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Originally Posted On: http://www.youngupstarts.com/2019/12/04/great-ways-your-business-can-increase-their-leads-and-customers/

If you’re thinking about how you’re going to increase your leads and customer base, you must understand the value of your customers to your business. Just like any other business, it’s essential to keep in constant contact with your prospects and existing customers to build a loyal relationship with them. After all, the more you cultivate a solid customer base, the more sales you can probably get.

So, if you’re eager to grow your business by getting more leads and customers, here are a few great ways to consider from the very beginning.

Determine Your Target Audience.

The first step in increasing your leads and customers is to identify your target audience. Besides, you can’t reach your prospects without knowing who they are, where they come from, what they want to do, what their lifestyle and personality. That’s why it’s essential to conduct research and have a clear picture of your audience. That way, you can proceed with the creation of your marketing plan.

Use Search Engine Optimization.

In today’s digital world, many business owners know the importance of search engine optimization for big and small businesses when being implemented. Generally, SEO refers to the process of improving the quantity of traffic to a website using organic search engine results. By performing some good SEO practices, you can improve your website’s visibility in the search slides and drive more visitors to go to your site and take action.

Below are some SEO tips that can help expand your business:

• Begin with keyword research. Make sure you have a better understanding of the words and phrases your potential customers use to search for your products. When you target the right use of keywords for our website, you’ll become more visible in search engine results.
• Don’t forget to optimize your site by ensuring it’s mobile-responsive to accommodate the growing number of mobile phone users. Remember, Google acknowledges those websites which are mobile-friendly and have faster loading speeds.
• Provide regular content to your website, which is suitable for the consumption habits of your prospects. Be sure the content is useful, engaging, and consistent. Your target audience will be more attracted to visit your site and boost your lead generation potential if they read valuable written content that they can relate to.

Mass Text Messaging.

In addition to email marketing, mass text messaging is also gaining popularity as a useful tool to boost leads and customers. Typically, it refers to a communication service that allows an organization to send a single text message to a large group of people. Since countless people are using mobile phones, mass text messaging can reach a wide range of target audiences for marketing purposes.

Here’s how you can start sending mass text messages to your potential clients and generate more leads:

• Choose a mass text messaging service provider and sign up for an account. Fill out the form with the necessary information and wait for the confirmation. Make sure to read the provider’s terms and conditions before pushing through with the registration.
• Build your list of contacts to streamline the sending process. If you can, collect more numbers to reach more people. But, if you have an existing list of contacts, have it imported directly to the platform.
• When everything is ready, write your marketing content and send your mass text to your contacts. Make sure the content of the text message has a call to action so your prospects know where to go in case they’re interested in your brand.

Invest In Email Marketing.

Another great way your business can use to improve your leads and customers is through email marketing. This marketing tool refers to the process of sending business messages to a wide range of contacts using an email platform. Therefore, with several people who are checking their emails on a daily basis, investing in email marketing to expand your business can be an excellent idea.

Before you get started, below are some tips that can help make your email marketing shine:

• Remove inactive subscribers to maintain your list fresh. Some of your subscribers might have changed their email accounts, or they no longer find your brand interesting. Whatever the reasons are, make sure that your list doesn’t go stale. That way, you can save time and effort in sending messages to a large group of people.
• Make your subject line attractive to encourage people to open and read your email. When making your subject line, use a conversational tone, and communicate in the language that they understand themselves.
• Come up with fantastic content. The actual content of your email has the ability to increase your business leads and customer base. When your recipients are happy with your content, they’ll more likely take action on your email by reading what’s inside. In other words, make your content awesome to drive more customers.
• Make sure your emails are responsive to mobile phones. Since these devices have smaller screens, keep the formatting simple, use large fonts for readiness, and add smaller images to cut the load time.

Take Advantage Of Social Media Marketing.

With the advent of several social media networks nowadays, social media marketing is undeniably one of the best ways to improve your business leads and grow customers. In its simplest terms, social media marketing refers to a process where social media channels are used to interact with your target audience to boost sales, establish brand identity, and attract more prospects.

To gain the benefits of using social media for your marketing efforts, below are the things you should remember:

• Plan your social media strategy by determining your goals, the platform you’re going to use, and the type of content you want to share. Since social media can generate engagement, find and use a few channels that you think your target audience is using. When it comes to your content, try to make a marketing persona to know whether your prospects want an entertaining or educational content.
• Have a consistent presence on social media. If you’re more visible on a few platforms, you can provide your business with an opportunity to be found by your potential customers. Also, the other way of being present on social networks is to share posts, images, or even videos. By publishing great content that your target audience likes, you can increase leads and turn visitors to loyal customers.
• If you want to grow your customer base, don’t hesitate to listen and engage with your target audience on social media. The more you comment on your posts, the more they’ll message you directly about your offerings.
• Know how your social media marketing strategy is performing. Check how many people you’ve reached on different platforms and if you’re able to generate leads out of it. By knowing all of this information, you’ll see whether you need to make changes in your marketing strategy or stick with it.

Adopt Telemarketing.

This is one of the most popular marketing methods in the industry today. In telemarketing, the salesperson calls a prospective customer over the phone to encourage them to buy products or services. For that reason, it’s considered as an effective way to drive leads and more customers. However, telemarketing can be a challenging task. If you don’t know what to say, you might get stuck in the conversation.

If you want to make the task right, below are some of the common telemarketing tips that you should know right from the start:

• Prepare your data before making phone calls. Conduct your pre-call planning to identify your target audience and other important details.
• Don’t sound like a telemarketer to have a better flow of conversation. In most cases, prospects aren’t interested in telemarketers who do scripted calls. Because of this, try to soften your calling approach by sounding more comfortable and relaxed.
• Get some training courses to enhance results. Given the complicated components of telemarketing, you probably need the right training to attract more prospective customers.
• Ask good questions to demonstrate interest and get the right information you need. By asking questions, you can encourage your prospects to speak more and facilitate further discussions, which, in turn, leads to more sales conversions.
• Use an innovative outbound calling system such as a predictive dialer to increase your chances of getting more leads or closing some sales. Typically, this type of software allows you to automatically dial many numbers at once using your calling list. In essence, it improves your lead dialing productivity since the contacts are called at the same time, and whoever answers first will be connected to you.

Final Thoughts.

Marketing, whether online or offline, is considered an art of drawing and keeping customers. Thus, if improving leads and customer base is what you’re aiming for your business, keeping all the information in this article in mind can significantly lead to favorable results.

Although each of the tips above can help increase sales conversions for your business, try not to get overwhelmed with the list. Instead of trying everything at the same time, why not focus on one or two methods to see the positive outcomes. That way, you can maximize these marketing strategies while watching your sales figures, and the number of customers grows.