Is your business living up to its potential? Among small businesses, the answer is almost always “no.” That can happen for a number of reasons: Owners are too anxious to take risks, fail to focus, or haven’t cultivated a strong network. You need to learn how to increase lead generation as a business owner.
Luckily, there are simple tools that can help your business overcome these barriers. These four tools enable small business owners to take control of their lead generation process, attract new clients, and create relationships that matter. You need to be proactive, but you don’t have to go it alone.
Think Locally
Despite living in a global economy, consumers still express a strong preference for shopping with local businesses. Key into this desire by using Google Local Service Ads (LSA). Google’s LSA system offers consumers a trusted verification process, including background checks on businesses. LSAs, in fact, encourage consumers to act now and call your business. This takes some of the pressure off; unlike other lead generation services, you don’t have to purchase access to customer information. On the contrary, interested parties reach out to you. Google’s LSAs are ideal for contractors, plumbers, and other in-home services, but any service-centered business can use them to their advantage.
Standardize Your CRM
Your company’s CRM software is the heart of your business, so it’s important to choose the right one. That’s why you need Jumplead, a centralized CRM system that generates leads while ensuring you continue to nurture existing client connections. Jumplead analyzes site interactions to identify potential leads and creates a clear sales funnel. It also provides automated workflows that can motivate increased sales among established customers. Don’t segregate analytics from your CRM — you can make them work better together.
Watch Google’s Rules
Recently, Google made a mistake. The notoriously secretive company’s lead generation rules were made public. While it’s unclear who was behind the leak or what the motivation was, we now know more about what Google expects from business sites.
In particular, Google wants to see a clear value proposition and an appearance of trustworthiness. Also described as solution messaging, this document makes it clear that you should perform a website audit to ensure you can identify your value proposition statements across the site. Google’s recommendations also include elements from its SEO rules, such as eliminating page interstitials and simplifying and clarifying on-site forms.
Use the Power of Prediction
Finally, it’s important to remember that we live in an era of predictive analytics. You need to be using these types of tools to evaluate your client base and develop growth paths — average conversion rates are dismally low, estimated at about 2.35 percent. Such low rates mean that each lead is expensive, and small businesses need to drive those costs down. This is where predictive analytics adds value.
Predictive analytics companies, such as Endor, equip businesses to find their best customers. Other programs have helped companies boost their lead acquisition rate by as much as 30 percent. It sometimes comes down to a single variable, and predictive analytics companies are skilled at identifying those issues. By carefully analyzing customer behavior data, predictive analytic systems work alongside CRM to tell you what both new leads and existing customers want so you can act before they ask.
When you have the right tools to understand your customers, you mitigate many of the risks that hold small business owners back. You’re then enabled to create valuable content and reach customers at the ideal moment. Whether you prefer CRM and triggered workflows or locally driven customer communication, there’s a tool for you.
In the age of big data, are you getting the most information from your client interactions? If there’s any doubt, these tools will help you bridge the gap.
