For nearly a decade now online marketers have been pushing their lead magnets in an attempt to obtain names and email addresses. Up until recently it has worked wonderfully and many businesses used this lead generating strategy to grow their databases tremendously over the years.
However, consumers are smarter now than they were in the early days of the internet. They know that if they give you their email address, their inbox will be full of spam and unsolicited offers from the very business they trusted with their email address.
Not to mention, with so much information on the web today, consumers can simply do a Google search and find what it is they are looking for without having to sign up for the “special” lead magnet that is full of promises that never materialize.
So, as a marketer, what are we to do to generate leads and grow our business? I mean, email marketing is still a huge success and I’m not saying you should not have an email marketing strategy put together. What I am saying is you first need to let your potential consumer get to know and like you so they trust you and are more open to giving you their email address.
Establishing Trust
In today’s world everybody is a specialist at everything. Just do a Google search for the best this or the best that and you will see millions of results pop up.
In order to build trust you need to set yourself apart from all of the other so called experts. Consumers are seeking content but most are not willing to give anything up, such as an email address, in the initial stages of research.
You need to show that you are the expert by providing them the content they want. Get rid of your “I Am The Best & Here Is Why” lead magnet and just put it out there on your blog for all to see. If your content is good your potential customers are going to seek more information from you.
If you web page is optimized correctly, good content can lead to new follows on social media platforms. Consumers may even bookmark your website or sign up to receive new blog posts via email.
Giving your best content away for free not only shows your expertise in your field but also gives your potential consumer a chance to get to know, like and ultimately trust you.
Building An Audience
Building an audience to consume your content works in the exact same way it does when it comes to promoting your lead magnet.
- You can optimize your blog post for search engines.
- You can advertise on Google AdWords and social media platforms.
- You can spam craigslist.
- Email your current database.
- The list goes on and on…
Now you may be asking, why would I want to spend all of this time just to send traffic to my website and not even try to collect an email address? How do I generate leads?
Besides the know, like and trust factor mentioned early in this blog, we as marketers now have the ability to listen, understand and identify our ideal consumers.
In case your unfamiliar with advances in tracking from Google and Facebook, a marketer can now track their online visitors across multiple platforms.
By simply placing a snippet of code, one from Google and one from Facebook, you can deliver additional ads to specific groups of consumers who took specific actions on your website.
For example, using Google AdWords remarketing, I can show additional ads to my visitors who have visited this page and then went over and checked out some of my AdWords services or additional AdWords blog posts. I can do the same thing with the Facebook pixel for those who view my Facebook services or blog posts.
This tracking allows me to deliver some pretty powerful ads across multiple platforms to consumers who have shown an interest in my products or services on a granular level. This also allows me to exclude any visitors who may have came to my website but left within 10, 15, 20 seconds upon the page loading.
Building The Trust
Assuming you have established some sort of trust with a consumer who visits multiple pages on your website, you now must continue to build on that trust.
In order to build the trust you need to continue to push quality content that your consumer will devour. This may include some tutorials about how to “do it yourself”. I know this may sound counterproductive to lead generating but in the long run it will be worth it because sooner or later your consumer will realize you are the expert and they need your help.
Furthermore, your potential consumer today will likely follow you on their favorite social media platform if they find value in what they have to learn from you. In today’s online marketing game it is all about the following on social media because of the impact your consumers can have on helping you spread your message.
With that being said, I hope this article gave you some ideas on how you can grow your business and generate leads without having to come up with that next great lead magnet and without becoming a spammer.
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