10 Ways a Small Business Can Drive More Leads

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Ten of the best digital marketers from Salesforce past and present gathered at Dreamforce to share their advice on how you can generate leads better and faster. With a range of tips from using SEO best practices, stepping up social media, conducting paid search, or using site optimization, this advice will help you immediately start driving more leads for your growing business.

“Create a unique editorial tone and voice and embed this into your website and apps. Have fun and create a strong emotional connection with your users that differentiates you from your lifeless, sterile competitors.” – Bill Macaitis of Macaitis Advisory (former CMO of Zendesk and Slack), @bmacaitis

Even small businesses need to focus on building a unique brand with a voice and personality that stands out from the competition and engages customers. Don’t be afraid to have some fun –  customers prefer to do business with brands that are likable.

“Make yourself bigger than you really are.” – Lauren Vaccarello, VP of Marketing, Box, @laurenv

Just because your business is small doesn’t mean you can’t compete with bigger, more established companies. Use re-targeting and geo-targeting to saturate audiences that have hit your website to make you company seem bigger than you really are.

“Spy on your digital competitors.” – Rachael Fishman, Sr. Analyst, SEO & Acquisition, Salesforce, @rachaelfishman

It’s important to pay attention to the type of content your competitors are creating and their cadence, and to learn from their mistakes. You can use tools like Screaming Frog to evaluate their SEO optimization and the Wayback Machine to see how their messaging and web architecture evolves.

“Don’t tell them — show them.” – Dan Haroldson, Director, Web and Organic Strategy, Microsoft Office, @dharoldsen

Make it as easy and enjoyable for customers to engage with you and your products. Showing them how things work — instead of explaining in text — always works better. It’s much more effective to give them a video or an interactive tool.

“Go local, then scale.” – Cam Tran, Sr. Manager, SMB Marketing, Salesforce, @c7ran

Small businesses with limited resources need to be thoughtful about how they spend their money. We often start by testing in a local market so we can refine our strategies and retool as needed before we roll out on a larger scale.

“Read the book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow.’” – David Austin, Sr. Director, SMB Marketing, Salesforce, @mymyopia

Marketing is about creating experiences. Thinking Fast and Slow helps you understand how the mindset of the participants coming into your experience interacts with the elements of the experience you offer.  This lets you predict the success of any marketing endeavor.

“Track all calls digitally.” – Todd Friesen, Director, Digital Strategy & SEO, Salesforce, @oilman

Phone calls should be tracked just like any inbound digital lead. You need to be able to track all of your incoming calls. Understand how people get your phone number, and when and why they are calling. This will help you understand  ads or pages on your website are working well.

“Create a customer cookie. Don’t make it hard for customers to give you their money.” – Brad Morris, Marketing Leader & Executive, Morris Consulting, @cbradmorris

Have an easy way to segment out your customers from non-customers hitting your website so you can tailor your messaging and experience, and also understand the behavior of both groups better. It’s incredibly important to sell the way that your customers want to buy. Don’t create barriers that make it hard for them to give you their money.

“Use the ‘Net Promoter Score.’” – Mark Vozzo, Marketing Leader and Executive, Morris Consulting, @cbradmorris

It’s a very simple survey to conduct and it helps you understand the strength of word of mouth for your product. Be sure to use it at different touchpoints in your product experience (right after the sale, or after a support call, and after they’ve been a customer for a year) so you can understand how people feel throughout the lifecycle.

“Website speed is king.” – Alex Bullo, Manager, SEO and Acquisition, Salesforce, @alexbullo

In a mobile world where a prospect or customer may only have a fleeting moment to be found, website speed is king. And faster is better for SEO (Google will de-rank your website if it’s too slow). As we move more and more to mobile, it will be even more important to be high in rankings.

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This article, "10 Ways a Small Business Can Drive More Leads" was first published on Small Business Trends