10 Ways Successful Startups Generate Leads For Their E-commerce Stores

Let’s face it, lead generation while building your startup is the most important aspect.

As an entrepreneur, you definitely know that starting a business is extremely exciting, but can be dauntingly challenging.

Starting e-commerce however has a special allure, a kind of addictive adrenaline rush that courses through your veins powering long sweaty hours, maniacal focus, an obsessive zeal, and a near fanatical frenzy.

Lead generation for any startup operation working on a lean budget is often expensive, and mostly hard to achieve.

This is where creativity, tons of experience, and gazillion doses of luck are needed, and that’s what this article is about. How to get around money worries, as you compete with deep-pocketed enterprises running on millions of marketing budgets.

As an experienced entrepreneur with a few successful startup belts, I will share with you simple often overlooked strategies that can help you generate powerful leads to get much-needed dollars trickling into your business.

Surviving business cutthroat competition is bloody, messy, and often vicious.

Fresh leads are the lifeblood that breathes life into your cherished startup, without them, your startup is doomed to starve to its disastrous demise.

Having a website is good, but it’s not enough. Generating high-quality leads is what leads to new customer acquisitions. The more high-quality leads you can generate the more successful your business will become.

A lead or a prospect is anyone interested in your product or services. E-commerce leads are captured in many ways, such as ad clicking, social media brand following, email subscription, and free downloads.

For instance, when a client gives you their contact information after downloading an e-book in exchange for their email address that’s a practical definition of a lead. In short, they’ve given your business permission to contact them.

Lead generation is the process of attracting strangers and convincing them to give you their contacts and by extension, permission to contact them.

Here are three common steps, precursors to successful lead generation:

• Attract: Publish high-quality content to attract a loyal audience
• Engage: Keep your clients on your platform with engaging conversations as you subtly introduce and market your business. The longer you can keep them on the platform, the better your chances are of converting them into useful prospects.
• Convert: Give them a valuable offer for free so to get permission to contact them. You can give them lead magnets such as a free e-book, a free trial of your product, discount coupons, and any other desirable freebie.

Now here is how to maximize these strategies.

1. Inbound Marketing: Content Marketing+SEO

Inbound marketing is a common buzzword in digital marketing. It is a softer approach to advertising. Simply put, it’s the use of content marketing and SEO strategies to hook your ideal audience without appearing pushy or spammy.

It’s an effective strategy for subtly attracting clients without their resistance. But it costs tons of work — publishing high-quality content consistently on various channels.

This way, you can start introducing your brand/product, while offering a lead magnet to prospective clients.

Advertising isn’t effective anymore, most people use ad blockers or actively dodge feisty ads.

Inbound marketing on the other hand generates more qualified leads for startups both in quantity and quality as opposed to outbound marketing.

Inbound marketing is a broad subject, but here are some important areas you need to focus on:

• Content is king: The quality and relevance of your content is an important factors to your success. Focus on these areas:

1. Keyword research:target those keywords with a high enough search volume to ensure your content is relevant.
2. Search intent: ensure that you meet your target audience’s search intent with each keyword.
3. Competitive analysis:always strive to create better, more unique, and more relevant content than the highest-ranking pages on Google by consistently checking for your target keywords.

• Content promotion:content won’t generate leads if it doesn’t reach enough people. Therefore, promote your content via all the available channels. This will generate more traffic and get you more backlinks in the process.
• Backlink building:Backlinks are the most important ranking factors in SEO. Generally generating just three to five backlinks each month from quality sites in your industry is sufficient. To achieve this you can:

1. Give your prospects a reason to link your page. You can include at least one link hook for instance unique data/information, an engaging story, a great photo/image, and so on.
2. Create long-term and healthy relationships with relevant sites and influencers in your niche.
3. Guest posting is also effective in generating backlinks.

• Be more creative in social media

Primarily, generating leads via social media marketing is a given.

However, with the social media marketing landscape getting saturated, getting your voice heard amidst all this noise can be a challenge.

Utilize the following social media marketing options to balance cost-efficiency and time:

1. Organic:Build own followers and spread promotional messages organically. Doing this will save you money but can take longer to see results.
2. Paid:I know I said advertising doesn’t work, but people still use paid advertising options offered by social media platformsand they still work for loyal customers.
3. Influencer:work with influencers who can help promote your brand/product/service/content.

• Effective Usage of Landing Pages

Launch as many landing pages as possible to capture different audiences. The more landing pages, the more opportunities you’ll have to generate leads.

However, it’s not only the number of your landing pages that is important but also how optimized they are. And this is how to do it:

v Clear offers: ensure your offer is very clear.

v Simplify everything: streamline every element on your landing page so your audience can focus on your offer and click on your call to action (CTA) button.

v Optimize CTA: make sure your call to action (CTA) is straightforward, to the point, and obvious.

v Contact information: also ensure it’s easy for your prospects to contact you. Provide as many options as possible.

v Social proof: add testimonials from previous clients and existing customers. You can also display your awards/accolades if any.

v A/B test: Lastly test every element on your landing page, and continuously optimize it.

2. Optimizing Your Lead Magnet

Now that you’ve successfully attracted prospects to your platform or website, the next step is to convert these visitors into leads by offering your lead magnet.

The perfect lead magnet should be:

1. Valuable for your target audience.
2. Relevant to your brand, and preferably related to your product/service.
3. Cost-effective.

Here are some common lead magnet ideas you can try:

• Gated content:This is a common lead magnet intended to offer a more in-depth version of the content the audience is currently consuming. For instance, offering an ebook about the latest cooking tricks on a recipe-related blog post.
• Free trial:a free trial offer is another effective lead generation campaign, especially when selling digital products.
• Webinar:This is an effective tactic — you offer free webinar sharing tips/educational videos related to your niche.
• Tools:you can also offer a simple but valuable tool as your lead magnet if your niche allows it. For instance, if you are a fitness blog, you can offer a BMI calculator as your lead magnet.

 

To be successful, your lead magnet should be easy, unique, problem-solving, and provide immediate value.

1. Lead Scoring

After generating your leads, you will need to start scoring them to qualify which leads are worth investing your time and resources in.

Whereas lead scoring methods vary from business to business, here are some general steps you should follow:

Defining the stages/tiers

This is the most important step in lead scoring. The standard tiers include:

• Stranger:a website/platform visitor that hasn’t submitted their contact
• Prospect:a contact that has submitted their contact info (email address)
• MQL (marketing qualified lead):a lead that has engaged several times with your content.
• SQL (sales qualified lead):a lead that is very likely to make a purchase.

 

Assigning points

For instance, you can use a 100-point system with the above tiers: 10 points for a stranger, 50 points for a lead, 80 points for an MQL, and 100 points before the lead is qualified as an SQL.

Define scores for actions

You can also assign scores to other actions depending on your business model. For instance, every email open and read can be assigned 1 point.

Define point decay

Your leads aren’t static, prospects can change their minds about your brands before, or even after they’ve made their purchase. To properly ‘demote’ a lead for more accurate scoring you can assign point decays.

For instance, you can subtract 10 points after 30 days of no action, another 40 points after 60 days of no action, and all points after 90 days of no action from a prospect.

2. Pay-per-click marketing (PPC)

When you do a Google search and an ad for a product pops up, that’s simply pay-per-click marketing. If you do it right, you can bring extremely targeted traffic to your product/service pages.

However, you need to be careful as you can easily burn your whole marketing budget if you aren’t sure about what you’re doing.

To avoid paying too much per click, ensure that the ads are properly optimized, which means they only appear when someone is actually looking for what you offer.

3. Social media marketing (SMM)

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is a form of online marketing. You can promote and sell your products and services to people who are on social networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc.

A successful SMM campaign will boost brand awareness and increase your engagement with customers by providing them with content that is both timely and relevant.

However, you need to know who your customers are if you want to succeed. You need to know their preferred platforms and where they spend most of their time. For example, you can use TikTok to target teenage customers, Facebook to target older audiences, and Instagram to cross between audiences.

Most people use social media sites as platforms for content promotion and shareable links. You can also try Facebook ads, which are usually cheaper than Google ads, and they allow better targeting.

4. Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Conversion Rate Optimization is the process of improving site design to increase the proportion of visitors who convert or perform an action, such as purchasing a product.

CRO is important when running an online business. Optimizing your website to be as user-friendly and intuitive as possible will help you lead more people through the conversion funnel that may have otherwise been deterred by a less inviting site design. Common CRO tactics include A/B testing, multivariate testing, and personalization.

5. Email marketing

This is another great avenue for acquiring leads. You can set up email marketing software, such as Mailchimp or AWeber.

This will mean that when someone signs up for your mailing list, they can automatically receive offers from your company over time, which should then see them convert into a customer if properly nurtured.

You can lure in subscribers by offering a freebie or “deal of the day” to entice them into signing up for your email list.

You should also consider using an incentive system with reward points that can be redeemed as discounts on future purchases, which will encourage more loyalty and higher conversions over time.

Ensure your emails are personal and targeted in content and design. Your recipients will most likely prefer content that they can relate to.

6. Create an email referral program

Another great way to generate leads is through email referral programs. Asking your current customers to refer their friends and family members to your business is a cost-effective way of generating leads.

Email referral programs are easy to set up and can be very effective in generating new leads. You simply need to create a landing page where people can sign up for your program and then ask current customers to invite their friends and family members there.

Besides, you can also incentivize people to refer your business by offering them discounts or rewards for every new customer they refer. This will increase the number of leads you generate, while also building a database of potential customers.

 

7. Events

One of the best ways of generating lasting customers is to meet them in person. Attend events where your target market is and speak to them about the benefits of purchasing from you. This can be a great way to get more eyes on your business.

Besides, events are great networking opportunities. You can get in touch with other businesses that may want to trade links or advertise together.

You can also host your own virtual events to attract those customers who might not be able to attend in person. It’s also a great way to reach out to individuals all over the world who might be interested in your products or services.

8. Start a podcast

Podcasts are all the rave right now — and we can understand why. Podcasts are increasing in popularity and if someone stumbles across one of your recordings, it may lead them to find out more about what you offer.

Creating a podcast can help you connect with customers who might not have otherwise known about you.

9. Make your website user-friendly

Your e-commerce store might have the best content, but if your website is not user-friendly, then you can’t generate leads.

The key goal of web design is ease of use and convenience for the end-users. You need to make it easy for your web visitors to navigate and find what they are looking for on your site through your product pages, navigation menu, and search bar.

Your website should also be mobile-friendly so people can access it on the go.

Create a responsive design for all devices to ensure an optimal viewing experience across different platforms. You should also optimize images by compressing them without diminishing their quality or size. Finally, use clear and concise text so people can easily understand what they are reading.

10. Set up affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing works. Get affiliates to promote your product and receive commissions for any sales or leads they generate.

You can reach out to influencers in your niche and ask them to promote your products for a commission on every lead generated.

Final Thoughts:

There are many ways you can successfully market your online store — but no matter what strategy you choose, your focus should be on authenticity and relevance.

Most people will not pan out, and others will want something for free. However, you should resist the temptation to give your services away for the promise of a larger payday down the road someday, as this might never happen.

 

This  article was first published Here: 10 Little-known Ways Successful Startups Generate Leads For Their E-commerce Stores