The most frequently asked questions that I get are in and around lead generation and sales because yeah I get it I mean I was a freelancer for years and I remember I didn’t know where my next lead was coming from. I didn’t have a strategy other than to wait around for referral which wasn’t a strategy. When I began to start experimenting with ways that I could bring leads into my business I found out what worked and what didn’t. In this article I want to give you eight strategies that you can take into your own creative agency so you can start generating leads for your business and stop worrying about where your next lead is coming from.
Incentivize Your Visitors
When your visitors come to your website, it’s not enough just to give them information. Yes, you need to tell them very quickly what you’re going to do for them, how you are going to do it but that information is not enough you need to incentivize them to take some kind of next step. If all you have is your core offer for your products or services then that’s not enough for somebody to take action coming to your website. You need to incentivize them with some kind of next step that will get them into your business. An example here might be a brand audit or a brand consultation.
Get Creative with Your Forms
Chances are if you have a website, you have some kind of lead capture form or you have some kind of inquiry form. I’ve seen forms that are as long as 30 questions and they asked their visitors to fill out 30 questions to make an inquiry that is the quickest way to scare your leads off to get no leads. If you just have a simple form with a handful of questions even that is not good enough you can get creative with your forms today, you can make them very easy and very intuitive to use and quite creative that you can lead your visitors along one question at a time towards whatever it is that you are offering. Scrap the old inquiry forms, don’t make them 30 questions long and get creative.
Speak at Small Industry Events
I remember hearing advice like this when I was younger on my career and I used to go along to small business events and there were tons of other designers and branding specialists and marketers they are all singing the same tune but here I’m talking about going to industry specific events and you need to be positioned effectively here for this. You need to be positioned within whatever niche that you’re trying to target and you need to have your messaging dialed in, you need to understand their industry. If you go along to a small business event offering creative services to small businesses then that’s not enough, your language is not dialed in enough, you’re speaking in generic terms but if you are dialed-in in terms of your positioning, if your messaging s dialed in, if you take that know-how and that knowledge to industry specific events you will be the only branding strategist there giving them information and giving them value about how they can brand their businesses. Think about the industry that you’re serving, think about the events that they have and go along and speak at those events.
Give Then Something Actionable
Chances are when a visitor comes to your website they have a problem. This problem could be that they need a new website or they need a brand identity or a brand strategy, they might need SEO or Facebook ads but whatever they’re coming to your website for they have a problem and if you understand what those problems are and you understand all of the questions in and around those problems then you can create a document that will answer all of those questions for them and that document will be valuable to them because it will answer those questions and it will give them that information that they’re looking for. In exchange for this document you are going to get their email address so not only are you giving them value here and earning trust, you’re getting the ability to follow up with them via email strategy.
Use Automated Email to Warm Your Clients
Without a doubt automated email is one of the most effective ways to turn a cold lead into a hot lead and you do this by giving them value, educating them, and addressing the challenges that they have, acknowledging the outcome that they’re trying to achieve and what they need to do to get there. This is a very effective way to give that information, to earn that trust, to stay top of mind, it kills so many birds with one stone through email automation and it warms your clients throughout that process. Take the time to put together a sequence that will bring your clients along, educate them, give them that value, and that will warm them to your offer when it comes.
Go in Gently
Just because you earned a little bit of trust with your lead doesn’t mean they’re ready to jump into bed with you straight away. Your core offer might be $10,000 or $20,000 and just a few emails and a few touch points is not going to make them ready enough to be able to spend that kind of money with you. You need to give them a low commitment offer first you need to have a low commitment transaction first and foremost to give them a taste of what you’re like, to give them a taste of how you work and whether or not you’re good for your word and you deliver on what you say you can deliver. If you deliver on that micro offer and they feel that they got value from that outcome then they’ll be ready to take you up on your core offer.
Build Your Referral Network
When you do niche down effectively chances are you’re not going to be a jack of all trades so therefore you’re not going to be doing content marketing and SEO and Facebook ads and brand identity and brand strategy and web development you are not going to be doing all of those things but all these businesses and all of these executioners that do this kind of work are doing this work for the same type of audience that you have so you need to build up referral network and that’s a two-way street. When somebody comes to you and they’re looking for a certain type of service and you don’t deliver that service it’s better to have somebody to refer them to rather than just close the door on that relationship. In turn if they do go to your referral network that’s a chance for you to earn more revenue through a referral fee or whatever agreement that you have set up and on the flip side of that you get more referrals through that referral network. It’s a two-way street and it’s a great way to get leads and strategy.
Create Advocates
Once you start getting those leads through those leads turn into clients, those clients turn into revenue and that completes the circle. However, you can keep that circle going by making sure that you over deliver with your clients making sure that they walk away feeling that they experience that they got through your brand was above and beyond what they thought they were going to get. You should treat every single client like they are going to go away with a megaphone and speak to the world about your business and your brand and if you do that you will create advocates in waiting if you then incentivize them to go out and speak about your business that will turn into leads.
There’s denying that the idea of getting new leads and trying to out there into a cold market and sell yourself is a little bit daunting but it’s easier than you think with inbound marketing today, with email automation, with the amount of things that you can do online to get the attention of your audience to give them value and to warm and nurture them before putting your core offer in front of them it’s a lot easier than you think. You just need to identify the strategy that suits you and your business and then commit to it and that commitment will turn into leads and sales.
