Everyone wants to be their own boss. However, starting a business, surviving the competition, and thriving beyond the startup stage is a tall feat. During the initial stage, you need valuable leads that can turn into paying customers and fuel your growth to help you reach the finish line. But, how do you generate such valuable leads?
Let’s explore a few viable lead-generation strategies for a budding startup:
1. Leverage Your Network
Unless you’re inventing a revolutionary product or a radically disruptive service, business strategies, analysis, comprehensive reports and everything else comes secondary. That’s why the first lead generation strategy in this list is all about who you know and how you can leverage your connections to grow your business.
The right people may help you with valuable industry or media exposure. They might even provide you with guidance on improving your business or attracting new clients, connect with new clients directly, or even connect with other people who can bring you new clients.
For effective networking:
- Reach out to your alumni
- Provide real value to your connections to foster productive and genuine business relationships
- Attend conventions
- Meet other startup owners
- Look through social media and online forums
2. Content Marketing
Content marketing is a reliable way of generating and guiding new leads through the sales funnel to convert them into real customers. Create high-quality and relevant content for your target customer base and integrate your brand cleverly into that content.
This allows you to increase your website’s online visibility and attract the right eye to your business. It’s one of the best lead-generation strategies for startups since it’s cost-effective. Whether you hire in-house SEO experts, writers, and content creators or outsource content marketing, it’s going to be much cheaper than extensive paid ad campaigns. Content marketing also helps you establish yourself as an expert in the industry and gain the trust of potential customers.
3. Hold Online Seminars
As a business, you have an area of expertise. Consider sharing knowledge about solving a problem in your industry with that expertise through a seminar. Regular people aren’t usually interested in seminars since they are packed with boring yet informative information, knowledge, and expert guests. No wonder holding a seminar counts as an excellent B2B lead generation strategy. Seminars also present networking opportunities for all the participants.
If a regular seminar is out of our marketing budget, consider holding online seminars or events. It can also work the other way around where you simply pay for having a booth at an important conference and get your name out to potential clients and sales coordinators.
4. Be Creative With Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are incentives that businesses provide to potential customers for their contact information. However, if you aren’t creative with it and simply offer discounts, you’re going to run out of VC (venture capital) funding very soon. Instead, design lead magnets creatively to provide value only to your target customers.
For instance, if you are an educational site, create unique challenges that can be shared among students with wins and losses being tracked on a leaderboard.
If you are a digital marketing company, share cheat sheets, or a list of tools that can help your ideal customer.
You can find thousands of lead-generation marketing strategies on the internet. However, it’s important to test out if a tactic works for you and aligns with your marketing goals and budgets before blindly implementing it. Have a few creative lead generation tactics of your own? Feel free to share them in the comments.
Amilia Brown is a seasoned business writer & strategist who simplifies complex business concepts and turn them into engaging narratives. As a trusted business writer, she delivers actionable insights with precision.
