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10+ Best Lead Generation Ideas to Get Instant Results

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Sam

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Daniel

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Because leads are money, they are important marketing indicators.

Any marketer’s main goal should be to** generate quantitative and qualitative leads** since a successful lead generation campaign will fill your prospecting funnel while you are out like a light.

You read that correctly: money can come in even if you aren’t sitting in front of your computer all day.

And I’m not going to leave you hanging like this without giving you some concrete examples to back up my claim and help you understand what a great prospecting campaign entails.

You should strive to employ various marketing channels, including some digital marketing ones, such as retail marketing, email marketing, message communication, or a social media platform, to generate leads successfully.

We can assist you if you’re having trouble coming up with innovative lead generation concepts. Continue reading to learn about the 10+ innovative lead generation ideas to help you excel at creating more leads and sales for your eCommerce business.

How does lead generation work?

The practice of capturing the contact information of potential clients is known as lead generation. A solid marketing approach helps you produce leads from people who express interest in your organization first, rather than cold contacting (or bothering) potential buyers.

Attract and convert are the two main processes in lead generation marketing. To begin, you must first draw visitors to your brand. This entails increasing the number of people who visit your website or follow you on social media. However, if visitors leave your website without revealing their information, you won’t be able to sell to them again. As a result, the next step is to convert. You can convert visitors to a lead by providing a compelling incentive for them to give their information voluntarily.

People today are more guarded than ever before about their personal information, including their email addresses. That means if you want to attract and convert potential clients, you’ll need some creative lead-generating ideas blended into a meaningful web design. Continue reading for the best lead generation ideas that will help you attract and convert new leads daily.

10+ Best lead generation ideas

Let’s unpack the best ideas for generating leads with activities on email, content, website, social media, and more. While some of these may seem obvious, it’s worth reminding yourself that sometimes the less complicated answers are the right ones. Let’s get started.

1. Boost your lead generation with email marketing

Boost your lead generation with email marketing
Boost your lead generation with email marketing

According to Emma, 59 percent of marketers consider email to be their most effective revenue-generating channel. Okay, if someone is subscribed to your email list, they are already possibly a lead, but email is critical for determining whether that lead is viable (with minimal hands-on sales activity and lead scoring in place).

Also, email marketing is highly cost-effective. Here are some tips for actually using email marketing to generate leads for your eCommerce business.

Purchasing email addresses with the intent of spamming your potential clients would only make them angry, rather than encourage them to share your offers with others.

Furthermore, they may unsubscribe from your newsletter, which would be a waste of time and money if you invested time and money on something that caused you to lose customers who had previously opted in.

So, the first step in generating additional leads is to ensure that your current clients and email subscribers are happy with the service you provide, love receiving emails from you, and want you to keep their contact information on file.

  • Allow website visitors and other users who are interested in your content to share it. In other words, include a link or share buttons for people to share your emails on their social networks.

  • Use email to send only the most compelling and worthwhile downloadable offers to your prospects; all types of discounts combined with instructional content deserve to be retrieved and distributed to other prospects.

Following that, I’d like to emphasize the need of building an email subscriber list in order to achieve effective lead generation. As a result, as shown above, Ahrefs is urging all website visitors to sign up for their newsletter and be included in their email list.

What’s more, you must recognize that you must give value to your newsletter in order for readers to be engaged with it and not be overwhelmed by low-quality material and large amounts of email communications.

In short, content helps you bring in the volume and email marketing helps you separate the wheat from the chaff. Done will and you will absolutely see those leads flowing in.

Boost your lead generation with email marketing

Now that you understand email marketing is a valuable part of your lead generation strategy, I want to introduce you to a tool that will help you automate your email campaigns and gain more leads on autopilot. AVADA Marketing Automation is a one-stop solution for email marketing with powerful automation workflows - taking care of prospects and customers on all occasions.

Do you want to create beautiful newsletters for your blog posts? Do you want to send mass emails but still be personalized? AVADA Marketing Automation can do that. And, best of all, the app is free to start using and only costs $9 when you switch to the paid plans.

2. Start a (good) business blog

Start a (good) business blog
Start a (good) business blog

One of the most typical complaints I hear, especially from sales-focused business owners, is that their blog isn’t generating enough leads. Either it doesn’t get enough traffic, or it does, but it isn’t turning into business outcomes.

Well, a tip that you need to hear is this: be better with your blog.

Make a strategy and stick to it. Instead of regurgitating other people’s views, start presenting your own. Write your posts as though you were a real person that should be read by other people. Also, always try to include landing page links and some articles relevant to your content, associated with bold call-to-action buttons.

Blog content marketing is a popular marketing tactic, so you will see many competition. Most of you competitors may already have had blogs and are producing multiple posts monthly or weekly. So, it’s essential for your blog to stand out.

First and foremost, make sure you’re offering high-quality material and that your blog’s design and reading experience are both excellent. Your content should be simple and enjoyable to read.

Pay attention to responsiveness when optimizing your blog, since more and more information is accessed on mobile devices these days.

Keep in mind that anything you generate must resonate with the proper audience if you want your blog content and Ecommerce to flourish. To put it another way, if you want to broaden your target group and attract more clients, make sure your content addresses them as well.

Including custom CTAs in your content is a creative technique to increase the conversion rate.

When incorporating these tips, your business blog can turn into a lead generation machine that can capture information from visitors.

Guest blogging can help you get even more readers as your confidence in your writing ability grows. Look for brands that your target audience already admires and follows, and then offer to be a guest blogger to deliver free content. Most brands love receiving free content that their target audience would enjoy, and in exchange, you can gain significant exposure with their target audience.

3. Create exclusive content

We’ve all experienced the rush of getting our hands on something unique. Getting access to something we can’t obtain anywhere else is alluring, whether it’s tickets to a movie premiere or a limited-edition pair of sneakers. The same may be said for content.

You may add value to your visitors’ experience by providing them with information they haven’t seen before. Perhaps it’s a statement from a thought leader or an interview with an industry hero. You’re the only one who can share whatever it is with them. By enlisting the help of accomplished experts in your sector, you may position your organization as a leader and earn potential clients’ trust.

As you plan your content marketing strategy and social media posts, keep this in mind. Consider how you can market this unique material throughout your platforms and on your website in a way that highlights your brand as much as the exceptional guest you’re hosting.

4. Spread your information via social media

Spread your information via social media
Spread your information via social media

Despite the fact that today’s social media platforms are cluttered, company owners should endeavor to make the greatest and most productive use of them.

Simply put, social media is more than just browsing through images, like amusing ones, and tweeting about your meals on Twitter or Instagram.

Furthermore, it is a well-established medium that most businesses use to promote themselves. Here’s how you generate leads via social media channels:

  • Post and share content to send traffic to targeted landing pages and web forms. To gain the most engagement on your material, make sure to consider extra elements such as the time of posting on each platform.

  • Build a database of loyal customers. Social media allows for close relationships, so seize the opportunity and get to know your audience, communicate with them, and share your experiences.

  • Interact with the audience. Be helpful to your prospects, join online communities such as Facebook groups to post questions and answer people’s questions.

When using social media marketing for lead generation, keep in mind that your business must have a distinct voice. It’s something you’ll have to work on over time.

Look at Wendy’s as an example. They found a way to engage with their customers and leads via social media by producing charismatic content that goes viral. You can do that, too, by connecting with the right people and maintaining a distinct relationship over time. You don’t have to be that savage, though.

5. Build an online community

Not only can establishing your own social networking community help you generate business leads, but it may also help you establish yourself as a thought leader.

If you’re wanting to use this as a lead generation tool, my main piece of advice is to avoid approaching it from a branding standpoint. It should have a name that has nothing to do with your business.

Create your personal brand by posting as yourself. Your own community is the ideal area to share one-of-a-kind material and target people who are likely to be experiencing the issue you’re attempting to solve.

Furthermore, if you are an early-stage, SaaS-type business, it is frequently the ideal technique of nurturing early adopters who will subsequently become your “brand champions” or influencers.

But a word of caution: communities like these will take time to develop. They, like the material you’ll need to create to feed them, are an investment for the long term. When they reach the size required to become a credible source of leads, you may even need to hire a committed individual to administer the community itself.

The best way to kickstart an online community from scratch is to just put yourself out there, and start reaching out to your target audience. Refer to a sales leads database for details pertaining to potential customers within your niche, and start cold outreach to get the ball rolling.

6. Optimize for mobile traffic

Optimize for mobile traffic
Optimize for mobile traffic

Google has made a lot of noise about the importance of mobile in recent years. The PageSpeed Insights score, in reality, prioritizes mobile performance.

The graph above is for ad income rather than pure “traffic,” but it still provides a clear picture. If your sales and marketing strategy treats mobile as the ugly stepchild of desktop, you’re missing out.

Simple things that you can do are ensuring your site is clear and easy to explore on a handheld device. Check if your forms work. Many eCommerce sites on mobile are an eye-sore, with a bunch of consent pop-ups, live chat features, conflicting CTAs, and interstitials. Yes, on desktop, you can get away with it, but on mobile, you have a lot less playground to work with.

Perhaps you might replace the screen-filling lead capture form that appears on every page with something that appears “in-feed” as users scroll through your article or landing page?

7. Leverage SEO

While promoting your offers through numerous channels is important in the process of getting new prospects, you need also ensure that people can easily find you using search engines such as Google.

Here’s how to SEO-optimize your website:

  • Use keywords in H1 and H2 titles and subtitles.

  • Include keywords in your article, but only if they are relevant to the subject.

  • Include keywords in your image description and compress the images to make them smaller.

  • Include keywords in the page’s URL.

  • Choose the major keywords for each landing page and try to optimize the page around those keywords. If you employ too many keywords, you risk losing page authority and relevance since search engines won’t know what the page is about.

Your SEO effort will go hand in hand with content marketing. You can establish a terrific awareness engine for your product or service by optimizing your content pieces for good keywords.

Another good idea to use the SEO power for your eCommerce website is through customer reviews.

Review sites often have a significant presence in organic search, making them an excellent opportunity to increase your brand’s visibility and get discovered by the right individuals.

When you encourage people to submit reviews on a third-party platform with excellent SEO, such as Yelp or Google, you enhance your chances of being found in search by qualified prospects without spending a dollar.

Leverage SEO

For example, when I searched for “marketing automation software”, the first non-ad result was from G2.com, a famous B2B review platform. Imagine having your company on a list like this. There’s a high chance the listed products from your business will lead to more purchase during the customer decision journey.

In high-value keyword searches, you also outmaneuver competitors. This is critical because many searches begin with a generic keyword phrase.

8. Provide upfront value

Provide upfront value
Provide upfront value

Don’t focus just on closing a deal.

I mean, an offer in and of itself is a terrific method to attract new prospects, but adding links to intriguing downloadable and actionable information will make your prospect more than delighted with your collaboration, leaving them wanting more and eager to share the news with their friends and family.

To add value, you can reach out to your audience through a variety of platforms and methods, such as being a guest blogger or a guest on a podcast. Additionally, you can try to organize video conferences or webinars for your audience.

In short, a thing that really helps with lead generation is providing more upfront value to your prospective customers.

Establishing yourself as an industry leader and decision-maker increases your reputation and strengthens the brand of your organization.

Downloadable material can take numerous forms, but the most prevalent industry standard is the creation of ebooks. Ebooks could be downloadable or exposed to the public. You can even make your own QR codes to promote your eBook downloads through offline methods.

Both of these approaches are good in generating leads, while the latter makes attribution more difficult.

Consider whether you would be able to partner with other companies in your industry while working on the ebooks. This will not only assist you in obtaining high-quality content from skilled authors, but it will also give you extra distribution outlets.

9. Launch a giveaway

Giveaways are one of the most effective solutions for generating leads. However, if not done correctly, a giveaway might result in a slew of useless leads and waste your time.

What’s the catch? Make certain that what you’re giving out is something that others want.

HubSpot, one of the most well-known names in digital marketing, gained early popularity by providing a free product.

While it wasn’t their main product, it was valuable enough for individuals to give their contact information and, more importantly, share a link to the tool itself.

The first tool they distributed was a website grader, and then they added more and more. This, of course, was accompanied with a rather feature-rich trial that was extensive enough for a startup to use to create their sales pipeline.

The leads were then nurtured with apparently limitless content in order to turn them into paying clients. Now, Hubspot is easily the solution many think of when looking for a digital marketing solution.

You can do the same as an eCommerce business by launching a giveaway for a product or service that you know will benefit your customers. Then, nurture those leads well because you know they are interested in the cores of your business.

10. Offer a free trial

Offer a free trial
Offer a free trial

Free trials of a company’s services might assist a prospect get their foot in the door. If people find the free trial useful and valuable, they are more likely to buy the full product and become a customer.

Touchless purchasing is popular with prospects who prefer to shop online rather than over the phone. A brand’s website can do its own selling and drive purchases in a low-pressure manner by offering a free trial.

Here, we at AVADA also offer a freemium version of AVADA Marketing Automation. This simple and payment-free version lets users sign up and use our app with basic features. It also provides guides for users to use the app and see real results, giving them more reasons to upgrade to the paid version.

If you are an eCommerce business that solely sells physical products, you can think of offering free samples. Consumers can buy or receive a small potion of your official version, letting them test to see their own results before committing to the full prices.

By providing a piece of your product or service line for free, you give people a taste of your brand while also increasing trust and recognition within your user base.

11. Try asking

Try asking
Try asking

The idea behind this lead generating strategy is simple: you can’t obtain a lead if you don’t ask for it. The proper online feature can be an easy victory for your firm, yet the wrong one can force people to leave your site in an instant. Using something basic, such as a slide-in scroll box, is a wonderful method to request contact information without confusing or annoying website users.

Slide-in scroll boxes are inconspicuous and will not detract from the user experience. Your visitor can provide their information or simply click the button to leave. It is recommended that you attract your reader with an offer, such as a discount, a download, or a free consultation, to keep them from leaving.

AVADA Marketing Automation provides users with this type of slide-in scroll boxes or popups, too, allowing you to collect email addresses from leads in the most simple way.

Final words

During COVID-19, your marketing strategy will certainly need some changes. Instead of scaling back, consider readjusting to fit the current situation. The lead generation ideas above are how you gain more potential customers at a low cost while focusing on providing real value for your audience.

There are tons of other unique ways to generate leads, so I hope you find your ideal ways soon. Best of luck! This is an excellent time to create fresh content, expand platforms, update SEO, and engage with people for more leads.


Sam Nguyen is the CEO and founder of Avada Commerce, an e-commerce solution provider headquartered in Singapore. He is an expert on the Shopify e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Sam loves talking about e-commerce and he aims to help over a million online businesses grow and thrive.