Leads are the backbone of any successful business. But generating high-quality, engaged leads consistently is also something most businesses find hard to nail…
What’s your main problem with lead generation right now?
- I’m not sure where to start
- I’m struggling to get traffic to your lead magnets
- I need to convert more visitors into leads
- I’ve got enough leads, but I want more sales
Whatever your situation, these 7 powerful lead generation strategies give you actionable ideas to boost your sales.
1. Podcast outreach
Being on a podcast is a fast-track to getting you in the ears of thousands of people – for free!
Start on smaller podcasts and you’ll soon see the snowball effect to appearances on those with larger audiences. Those with a bigger reputation are taking a larger risk, so they want to see that you’ve done it before.
Being a podcast guest is a great way to explore what you do, what you know, and why it’s important during interesting conversations. You can immediately help listeners by describing solutions to their pain points. You get to geek-out about your thing, with someone else who’s into it, for 30, 45, or 60 minutes!
Once people take the time to hear what you have to say, it’s very easy for them to disappear down the internet rabbit hole of you – hopefully, all the way to your checkout.
We’ve all done it – you hear someone say something that makes you feel understood and you suddenly want to know all about them!
Top tips to get featured on amazing podcasts
By the end of 2024, its predicted that there will be over 504.9m podcast listeners, with the average listener spending 7 hours a week on their podcast app. So there’s no shortage of podcasts out there for you to appear on. It’s just about finding the right ones and putting yourself out there.
Start by applying podcasts you already listen to and identify the value you bring to their audience.
Put together a 1-pager you can send to podcast hosts. Your podcast guest 1-pager should include:
- Your current bio
- Headshot
- Previous appearances on podcasts
- Social media links and stats
- Awards and badges
- Suggested discussion topics
This shows the host that you understand what they need from you, that you’ve done it before, and demonstrates your professionalism.
For a pitch email, there’s a template in our brand new lead generation toolkit to get you started. These must be personalised for each different podcast host.
You need to get straight to why their audience will benefit from listening to you. Suggest a topic that they haven’t covered before and fits in with the overall feel of the podcast. And, of course, a bit of specific flattery never hurt anyone!
Use a lead magnet to capture podcast listeners’ attention
After building rapport with listeners, it feels natural to refer them to your high value lead magnet – where you share more help for free. It’s not a cringy pitch, just you making it easy for them to find out more about you.
This could be a quiz, webinar, mini-course, free PDF, or even booking a free call.
2. Community guesting
Contributing to paid communities as a guest is a great way to get in front of actual buyers. People have invested time and money in their community – they’re paying to be there.
Being invited to attend as a guest immediately gives you expert status, because you’ve been asked by an existing expert in their community.
Smaller paid communities are more effective than larger free ones because the level of membership commitment is higher. This is great because it gives you the opportunity to really tailor your content to their niche. And you end on your lead magnet – delivering even more value for free.
Your first decision is what to offer, it can be:
- Q&As – focused on your business expertise
- Masterclass – teaching a specific skill or piece of knowledge
- Critiques – of existing assets or processes you’ve collected or they provide. For example: A web designer evaluating a homepage, or explaining what makes this one good, and that one weaker
- Case studies – if you’ve got case studies of other businesses in the same field as this audience, talking through how you helped them is incredibly valuable
- Live zoom coaching – very powerful because it’s applying your expertise, on-the-spot, to a real situation
Top tip to pitch to membership site owner
Personalisation! Start with a template and personalise it to each community owner. Spell out how your free training is beneficial to their membership – specifically.
3. Content bursts
Content is (still) king! Google is the most visited site worldwide, with YouTube in second place – both mainly containing long-form content. Clearly, we can’t get enough of it and will put time into consuming content if it’s interesting, informative or entertaining.
But how do you benefit from this global content addiction? Build carefully crafted content bursts around your lead magnet – also known as topic clusters.
Your content creation strategy starts with the lead magnet you want to promote. Every piece is specifically tailored to connect to related topics and signpost your lead magnet as the readers’ logical next step.
This gets you the organic search traffic from all the content in your burst, pointing prospects to your lead magnet landing page as it launches. And your audience gets consistent, in-depth content that delivers valuable insights into problems they’re facing during thier entire customer journey.
Top tip to maximise content ROI
Invest in quality, not quantity.
4. Direct messages
One of the fastest ways to get traffic to your lead magnets is by sending people direct messages (DMs).
But receiving DMs from a sales aim feels intrusive, right? But let’s remove the ick of the ‘Thanks for connecting, now buy my thing’ DMs we all know and hate from LinkedIn. That’s not what we’re talking about here.
Direct messages are just another way to network, building trust and strengthening connections with one-to-one communication. Which, of course, we hope will give clarity on your offering, generate leads and get more sales in the long run.
But let’s start at a more general, personal level. An easy way to get into the swing of sending DMs is to send catch-up messages to those people you’ve lost track of. Just a quick, ‘How are you doing? I was just thinking of ‘X’, and see you’ve moved to ‘Y’ – how’s it going over there?’
Your direct messaging warm-up programme can be 5 ‘catch up’ DMs every day, for 5 days. With absolutely no cringe factor at all!
Your next step is to build your DMs out from a central lead magnet that you want to promote – putting them into your overall lead generation strategy. More of a ‘Hi! Remember that conference we went to? We’re launching a video course that’s focused on ‘X’ and I really thought you’d find it useful at [their business].’
How many DMs do you have to send? This depends on how many leads you need to generate to have a real impact on your business. If you send 10 DMs for 22 days per month, you’re reaching out to 220 people! What if you got 50 leads just from that?
Remember, you’re already in the habit of daily DMs, from your warm-up exercise and you’re sharing something of genuine value to specifically selected people. And you don’t have to ramp it straight up to 10 DMs a day. Stick with 5, but turn them into lead magnet focused messages, rather than ‘catch up’.
Top tip for sounding like a human in DMs
Show empathy for their situation, give the lead magnet as a solution, ask if they’d like you to send them the lead magnet.
This demonstrates your understanding of their pain point and respects their right to choose if they want to receive your lead magnet. No pushy sales nonsense from you!
5. Lead magnet exchange
The idea of a lead magnet exchange is as simple as it is powerful because you’re being recommended by someone already known and trusted by the audience.
Two businesses with a similar audience agree to promote each other’s lead magnet. You agree on a date for the mutual promotion and that’s it! No one needs to spend any money.
Everyone wins – the businesses are endorsed by each other, adding credibility to their standing with the audience and customers get a new something that’s of interest to them.
Top tip to boost your lead magnet exchange powers
To get started, you need to identify businesses with similar audiences and ask them if they’re open to a collaboration. Again, it’s the personalisation of your outreach message that will win them over.
It helps to start with people who’s email list you’re already on. Highlight how your audience is similar but your product or service is completely different and see if they get back to you for a chat. You don’t want to launch into the idea of a lead magnet exchange straight off, you can discuss that if they signal interest with their reply.
If you haven’t got an email list yet, all is not lost. You can offer to promote to your social media followers in exchange for their email list. Or perhaps run some training for their paid membership as your part of the deal. Get creative, what you can offer right now is valuable when your audience is the same.
Build your email list – seriously. Yes, you can offer other things, but your email list is where the real money is and it’s completely under your control, away from the vagaries of social media platform changes. Start building your email list today.
6. Social media battle plan
Your lead magnet is the springboard for thousands of pieces of aligned content. You take all the knowledge you used to create your epic lead magnet and use it to build a supercharged action plan for social media.
For example, you’ve made a brilliant Fitness Assessment scorecard that gives participants actionable insights in 5 key areas: Cardio, Strength, Nutrition, Mindset and Flexibility.
You’ve got pillar content ideas like:
- ‘Biggest mistakes people make when…’
- ‘5 top tips to…’
- ‘Common myths about…’
- ‘6 steps to…’
- 3 benefits of…’
- ‘7 problems with…’
Turn this into a smart-thinking strategy by:
Step 1: Write blog posts
Take each of your 5 main areas and write articles using each of those 6 pillars. So that’s 30 in-depth pieces of content aligning with your main lead magnet.
Step 2: Redistribute as different content types
Posts like:
- Individual video shorts
- Numerous text-based posts from 1 – just 1! – of the long-form articles
- 1-pagers that summarise with related graphics
- Interesting primary research from the collective answers to your assessments – with image from your metrics
- Carousels highlighting connected key points
Step 3: Promote across multiple social media platforms
Use all of this across platforms where your audience(s) are most likely to find you, choosing the content types that perform best on each one.
Layer upon layer of content, all pointing towards your one main lead magnet – the resulting leads and sales are basically unavoidable!
Top tip for social media smart thinking
Write a battle plan. Yes, there’s space for the spontaneous post, but being strategic about the social media content you create is how you march towards success. Oh, and get that lead magnet link in your bios!
7. Contests and competitions
People love winning free, cool stuff! Pick a prize your audience will love and give them a chance to win it.
You might have a quiz that offers a free something to everyone who completes it. Optional extra – you also get entered into a free draw for one bigger prize.
Depending on your business, you may have the budget to invest in the ultimate goody bag. But this doesn’t have to cost a lot. Use the assets you’ve already got… you know they’re what your audience wants because you designed it for them!
Maybe you offer a year’s free subscription to your service, or access to resources that are usually just for members.
The motivation to win is built into this strategy, you don’t need any input there. You just need to make your prize something that’s instantly desirable to your audience and you’ll be inundated with entrants.
Top tips to boost your competition entries
Spread the word far and wide… when you think you’ve shared it enough, share it again. Your audience won’t see all of your posts, so the more effort you put into distributing your competition, the more entrants (and therefore leads) you’re likely to get.
Add a gentle nudge to share! They’re a super-shareable format anyway, just don’t let anyone forget to ‘tell their friends’!
How ScoreApp forces you to be successful
As part of your ScoreApp subscription, you get access to our new Lead Generation Toolkit. It’s rammed with all the assets, tools, and resources you need to implement all of these 7 strategies and fix your lead generation, including:
- Online courses and workshops
- Email templates and prompts
- Promotional tools and graphics
- Tools and calculators
- Social media swipe files
- Canva templates
- In-depth checklists
- Video scripts
- Blog post templates
And we’re always thinking of more ideas to boost lead generation, so we’ll be throwing even more tools into this particular box forever!
So, how many leads do you need to transform your business? That’s your aim. Now you’ve got everything you need to get moving towards your sales goal. Get your ScoreApp Lead Generation Toolkit at no extra cost today.
