Whether you own a brick-and-mortar store that’s been through a major overhaul due to the pandemic, or you’re combining your online presence with your physical one, lead generation is an essential way to stay afloat. As with so many other digital marketing opportunities, lead generation has evolved to embrace new and unorthodox ideas that not every business has the courage to try out – but if you give them a go, you won’t be disappointed.
What’s important to remember is that these ideas we’ll list are far from the only ones that work. They merely complement your existing strategy to capture leads and generate interest in your industry. However, in addition to potentially bringing in more people your way, these strategies also help increase overall brand visibility and boost awareness, which will in turn bring in even more customers your way. Without further ado, let’s cover a few unconventional, but extremely effective ideas to generate leads and grow your business during these trying times.
Visit online forums like Quora
It doesn’t matter if you’re a new brand or a well-established business. Showing how knowledgeable and authoritative you are in your field is paramount for optimizing brand perception and audience trust. The easiest, most cost-effective way to do that is to find forums like Quora where people ask questions related to your expertise.
Giving them answers and thus giving them value and inviting them to check out more of your insightful advice can get them to explore your website, sign up for your newsletter, and perhaps buy from you. More than that, investing time in sharing your expertise through forums helps you position yourself as a trusted industry leader.
Use AMA sessions to your advantage
Video marketing has been blooming for a few years now, but one particular medium that has become a true lead magnet is the use of Ask-Me-Anything sessions, or AMA for short. These live interactions between your business and your audience are a perfect opportunity to bond with your target demographic, but also to embed subtle CTAs in your advice and suggestions.
Even in providing valuable industry knowledge alone, you will likely get more people interested in your business. Boost visitor rates by sending out invites to your subscribers and social media followers, but go beyond that and incentivize some of them to invite their own friends who might benefit from such a discussion.
Let your domain inspire action
Businesses often invest most of their time, budget, and effort into complex marketing strategies that generally provide great promise in lead generation, managing brand reputation, and boosting ROI. However, there are a few subtle, but powerful ways to use seemingly stagnant assets such as your domain name to get more leads.
A simple example is utilizing a .me extension with an action verb such as click, buy, try, or get, which serves to create a CTA in your domain name. It relies on pure human psychology and it instantly helps people understand what the purpose of your site is and what your expectations are. Plus, simple CTAs are often the most effective, so it’s good practice to leverage them wherever possible, domain names included.
Set up creative giveaways
Sometimes people just need to get a glimpse of what you have to offer and who you are in order to be inspired to invest in the whole deal. The beautiful thing about organizing stimulating giveaways for your business is that you can use them no matter if you provide services or physical products. They work wonders for any brand and every industry.
You can offer a free trial for a service or send samples of physical products, offer personalized and customized goodies, and digital products such as e-books and case studies. These giveaways can be linked to your social media in order to get people to engage through contests, but the ultimate goal is to sign up, try your offers, and provide strong incentives that will get them to trust your brand and become valuable customers.
Leverage user-generated content online
For whatever reason, most companies perceive content creation solely as a way to create SEO value, and in boosting their ranking, hopefully get more visibility. Although strong content creation is a core pillar of SEO, you can go beyond this one aspect of marketing and use it to generate valuable leads. How? Primarily by handing over the storytelling process to your past and most satisfied customers! Their view of your business is the most insightful opportunity for potential customers to take your brand seriously.
Tooting your own horn is fine and dandy when you’re advertising your stellar services and talking about your success in numbers, but to elicit trust, customers want to hear real-world examples of how your brand serves its audience. Testimonials, reviews, social media pieces – they all add value to your brand voice and inspire your audience to give you a go.
Getting outside of your comfort zone in lead generation can help you position yourself better in your industry, but even more so, it can inspire you to come up with even more ingenious ideas to push your brand forward. New challenges will emerge, and it will be necessary to look for effective, if a little bit unorthodox tactics to get your audience to pay attention and act. These can help you get the ball rolling, and you will hopefully use them to fuel future lead generation strategies and bring more people your way.
