45%, 65%, and 75%. That’s how many new businesses fail within the first 5, 10, and 15 years, respectively. Scary, huh?
It goes to show how hard it is to succeed in business nowadays.
No matter the industry, you’re up against stiff competition, a challenging economic situation, and huge technological shifts that can seem impossible to keep up with!
Enter the importance of inbound lead generation.
Regardless of the obstacles in your way, finding ways to attract lots of new potential clients inevitably maximizes your chance of success. Even better, they come to you, which means you can ditch the awkward cold calls and ineffective email outreach!
Want to learn more and find out how to start generating leads for your field business? Keep reading.
Because all businesses are built on relationships.
And, by compelling people to reach out to you of their own accord, you’re in a stronger position to establish one. They initiate contact, at which point you can nurture the fledgling relationship, create trust and rapport, and guide them through your sales funnel until they’re ready to buy.
Ultimately, then, lead generation’s crucial because it’s a key point in the buyer journey! You don’t get satisfied customers without attracting leads first.
For field business, in particular, getting to grips with this process can be transformative. With no shortage of demand for your skill set in an industry that’s renowned for being late to the lead gen party, you’re almost guaranteed results if you act sooner rather than later.
We’ll get into the nuts and bolts of generating leads in the next section. Before we do, though, it’s worth laying out the overarching process. Wrap your head around this bit and everything else will make much more sense!
First, people have to find you. It could be through your blog, business card, Google search results, Facebook page, or anything else. Whatever the case, they come across your business via one marketing channel or another.
Next, they click through to a landing page on your website, usually after seeing and following a call to action (CTA).
CTAs vary in style and type, but they’re basically just a line of text or an image that asks viewers to take a particular action (e.g. “Click here to learn more”).
The magic really happens on the landing page itself. This is where you offer the user something of value in return for their contact details. It could be a free e-book, for example, access to a giveaway, exclusive content, or something similar.
The main thing is that it’s enough to pique their interest!
Heads up, a landing page is simply a page on your website that’s specifically designed to advertise an offer and capture peoples’ information. Like a door lets someone into a house, landing pages let someone into your sales funnel.
Finally, the user completes a sign-in form on your landing page to receive the offer itself. Congratulations! Each person that fills in this form and submits their contact details is a new lead for your field business.
Top tip: Make these forms as simple as possible. By limiting the number of steps and general hassle people have to go through to sign up, you’re guaranteed better results.
We promised nuts and bolts, and here they are! Read on for a breakdown of the various channels you can use to send web traffic to your landing pages.
You’re in luck if you already have a long email list of past customers.
Not only is email a convenient way to contact your audience, but the fact they’re already subscribed makes it easier to ask them to do something! They already know who you are and trusted you enough to hand over their contact information.
But don’t rest on your laurels. Keep your emails concise, with a clear CTA that makes it obvious why it’s in their interest to click through to your landing page.
For greater success, try using any data you’ve collected to segment your list into relevant categories. Examples include where on your website they first signed up, certain demographic information, and what products they’ve purchased before.
These segments allow you to send personalized emails that contain news, offers, and promotions relevant to each recipient. Expect far better results in the process.
Social media offers marketers a powerful way to both build an audience and use it to generate leads. For example, why not add a CTA and link at the end of each post that directs people to your offers/landing pages?
On Instagram, you can also add hyperlinks in your bio and tell your followers to click on them in each post. The “swipe up” feature on Instagram Stories can serve a related function. You’ll find similar features on almost every platform.
You can’t beat word-of-mouth referrals. It’s free marketing! Satisfied customers or knowledgeable third parties recommend you to people they know, creating newfound brand awareness and potential leads to boot.
Why not set up a referral program? By offering your current clients incentives for recommending your services, you could enjoy a steady stream of word-of-mouth referrals coming your way.
Blogging’s the old dog of digital marketing, but it continues to drive results. Better still, if it starts ranking highly on Google, you’ll see lots of new visitors on your site without having to spend a cent.
Assuming your content’s high-quality, relevant, and includes a strong CTA, those people will click through to your landing page and, with any luck, convert into leads.
Blogs are just one example of how creating free content can generate leads. Everything from e-books and YouTube videos to short TikTok clips and podcast shows does the same.
Trust us, by creating something that offers your audience as much possible value (try to solve their problems, educate, and/or entertain them!), without charging them, they’ll happily click on the CTAs you’ve scattered throughout it.
Rules number 1 of paid ads: don’t spend money on them unless you’re confident they’ll convert. After all, the entire point of any advert is to compel people to act! You’re wasting your hard-earned budget if they don’t.
For the best chance of success, make sure there’s your advert, landing page, and offer are all consistent in terms of style, tone, and content. Your copy should be the same across the board and the offer should match whatever the ad promised.
Follow that up with a clear CTA and you’re onto a winner.
Digital marketing might be most popular nowadays, but that doesn’t mean traditional channels don’t have their place.
Print’s a prime example.
Whether you use flyers, business cards, or posters, distributing them in relevant places with a link to your website can still generate leads.
To help track the success of the campaign, consider creating a specific phone number for it and putting this on the poster/flyer/card as well. That way, you’ll know when callers are responding to it, helping you analyze ROI as a result.
In a word, yes. Some businesses do buy leads instead of going through the rigmarole of generating them.
As tempting as it can be, though, this strategy’s best avoided.
Here’s why…
First, purchasing leads can be expensive. Expect to pay through the proverbial nose to acquire high-quality leads from reputable sources.
Given you could be spending cash on ads anyway, though, this “price-factor” might not be enough to dissuade you.
If that’s the case, then consider the potential cost to your brand as well.
Remember, any leads you pay for don’t know who you are! They probably opted into something on another site and, without realizing it, paved the way for their details to be shared. Talk about getting off on the wrong foot.
You’re left cold calling people who haven’t given you permission to contact them.
If you’re trying to establish contact via email, then you might end up straight in their spam folder. In worst-case scenarios, you can even wind up on what’s essentially an email “blacklist” that gets distributed to the various email providers.
Ultimately, the rewards don’t outweigh the costs when it comes to buying leads.
It might take longer and involve a steep learning curve, but generating them organically is always the better solution.
Inbound lead generation is a crucial puzzle piece for contractors, plumbers, construction companies and other field businesses looking to stand out from the crowd and beat their competition. Unfortunately, many individuals and companies in this industry are yet to take full advantage of it!
We hope the information in this guide will help change that. Put these principles into action and it shouldn’t be long before your client base starts to grow.
Want further support with your field business marketing? As experts in this sector, we can help. Contact us today to find out more.
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