When you are working with a sizeable marketing budget, gaining new leads can be quite easy. After all, you have the financial backing to invest in digital marketing tactics. But, if you are a small business owner or have a tight budget, lead generation can be decidedly more difficult. You will not be able to rely on paid methods, which means you will need to be a bit more creative with your ideas.Â
When you are working on a digital marketing strategy your budget is important to consider. Having little to no marketing budget for your lead generation campaign might sound like a daunting prospect, but there are methods and tools you can use despite this. Not sure where to start? Below we discuss some effective methods for gaining leads with no budget.Â
Make Human Error Work For You
Email marketing campaigns are known for being hugely successful, and with the various technologies at our fingertips today, you are able to make these emails extremely personalised and tailored to our audience. However, consumers are catching on to this and often do not open these emails.Â
An affordable method of ensuring that your emails are opened and that actions are taken is to add some human error into your email marketing campaign. It could work like this: the first email that you send out could have a button in it with a link that does not work. As bad for the consumer as this sounds, the very next day you will be sending out another email – this time with a link that works.Â
This email should have a subject line such as, “Oops, I made a mistake!” This will draw their attention and will lead them to believe that you yourself created the first email and it was not simply sent by a bot. Your audience will be more receptive to your offer when your brand feels more human.Â
Create Engaging Content
One of the most affordable and simplest methods of gaining more leads and engagement is to create a blog for your company or brand. You might think that this will cost you extra money – after all, a blog is not free, right? Well, there are free platforms such as WordPress and Blogger.com that allow you to create your own personalised blog completely for free.Â
On this platform, you can create, curate, edit, and manage content that will help you to drive more engagement with your audience and even generate leads. The content that you create should be relevant to your brand and valuable for your consumers. A blog is highly affordable and allows you to be creative with your brand. It can also help to improve your SEO (search engine optimisation) rankings, which in turn, improves your lead generation.Â
Don’t Forget Business Directories
If you are a small B2B (business to business) company, you can drive more traffic and gain more leads by making use of free business directories. These directories allow you to list your business and have a link back to your business website. By making use of the keywords and categories on these directories, you will be found by interested consumers who will become leads.Â
When listing your business on a directory, be sure to use accurate and up-to-date information and load up photographs of your products, services, and other brand-related images. Your SEO presence will also improve because these business directories have high domain authorities and are trusted by search engines. You can list your business on various directories that are related to your business niche as well as more general ones.Â
Referrals And Reviews
If you have a list of already-satisfied consumers, you can ask these people for referrals of others who might need to use your services. These referrals are from reliable and valuable sources, and you can also offer an incentive, such as ten percent off of their next purchase or service used.Â
Asking consumers to review your services and products is a highly effective method of improving your online presence and thus gaining more leads. These reviews should always be honest and unbiased. When consumers see a review that is made by someone affiliated with a brand or who works for a brand, they will ignore this review even if it is positive. A positive review left by a genuinely happy customer will have a positive impact on your brand.Â
Think Outside The Box
When it comes to generating leads, thinking creatively is highly beneficial to any campaign. If you do not have a large budget – or if you have no budget at all – a lead generation campaign can be difficult to achieve, but it is not impossible.Â
You just need to think outside the box when it comes to email marketing, content creation, and online presence. If you would like to improve your leads but do not have a massive budget, NetMechanic can create a lead generation solution to suit your needs. Contact us today to find out what we can offer you.
