Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs and written over a thousand pieces of content relating to marketing for small businesses. Unfortunately, through these years I’ve seen small businesses struggle with the same exact thing over and over: they can’t generate enough leads.
Most find that once they have a lead they can effectively carry out the sales process, or at least have a plan for how to do so. But it can be incredibly difficult for a small business to generate enough leads for a sustainable income.
Why don’t they have enough leads? Here are three reasons I see most often that are keeping businesses from growing their sales:
They don’t have a platform for content.
Many small businesses believe that once their website is built, they can “set it and forget it.” However, this is not the approach you want to take for generating leads through SEM and social media marketing.
Your website needs fresh content as well as content that will generate leads for you (such as an ebook download — more on that next). Content is the backbone of your online marketing, so you need to continually invest in it.
You aren’t collecting emails.
Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools in the modern digital media age. It can help you engage customers from the first time they visit your website, and easily promote sales both now and in the future. However, if you’re not capturing emails on your website, you’re losing out on the opportunity to use this incredibly powerful tool.
Start by offering a free download or coupon code in exchange for emails on your website’s front page. From there, you can work on an email campaign that will practically sell for you.
You don’t have a strategy to guide you.
Many small businesses use every marketing tool available, believing that it’s what they’re “supposed” to do. They create social media profiles, a blog, and maybe even an email campaign but have no guiding message to tie it all together. They have the right ingredients, but no direction to move their potential customers from point A to point B.
This is oftentimes the problem I see with small businesses and can cost them hundreds — if not thousands — in ineffective advertising. You need a cohesive message and a guided sales pipeline to automatically draw in leads. Your website should be selling for you all the time, and without a strategy it simply won’t do that.
All of these problems happen at the level of the sales funnel. If any of these elements is weak, the sales funnel is not strong enough to attract or nurture your leads.
If you don’t have that sales funnel to bring them to you, how are you ever going to sell?
I have been solving this problem for clients for the past decade and can help you solve it too with the right tools, content, and strategy to collect leads 24/7. If you’re ready to improve your business and get the lead volume necessary for sustainable growth, schedule a call with me today.
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