Everything in business is downstream from lead generation.
You could have the best product or service in the world, but if you can’t generate leads for it, it’s game over.
- If you want more clients, you need better leads
- If you want to grow your team, you need more leads
- If you want more predictable growth, you need consistent leads
For most small business owners, marketing is really just about lead generation.
But first…
What is a lead?
A lead is just a signal of interest. A potential customer can signal that they’re interested in doing business with you by giving you some information – maybe their contact details, maybe just their name, maybe a lot more.
Cold leads vs warm (or really hot!) leads
A cold lead…
- Gives you a little bit of information
- Softly signals interest in your business
- Might be a DM on social media, or a comment on one of your posts.
A warm lead or hot lead…
- Gives you lots of data or information
- Strongly signals interest in your business
- Might fill in an online form or survey
- Might even explicitly say ‘yes, I’m interested in a product or service like yours’.
Now that you know why leads are important, here are 8 ways to generate more leads for your business.
1 – Create an online self-assessment
The strategy
Imagine you’re a fitness trainer, and you sell someone an online assessment they can use to benchmark their fitness, like:
- Are you ready to run a marathon?
- Are you ready to lose some weight?
Their answers tell them whether they need you or not.
Why it works
The customer can feel confident that they’re buying the right thing for them. They filled in the assessment; they got information about themselves; now they can decide whether to buy from you or not.
Pro tip
At ScoreApp.com we use AI to generate everything you need to get started with an online assessment tool for your business:
- Assessment questions
- Landing page content
- Dynamic response content
Start playing right now for free to see what an assessment would look like for your business.
2 – Get your potential customers on a waiting list
The strategy
Big companies use waiting lists all the time. If Apple or Tesla are about to launch a new product that won’t be ready for a few months, they’ll launch the waiting list today to let people pre-register.
A registration of interest is slightly different: it allows people to pre-register for something that’s already available. A professional speaker might have a registration of interest page on his website: ‘If you’re interested in having me speak at your conference, fill this in and we’ll come back to you with availability.’
Why it works
This strategy generates leads while building interest in your product – and it’s perfect for small businesses, because you don’t even need to have a product ready to sell yet.
Pro tip
You can create a waiting list and/or a registration of interest page using our templates, with a free account at ScoreApp.com.
3 – Create a common interest discussion group
A discussion group is a small online group that you launch to gauge potential interest in the topic. Once you have your topic, you can announce it online to your friends and connections and invite people to become a part of it. This will help you understand if there is interest, but it also signifies who might be a potential client in the future.
The strategy
- Consider using WhatsApp, Facebook or LinkedIn
- Build a discussion group around a topic relevant to what you do
- Invite people to join
- Voilà: you’ve got leads pouring in!
Why it works
- Social networks are designed to get engagement – half the work is done for you by the platforms themselves.
- Everyone can see how popular you are! If potential customers know you can only take on 40 clients for the year, and there are 400 people in the discussion group, they know there’s a lot of demand for what you do.
Pro tip
Coordinate the discussion group to keep the conversation going. You could:
- suggest a topic of the day
- recommend some content, like a book or podcast
- set quizzes
- hold Q&A sessions.
4 – Run an introduction workshop (Online or in-person)
The strategy
Schedule a free regular workshop that explains what you do and why it’s important – It could be maybe 45 to 90 minutes long – and run it regularly. It gives your potential clients:
- some background about the product or service you offer
- answers to FAQs
- an idea of what to expect if they work with you
- a chance to see you delivering your expertise.
Why it works
- A lot of people will be more likely to want to work with you if they’ve seen you in action first.
- Thanks to Zoom, you can now run these events every single week for no more than the cost of your normal Zoom subscription.
Pro tip
The people who’ve attended your workshops are red hot leads, so make sure you give them a clear call to action at the end of the workshop.
5 – Produce a special report
The strategy
- Let potential customers know you’re producing a special report, and ask if they’ll give you some information about their business – via a survey or a scorecard – in exchange for access to the report.
- Once you’ve compiled all that data and started putting it into a report, you can reach back out to people – potential customers, industry experts, key people of influence – for their comments on it, and include those comments in the report.
- Encourage people to join the waiting list for the report by telling the story of how it was created, how many people responded, how much data was collected, which industry experts have commented on it and so on.
- Disseminate the report once it’s ready.
Why it works
This process generates leads at every stage. Even before you’ve published anything, you’ve probably got a hundred leads: the whole process could generate thousands!
6 – Organise a private dinner
The strategy
When I first arrived in London with a suitcase and a credit card, one of the first things I did was put together a dinner, in a private room in a beautiful restaurant, for a group of key people of influence in my market.
Between courses I stood up, introduced myself to everyone and invited people to meet me in the week that followed. I generated a lot of great bookings with highly influential people, and all of them supported my launch campaign which ended up generating millions of dollars.
Why it works
The people you’re trying to reach might not know you: but they’ll want to go along to the dinner, not just for free food, but because they know other influential people will be there. It’s a super powerful way to get potential customers and potential partners on board in one hit.
Pro tip
This is a quality lead generation activity, not quantity: it’s not very scalable. But if you get the right fifteen people around the table, magic happens.
7 – Create a prize draw
The strategy
Here’s what you do:
- Create a prize draw where the first prize is, say, £10k or $10k worth of the main product or service you offer. The runner up prizes include a discount or voucher for your product or service – say £500 or $500 off.
- One person wins the prize!
- You can give the runner-up prize to as many people as you want. If you have the data to tell which of the people who entered your prize draw are the perfect clients for you, then you can get in touch with, say, 80 of them and tell them they’ve won that runner-up prize, which they can claim by using your service.
- Then they’ll get back in touch to activate their prize.
Why it works
People love a prize draw – and doing this way attracts people who already had a strong interest in working with your business.
Pro tip
Your prize needs to be super relevant to your perfect target market only. If you’re a business coach, there’s no point giving away an iPad and attracting thousands of teenagers who want the iPad but aren’t interested in business coaching! Make sure the prize is the perfect lure for the type of fish you want to catch.
8. Run a training programme
The strategy
- Plan and promote a live event
- Charge a small group of people £/$100-200 to attend.
- Record the event.
- Make it available as a replay, for free – to people who sign up, becoming warm leads.
Why it works
The fact that people were willing to pay to attend the original training creates value, so more people will want to sign up to access the replay.
Pro tip
You can use this to generate leads for a year or more after your original live event!
There you have it: the eight lead generation tactics that I see working most regularly. Want to get started with your online assessment, waiting list or registration of interest page? Get started with ScoreApp now for free!
