Businesses are always looking for new clientele. The key to lead generation is providing consistent excellence and getting people to promote your business to others.

Here are some ways you can generate new leads for your business.

1. Make the most of social media. It all starts with nurturing and engaging your network of people online regularly. The idea is to provide content that will encourage people to share with their network of friends online. Create interest to draw new friends/fans and leads.

• Post usable content that encourages sharing, like recipes, quick household tips, and reviews.
• Post photos/videos that are amusing, informative and positive.
• Create a contest and/or offer free stuff.
• Post and invite people to events.
• Post a survey/poll.

2. Seek referrals from current clients.  By providing consistently excellent customer service as well as high quality products/services, you will generate a constant flow of referrals. Implement a process to automatically ask for referrals at the end of every order. If you don’t have this process in place, just ask your customers for referrals. You’ll be surprised by how many  business owners just don’t ask.

Another way is to create a fun contest to get your customers talking about your products/services with others. This way, customers are promoting your business without the sales pitch and creating leads. Click here for more ideas on getting referrals.

3. Team up.  Find a local business that caters to a similar market as yours, and build a relationship based on mutual interests and benefits.  You could hold a joint open house, offer incentives for customers that use both of your services, and even split the costs of local advertising.  Once you have built a solid relationship, begin referring each other to your customers both by word of mouth and also by distributing mailers and business cards to your patrons. For example, one local ice cream shop hosts a blood drive periodically, and offers a free ice cream cone to those that donate. They teamed up with the pub down the street so now both businesses advertise ice cream and beer (“a pint for a pint”) for donating which generates traffic to both businesses, and also creates good will towards both businesses in the community.

4. Network with influencers. This will require you to seek out influencers in your community. Also don’t forget the influencers that you already know off and online. Support influencers in their passions and causes and establish a relationship with them. Then you can create a mutually beneficial relationship where you refer to one another. This will help you tap into their network of people and find new leads for your business.

5. Weekly face to face.  Schedule time to have coffee, lunch and/or a social get-together with customers, online friends/fans, other local business people and influencers weekly. Keep it social. This will help deepen your relationships, and naturally get you leads as they talk about their time with you.

What methods have you used to generate meaningful leads?  Please add to our list in the comments section below!

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