25+ Online Lead Generation Techniques You’re Probably Not Using To Sell Your Services

You can attack a plate of pasta in different ways…

You can use a fork, or eat it one noodle at a time, dig your hands in like a 2 year old, or go mouth first into the plate like a cave man.

Either one you choose, the end result is the same- you would have an empty plate of pasta.

The same goes for generating leads and attracting clients online. The end result is the same- more clients, more money.

But there are different approaches. In this post, I’ll concentrate on online lead generation techniques (not offline), most of which you’re probably not using.

 

Why did I develop this post?

The last thing you want to do is think that there’s only one approach to building your service business online. That limits the magnitude of the results you can get. Knowing that there are multiple ways to get that one result which is more clients would open up your mind and give you a more refined strategy.

So, let’s get started.

1. Start A Blog (On WordPress)

If you’re still on the fence about whether you should include your blog into your online marketing mix, IMHO, you should. A blog helps you teach the little you know, gives you exposure if you market it and increases your authority.

Make this work: Get a domain name, use a self-hosted blog.

Read This: How To Launch A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog In 20 Minutes Or Less (Michael Hyatt)

 

2. Give A Free Ebook

The internet is full of freebie seekers, don’t ignore them. Offering a free ebook is a way to get people to know more about how you do what you do. A free ebook serves as a free incentive for people to get connected with you and learn from you. And if it’s written well, it makes you the go-to-guy for that problem you help people solve.

Make this work: Have a word processing application like Microsoft Word, write it, convert to an ebook format (preferably pdf), then host it on a file sharing site.

Read This: 9 Irresistible Incentives That Grow Your Email List Like Crazy  (Boost Blog Traffic)

 

3. Offer Free Services

If you’re just starting out, it’s almost impossible to present a portfolio to new prospects who might want to hire you. So, the best thing you can do is offer free services to a few people just for the sake of building a portfolio. Just ensure that even with that service, you put in great value.

Make this work: Approach the kinds of clients you’d want to work with, offer at least one service for free. Don’t leave empty handed, get a testimonial in return.

Read This: How To Get Your Service Business Off The Ground  (Entrepreneur)

 

4. Have A Detailed Hire Me/Services Page

This goes without saying. How can you sell services and not have a detailed services page? It’s not enough to just list out your services, you’ll be surprised that most people may not understand what those services mean.

Your services page has to be optimized and convincing enough to get clients to fill your order form. Otherwise, don’t expect any results.

Make this work: Include facts and figures in your copy, briefly explain your services, check my services page for how I did mine.

Read This: Get More Clients! 7 Quick Steps To Create A Hire Me Page That Converts (Writers In Charge)

 

5. Have A Landing Page For Your Free Ebook

In point 2, I said give a free ebook. Now, place that ebook on your site, but through a gateway- a landing page. This landing page has to be simple, clean and clear of excess distractions. Your main goal is for the reader to take an action, whether it is to click the download button, read the ebook, or sign up via your newsletter form.

Make this work: Remove excess navigation from your landing page, make your call to action bold and clear to understand.

Read This: 15 Great Landing Page Design Examples You Need To See (Hubspot)

 

6. Make A Newsletter Sign Up Form

If you want visitors to sign up to your email newsletter and become leads, you need to have that form on your site. And not just in one place but several places, including your landing page. This will be connected to your email marketing provider and would kick-start the process to nurturing those leads into clients.

Make this work: Make your form short and simple- asking for the name and email is enough for starters. Insert your form in visible places on your website.

Read This: Add A Mailchimp Sign Up Form To Your WordPress Website Without A Plugin (Amethyst Website Design)

 

7. Make It Easy To Contact You

One of the most visible elements on your site shouldn’t be your picture or information about why you think your business rocks. It should be a way for first time visitors to contact you. On some sites, it’s a herculean tasks looking for their social media follow buttons or contact form. Please don’t do that to your readers.

Make this work: Have a link to your contact page on your menu bar, place your social media follow buttons in the footer and sidebar of your website.

Read This: Contact Info: How, What And Where? (WebUsability-Blog)

 

8. Talk About Your Services

 

Makes sense right? It sure does. After all, if you don’t talk about it, who will? If you don’t refer to your services from time to time when you’re just starting out, no one else will do it simply because they really don’t know you yet.

However, once you’ve built that authority and credibility, word of mouth becomes your strongest marketing standpoint.

Make this work: Talk about your services in your blog posts, on social media and to people you meet physically.

Read This: 7 Mistakes Thwarting Your Attempts To Get Clients From Your Blog (Writers In Charge)

 

9. Article Marketing

While this is not as effective as the next technique, I included it because it still works to an extent. The logic is to spread your content to as many places as possible, not just for people to see it, but for your website to have lots of backlinks. This helps your SEO a great deal. Then when potential clients search for solutions online, you’ll pop up in the search results.

Make this work: Use specific keywords in these articles so that your website ranks well for them in search, share your articles to respectable sites.

Read This: How To Do Article Marketing (WikiHow)

 

11. Guest Blogging

This is a more potent strategy than article marketing because you’re not just spreading keyword rich articles, you’re building relationships with bloggers who have larger audiences. It’s also a faster way to build authority in your field because that audience will come to respect you for the value you bring.

Every post published on a guest blog usually has a by-line where you can link back  to your website. This is what sends leads your way.

Make this work: In your by-line, link to your landing page that has the newsletter sign up form, or link to your services page. Also write and publish on as many guest blogs as possible.

Read This: The Ultimate Guide To Guest Blogging (Writers In Charge)

 

11. Make Valuable Comments On Other Blogs

Blog commenting has been one of the oldest ways of building relationships with bloggers. All you have to do is locate those blogs in your field that you’d probably want to publish a guest post on in future, then place comments on their posts. Doing this consistently would attract the attention of not only the host blogger, but also other commenters.

This way, if your comments are always valuable, other readers would click through via your name unto your website to see what you’re all about. If your website is really optimized for lead generation, the rest is history.

Make this work: Try to be the first to comment on new blog posts. This means include target blogs in a feed reader, read their posts thoroughly and leave comments that would make an impact- such as asking very insightful questions, or even adding more information to what the host blogger wrote about.

Read This: The Ultimate Guide To Leaving Comments On Blogs (ProBlogger)

 

12. Offer Discounts On Services

Everyone likes a good deal. So for this technique, make your readers a tempting offer that they’ll find hard refusing. It could be a 50% discount on your design services, or a 30% discount if they request for 2 or more services.

Another good one would be for them to hire you for two of your services and get one free. These are just ideas, so find what works for your audience.

Make this work: Ensure you include a deadline- don’t offer the discount forever or you’ll go broke. For example, a 50% discount on design services for the next 48 hours only.

Read This: The 10% Strategy- Growing Your Business By Making Small Incremental Changes (Shopify)

 

13. Offer Referral Rewards

If you’re good at what you do, your present clients won’t mind telling other people about you. So with this in mind, always deliver top notch service. Then make an offer to your present clients telling them that they’ll get a finder’s fee, or a discount on their present project for every new client they can bring your way.

If you’re sure of your sales skills and confident enough to close every deal, take the offer a step higher. Offer them a reward for every new lead they bring your way. This will give you even more results.

Make this work: Improve your sales skills and offer top notch service. Period!

Read This: 10 Rewards And Incentives That You Can Offer Clients In Exchange For Referrals (Small Business Sense)

 

14. Run A Sweepstakes

A previous client of mine who owned a virtual assistant service business used this technique pretty well. In fact, all his guest blogging efforts were directed towards his sweepstakes. A sweepstakes is like a lottery where the lucky winner get whatever prize is being offered.

If I were to run a sweepstakes here, I’d probably offer free professional blog/website design to the winner. While only one person would eventually win, I’d have gotten a whole lot of people who may actually need websites. This way, I could add a discount to the mix for a few others.

Make this work: Ensure your prize is related to your services or what you sell. Don’t just pick any prize because it looks good.

Read This: How To Run Effective Online Sweepstakes Campaigns (ConversionXL)

 

15. Include Social Sharing Buttons

You not only want people to come to your website, but to also tell others about it. The easiest way is to include social sharing buttons in your blog post, your landing page, home page and other pages.

This makes it easy for people to share because it only involves a click of a button.

Make this work: Include social sharing buttons at the top of your posts. This should include the major social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. Study which network gets shared on more to help refine your social media strategy.

Read This: The Best Place To Put Social Media Buttons On Your Blog (CoSchedule)

 

16. Use Social Media

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram…they’re so many that you’ll get confused which one to use. Should I use all or should I use just one? The answer: none of the above.

Focus on at least two social networks that have your audience and potential clients. For example, my main focus for RatherSure is LinkedIn, Google plus and Twitter since I work with professionals. Since I’m not selling cakes or jewellery, Facebook might not be too profitable. But I still have a Facebook page all the same to help in the social proof :). Hop on over here to like it: RatherSure Concepts Official Facebook Page.

Make it work: Create pages on your preferred social networks for your business. Then focus on using them to drive leads back to your website and not as a 24/7 chat room.

Read This: How To Use Social Media For Lead Generation (Marketo)

 

17. Leverage Google+

I know I’ve said use social media, but this is for another purpose- SEO. Google plus happens to be one social network that helps boost your SEO, if done right anyway. The way it works is that all those in your circles come up in search engines whenever you search a keyword related to what they post about.

So, if you post about dogs and I do a search on “big dogs”, you’ll pop up in my search results if you’re in my circles. Get it? SEO is still an integral part of your lead generation process.

Make this work: Circle as many people as possible on Google+ and share valuable content so you don’t get “uncircled”.

Read This: 10 Smart Tips For Leveraging Google+ For Increased Traffic (Moz)

 

18. Create Epic Content

Epic content separates you from the pack and stands you out. It makes you someone worth following. Epic content simply means value packed content that makes your audience better than they were before reading it.

The length of the content can be long or short, what matters is how you create it and what your audience will learn from it. The more epic it is, the more respected you become by potential clients.

Make this work: Epic content can be infographics, written (like this one), audio, video or a combination of any two. Just ensure it’s something people can learn from.

Read This: The 6 Principles Of Epic Content Marketing  (Content Marketing Institute)

 

19. Engage Your Subscribers

Lead nurturing is about engaging your email subscribers to the point where they feel confident enough to buy from you. Lead generation doesn’t stop at just setting up a newsletter sign up form on your site. You need to take it a step further.

Send them regular emails, let those emails feel human and not like some big company is trying to suck cash from their pockets. When they reply your emails, give them personalized replies back. This is what makes leads become clients.

Make this work: An email everyday goes a long way than an email once in two weeks. 100 words is enough for one email. Write and have fun writing it.

Read This: 10 Basic Ways To Keep Your Email Subscribers Engaged (Padicode)

 

20. Make Your Subscribers Feel Special

Sending them notices about your new blog posts is one thing, but sending them exclusive content that’s subscriber-only is even better. The benefit of being a subscriber is to be able to learn more than what a normal website visitor would learn. So give them that privilege.

Create exclusive content just for them and let them know. This makes them feel and know that they’ll probably get more value if they become clients.

Make this work: You can write a short ebook or create a video you know would be of great benefit and share it to them. Don’t put this content on any blog or social network for the public to see.

Read This: 3 Ways To Make Your Newsletter Subscribers Feel Special (Mad Mimi)

 

21. Host A Webinar

The good thing about hosting webinars is that your visitors get to either see you talk or hear you talk. This is actually more engaging than reading a long block of text on a blog page. Webinars are also a great way to showcase your knowledge and show clients that you’re not afraid of sharing that knowledge for free.

Make this work: You can pick a topic or problem you know people have questions about and talk about it. Just ensure that if you’re using presentation slides, your designs have to be visually appealing to an extent.

Read This: How I Generated 518,399 Visitors And 16,394 Leads From 77 Webinars (QuickSprout)

 

22. Repurpose Your Content

Content can be presented in different ways. Repurposing simply means presenting that piece of content in as many ways as possible. You can take a blog post and convert it into presentation slides that would go on Slideshare. You could talk about it and put it up on iTunes, or you could make it into a video.

Doing all this actually increases the reach of your content to different kinds of audiences that consume content in different ways. This way, if a potential client prefers listening to podcasts instead of reading posts, you still have him on lock.

Make this work: The quality of the new content is very important. Infographics work well on social media, submit the video to video sharing sites, including Youtube and the audio to places like iTunes.

Read This: The Ultimate Guide To Repurposing Content: 12 Ways To Extend The Life Of Every Article You Write (Buffer)

 

23. Develop Whitepapers

Whitepapers are a great way to showcase your knowledge because they’re often in-depth and cover a lot of ground on the topic. This is especially useful if your clients are businesses.

Make this work: Give your whitepaper a good headline. Even though the content may be long, make it engaging enough and share to document sharing sites on the web. You can also convert it to pdf and as a giveaway (lead magnet) on your website.

Read This: How To Write White Papers In Your Content Marketing Strategy (Social Mouths)

 

24. Offer A Free Trial

Unlike giving free service totally, a free trial only involves you giving a part of a service for free for a limited time. What you need to do is look at what part of your service you can easily give free to new clients. Then put an announcement up on your website with a sign up for those interested.

Make this work: What you give away for free must be something that doesn’t require much effort for you to deliver, since you’re running a service business. And you can put a deadline to this if you decide to. Deadlines and scarcity always work well.

Read This: Is Freemium The Right Business Model? 10 Questions To Answer (Zuora)

 

25. Share Business Cards With Your Url On It

Business cards are a great way to spread buzz about what you do, especially if you like attending networking events, meetups and seminars. Get one designed and print out as many as possible.

Make this work: Ensure your cards are visually appealing and have your url on them.

Read This: Use Your Business Card To Generate Web Traffic (Shout It Out Design)

 

26. Use LinkedIn Company Pages

LinkedIn seems to be getting more popular as more businesses are beginning to realize its effectiveness.

Unlike Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn is a professional network for professionals (i.e. serious people doing serious stuff). This social network also gives you the ability to create pages for your business. This feature increases your exposure because Google actually crawls LinkedIn pages, making them pop up in search engines.

Also, having such for your business and populating it with valuable content attracts partners and clients.

Make this work: Create a LinkedIn Company page and optimize it with the right keywords. Share it to your network to increase its followers. This way, when you share anything on the page, more people see it.

Read This: Master the LinkedIn Company Page: 12 New Data-Backed Tips to Max Out Yours (Buffer)

 

There you have it- 26 techniques that could generate a ton of leads to your website, if done right. I really hope this broadens your horizon. The good thing about this list is that you can actually use ALL the techniques here for your service business because they’re all best practices.

The best way to do this is to pick them one after the other and implement, then you’ll realize how all the techniques come together to make your business a lead generation machine.

What do you think? What techniques would you be starting with first? Did I miss anyone? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

 

Original image credit: Edward Dalmulda