is what inbound lead generation is all about. Inbound leads are those customers who proactively or directly lands on your website in search of a product or service, rather than you going after the customer by sending him direct mails or via cold calling etc. Thus inbound lead generation is the process where you create great content and campaigns in order to bring the customer to your website and then convert them into leads. The best thing about inbound lead generation is that as the customer is already in the look out for the products or services you are offering, the chances of conversion of the inbound leads is more. Studies show that on an average inbound leads cost 61% less in comparison to outbound leads. Again inbound lead generation techniques produce 54% more leads than the outbound techniques of lead generation. Hence inbound lead generation is one of the best ways to grow your business, and in case you are wondering how you can generate inbound leads, these are some practices you can follow -

Easy and Inexpensive Ways to Generate Inbound Leads

1. Generate Search Engine Optimized Content
2. Create a Blog to Address Customer Problmes and Queries
3. Utilize the Power of Social Media
4. Video Marketing
5. Get Your Business Registered in Review Sites
6. Hold Webinars
7. Join Social Media Groups in Your Niche

1. Generate Search Engine Optimized Content

Ever wondered how Google or any other search engine can easily identify your search words and present you with the right content of your interest. Well, it’s not magic, but SEO(Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the process that is followed to make an online piece of content easily discoverable by search engines. With every other company having an online presence, it is very important to optimize your website's content so that it becomes easily discoverable in Google and other search engines as well. Only a website that ranks high in SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is more likely to generate more inbound leads.

The SEO is further divided into the following two parts:

On page SEO

On page SEO as the name suggests is the process of structuring individual web pages in a way that they can be easily discovered by search engines. Using related keywords in web pages, writing unique content, taking care of UX, proper meta data, SEO friendly URLs, including internal links etc are some crucial on page factors that needs to be taken care of.

Off page SEO

Off page SEO consists of the techniques that we implement off-page like building back links to your web pages and other techniques like guest blogging, answering queries on platforms like Quora, social media promotions etc, that increases traffic to your website.

2. Create a Blog to Address Customer Problmes and Queries

The best way to reach the target audience and make them believe in your services is through blogging. Write a blog that will handle all the questions and doubts that a person has about your niche. The blog should be written according to the perspective of the customers and can contain promotional elements to attract more sales and leads through inbound lead generation process. The customers are smart nowadays. so tell the truth to gain the trust and loyalty of the customers.

For example, if you have a website, that sells trendy fashionable clothes, then your blog topics should be like, how to stay stylish, a method to buy cheap branded clothes, the top leading clothes brands etc. So, it’s like bringing customers to your website, but in a twisted manner. Make them believe in your words of the blog, the blog must have the following things:

• An innovative and eye catchy topic.
• Friendly and easy to understand language.
• It should be informative so that the readers feel satisfied after reading it.
• The blog should attract the mass.

3. Utilize the Power of Social Media

The social media is a drastic tool for the inbound lead generation which in return escalate trade. One social media post can create and demolish your reputation easily. So, utilize the power of social media to enhance your inbound sales, but it should be done smartly after evaluating, every pros and con. The social media should be utilized very carefully. There are numerous social media platform available and each one has different methods to operate their function for the different targeted audience. So, it’s up to you how you take the advantage of social media to gather more customers and raise your trading.

For example, LinkedIn is a platform for the professionals and you will find business oriented people there. On the other hand, Facebook is bit informal and friendly place to chat with the potential clients. Now it’s up to you which platform you use and what kind of audiences you are attracting. So, choose smartly and wisely because it reciprocates your inbound lead generation capabilities and sales.

Social media monitoring is also a great way to know about what people are talking about your business in social media, which will allow you to connect to the prospective leads on social media through various content of their interest. This will inspire people to visit your website in search of solutions in the form of products or services.

4. Video Marketing

Videos can have a profound impact on the minds of people. As such video marketing is a great way to reach out to your potential customers and attract people to visit your website. Besides creating videos need not be an expensive affair. You can shoot any good quality video talking about how your product or services stand out. Also you can make video about how your products are made. You may opt for explainer videos as well and there are many free tools that will help you in making these explainer videos. Once your video is created, you can share it on social media, your website or even use it for video advertising if your budget permits.

5. Get Your Business Registered in Review Sites

A huge segment of people these days check online reviews before making any purchase decisions. Hence registering your business with review websites is a good way to get noticed by your potential customers. There are free business review sites as well where you can get your business registered.

6. Hold Webinars

Webinars are a good way to connect to people. Hold informative webinars on different topics of your niche. This way you can urge people to visit your website or sign up with you to get more of your products and services. There are free tools like ezTalksWebinar, WebEx, Zoom etc for holding webinars. Make sure to promote your website across various social platforms to garner interested audience.

7. Join Social Media Groups in Your Niche

There are many social media groups and communities which are amazing platforms to promote your business. You can join some such groups related to your niche and share great content and info related to the services and products you are dealing in. You will surely find some people who will take genuine interest in your offerings.

As marketing experts put in, there are basically 4 main stages that marketers need to follow when it comes to inbound lead generation which are - Attract, Convert, Close and Delight. The strategies mentioned above are those that will help you attract customers to your site. Especially if yours is a new business and you are operating on tight budget these are some effective yet very inexpensive ways to generate inbound leads. However, only attracting the potential customers is not enough, you need to convert these website visitors into leads by designing amazing landing pages, creating gated content and by using powerful CTAs with your content. When it comes to closing the deal, the success of inbound sales depends a lot on the of the inbound marketing team. Again, closing the deal is not the end, its actually the beginning of your relation with your customer, and you need to nurture this relationship by delighting the customer and providing him the required assistance as regards using your products or services.

You can try theses techniques for generating inbound leads, and you are bound to see some positive results, and please share your feedback with us in the comments box!