Every day, the small business owner can be the difference between making it and falling behind in your business goals and financial obligations.
The boom-and-bust cycle is one that your business could suffer from if you don’t have a detailed strategy. What differentiates your successful business are the strategies that drive your business and sales forward, increase brand awareness, and mitigate the peaks and valleys associated with the boom-to-bust cycle.
If you have a business, then you know that leads are the lifeblood for your business growth. If you rely on organic sales or word of mouth, that’s not enough.
If you could get 100 people to look at your brand and 98 make a purchase or submit info, those are some great leads! Not so much if you shoot zero for 100. So how do you know which 100 leads you are getting? That’s where the difference between you getting leads and qualified leads comes into play.
Leads Versus Qualified Leads, What’s The Difference?
Leads are defined as people or organizations that may become customers. You could use data to identify these individuals and organizations by collecting personal information or requesting for information.
The problem you might have with an identified lead is that their interest may be lukewarm. You might realize that these people may need more time and more information to move from curiosity to potential customers. As a business owner, you need to help educate and guide this individual to make an informed decision to act.
A qualified lead has offered personal information and is already in the action of purchasing in a time period that has yet to be determined.
An excellent example of a qualified lead is somebody who contacts their realtor asking for a comp report on their home price. The prospective seller is considering selling their home soon and would like to schedule a meeting to possibly list the property. In this instance, the customer has already decided their course of action and deliberates the timeline to act.
You’ll notice that while qualified leads are already further along in their decision-making process, it may be harder for you to attract without the aid of a specific strategy to find, educate, and motivate them to utilize your business’s offerings.
Establish Your Customer Relationship Management Before Finding Leads
Before we discuss ways to generate online leads from Google and other sources, your business organization must be ready for those potential leads.
The worst strategy you could use to find a qualified lead and be unprepared for the follow-up. Have you ever heard the story of a dog that chases a car? One day, the dog catches the car and then doesn’t know what to do.
Don’t let your business strategy do that.
The most significant step you need to take is to have your backend sales and support organized to handle inquiries and feedback of all sorts. Not everyone can follow your sales funnel exactly the same, so be prepared for deviations, setbacks, or extra customer support to close a sale and make a long-term customer.
For any campaign to generate leads, you should have some form of customer relationship management software (CRM) or program set up and running optimally. By establishing this step first, you’re guaranteeing that your inbound customer can be contacted and directed to the next step in your sales process.
Now that you have your CRM in place, it’s time to look at ways to generate more qualified leads through Google, Twitter, Linkedin, and other platforms.
Simple Strategies To Find Qualified Leads
Google is the leading search engine on the planet. As such, you should make it a priority for your advertising and lead generation strategy. But not knowing a few basic principles can lead you in the wrong direction and become a costly mistake.
Once you understand the basics, there are plenty of Google hacks to get more leads that you can incorporate in your planning as you analyze what is effective.
Be Fundamentally Sound
Have you ever listened to a successful coach discuss strategy?
You will hear that a fundamentally sound team makes or breaks success. If you focus on the foundations for an effective strategy, you’re giving your plan a better chance at success.
For your lead generation strategy, your fundamentals need to include intent, reach, best practices, and discovery.
- Intent: What is your future customer’s intent, and what is the timeline they plan to act? Pairing your keywords with other Google tools helps you identify and target those individuals at various stages of their purchase decision.
- Reach: You should utilize the platforms as they are designed. Using Google’s many platforms such as AdWords for click ads, YouTube for videos and discovery, and Gmail for outreach to help you get your brand and ad in front of over 3 billion users.
- Best Practices: Google has streamlined the process for you to be able to seamlessly get in front of an audience, target them effectively, and move them to action. You don’t need to rediscover fire; the match is already lit. The best practices are summed into a couple of easy categories – Show your target a unique benefit of your product and have a dedicated call-to-action.
- Discovery: You should utilize Google tools to analyze data and iterate your strategy to discover what is useful and what isn’t working.
Optimizing your lead generation starts with your Google ad strategy. If you focus on the fundamentals, this will allow you to analyze data in real-time and pivot as necessary to optimize your overall effectiveness. You need to take to make sure you have a CRM in place to maximize the opportunities as they arrive.
