Sales is one of the most difficult aspects for any business, especially for startups. Since it is easier to close a sale with a prospect that is looking for what you are offering, generating these qualified leads is what can make or break growing leads.
Generating inbound leads for your organization can be achieved by employing, what we call, a “Virtuous Circle”. These are steps that we use with our clients and that have also lead to VA Partners generating over 50 inbound leads a month.
The steps in this Virtuous Circle are:
1. Website
It all starts with a website that not only articulates your benefits, explains your solution, and highlights your business, but is also is a great base for your inbound lead generation. Your website should be easy to update, include SEO friendly features, and have the ability to deliver great content. The best vehicle for regular content is a blog and the content from your blog can be used in other digital marketing formats. Blogging is also one of the best ways to increase search rankings and have prospects find you.
2. Distribute
Once the content is created then it’s time to find ways to share it. One of our primary mediums for sharing is social media. For B2B solutions, we find that Twitter and Linkedin are best. Having an email newsletter is another great tool to share content. A few blog summaries as part of the newsletter is a great way to reuse content. Another successful distribution method is guest blogging. This helps spread your word to new prospects and it also helps strengthen SEO if the site that you are posting on has authority.
3. Convert Visitors
In the B2B space, website traffic is great but what’s even better are quality leads. Inbound calls and emails are the best forms of inbound leads. Make it easy for prospects and clients to contact you by having a telephone number, email address, contact us form, and social channels all very easy to find on multiple spots on your website. The next best inbound lead is an email address. Downloadable assets such as white papers, and email newsletter sign-ups are all great ways to get an email address from a prospect. You need to provide great content to continue gathering email addresses, but if you manage to do this, it will be a great source of leads.
4. Review Analytics
I think this step is often overlooked, even though it is the step with the best ROI. Using Google Analytics, email newsletter analytics, and SEO tools you can determine how people are finding you and how well they are converting. These tools let you understand what is working well and then build off it. You should also track where your closed leads come from and make sure all the data is in a CRM. A small tweak that results in better conversion can be more effective than trying to generate more traffic. Review your analytics, make your tweaks and then repeat.
If you’ve followed the process above, your organization will have created an inbound marketing machine. If you need help getting the machine started, we can help. Please connect with me and we can talk about how to drive inbound leads for your organization.
