Generating leads is a crucial component for any business.

After all, you could nail the product or service, the pitch, and pretty much anything… but at some point, you need to be able to sell.

And to do that, you need people to sell to.

But we don’t need to tell you that!

Generating leads is a lot like many facets of marketing – there’s no cure-all and if someone tells you there is, you should take it with a very large pinch of salt.

So, the question is this – why do some businesses seem to generate more leads than others?

Well, they employ strategies that specifically target different types of leads, ensuring there’s also a plan to nurture them over a period of time.

Generating Leads – Is There A Shortcut?

Well… no.

But there are things you can do to instantly give yourself an uplift.

The thing that will trump almost anything, though, is activity. That means email activity, social activity, paid ads, and communication with as big of an audience as you can pull together.

There are two types of engagement that are key here:

• Promotional activity
• Prospecting activity

Promotional activity is about attracting prospective customers through advertising, PR, direct response marketing, email campaigns, referral programs, social media campaigns and content marketing.

Whereas prospecting activity focuses on the more sales-driven side of things. That means sales teams or business owners attending networking events, perhaps speaking at conferences or networking groups, and in the past, it’s been about cold calling.

But I think we all recognise that utilising cold calling these days is both incredibly difficult and can also diminish reputation.

Who Are Your Best Customers?

The best questions in marketing and business are always the simplest.

For example, if someone asked you what your most successful marketing campaign was, what would you say?

And the follow up to that one is even more crucial – when was the last time you ran it?

We speak with business owners all the time who’ve run successful campaigns but then not repeated them for 5 years for various reasons, including feeling the need to do something different.

But there’s a psychology in created repeated patterns at the right time so people are ready to buy from you. Think of Black Friday, Amazon deals, the Boxing Day sales, and any offers centred around holidays and dates – the August Bank Holiday, Halloween, Easter.

So, the question is – who are your best customers?

Because your customers are your best source of customers.

Testimonials and referrals are about as sure-fire as you can get in business, after all, you’re never going to recommend something to a friend unless you really and truly believe in it.

Anyone who’s ever taken the step of recommending a TV series or film (like our very own Thom Smith does on the regular – he’s the king of ITV drama series), then they’ll know there’s a lot on the line.

Testimonials are the most powerful form of communication for any business.

If you can get your best customers to say what they love about you and why they’d recommend you to other people on camera, then you’re onto a winner.

Video is an incredibly powerful form of communication, as anything visual is.

You can check out our blog on why whether video is essential to market your business HERE.

So, How Do I Generate Leads?

A multi-pronged approach is always the smartest way to go…

But the basic concept of everything you do should follow this simple ideology:

Build the biggest audience of potential customers that you can and communicate with them regularly.

When they’re ready to buy, they’ll come to you. And depending on what you’re selling (whether you’re B2B or B2C), you can nurture them until you’ve got enough credit in the bank to make an offer to them to bring them in.

That might be through social media, email, physical media, brand marketing, SEO, networking or wherever your best source of potential leads are…

But the important thing is to identify who they might be and communicate with them regularly, whether that’s weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or every few days.

Get help to grow your business, for FREE

Book a free 3XM Business Growth Call, and spend 30 minutes with a member of the 3XM team, where we’ll help you outline some straightforward actionable things you can do to improve your marketing and grow your business, no strings, no tie ins, and no purchase necessary.

During your Business Growth Call, we’ll:

• Take a look at the marketing you’re doing, and give you our two cents on how to improve it
• Tell you what we’d be doing if we were in your shoes
• Give you actionable tactics and strategies we’re using right now to get leads and customers for our clients
•  Make sure you walk away with something you can take away and use straight away

Click the button below to book a slot, and we’ll see you on the call: