The whole lead generation process for physical brick-and-mortar stores is not only tedious but also laborious if you’re relying on traditional methods.
Cold emails and cold calls by scraping through local address books just don’t cut it anymore.
But, what if you could still accomplish your lead generation goals using methods that add value to your prospects?
To walk you through some of the different methodologies, we’ve curated 7 unconventional lead generation techniques for local businesses.
1.Embed know-how videos
Video marketing is the future of the internet. Video content improves SEO, increases conversion rate, generates a direct sales lead and more.
Web users spend more time watching videos. This has proven to be highly beneficial for marketers and local businesses.
Videos are an effective lead generation tool. Consider using high-quality, informative content as gated content, adding videos on landing pages, and adding CTAs at the end of the video with a related offer can help to generate leads.
Consider platforms like YoutTube and Vimeo to get millions of views every single day. YouTube is the second most popular search engine as of today.
Users get on to YouTube to find potential answers to their questions. If a video is linked to the answers at the bottom that directs them to your website, that is a potential client in the pipeline.
Forbes predicts that 90% of customers say a video helps them make decisions to buy and 64% of customers say that watching a video makes them more likely to buy a product.
Add dynamic QR Codes at the end of the videos for the potential lead to scan and are directed to your website’s top landing pages or social media handle.
Beaconstac here, for example, leverages know-how videos to educate their users on how to create PDF QR Codes. Videos serve as a great interactive tool and simplify the process on the whole for users.
For more on using video for business, check out our guide on six types of video ideas to supercharge your social media.
2. Leverage app-less marketing
Deploy QR Codes and NFC Tags to generate leads to your local business and automate your marketing strategy.
QR Codes and NFC tags are cost-effective, work out-of-the-box, and is extremely efficient in generating leads.
This allows businesses to analyze, track and retarget their consumers by engaging with third-party applications exclusively meant for analyzing and retargeting by studying their click behavior.
Macy’s, the largest retail chain in the US has deployed beacon and NFC technology to strategize an engaging shopping experience for its users.
By opting for these technologies, Macy’s has amped the customer experience by rolling out loyalty programs, an enhanced customer service, segregating the layout merchandise in their stores, and offering personalized shopping experience.
Using QR Codes and NFC Tags on print marketing medium such as flyers, brochures, OOH advertisements, incentivized coupons and offers can be leveraged to promote the product, and, in turn, effectively increase leads.
McDonald’s used QR Codes on their paper packages after learning that their customers wanted to know more about their food by sharing nutritional information about their hamburgers.
This not only instilled a blanket of trust amongst the customers but also helped the company to highly target and retarget their customers to send out personalized messages and offers.
3. AMA (Ask Me Anything)
One of the most powerful and unique techniques to generate leads to your local business is by reaching out to pioneers in the market industry for their thoughts.
Take advantage of social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and even LinkedIn to post these Q&As. Send out a planned invite to your customers and followers notifying them about the Q&A session.
The questions could either be asked by an employee or you could even leverage consumers in this case with questions to ask the expert.
Awario states that companies who engage in social selling get 199% better ROI.
DataVLT, a data analytics platform ran an AMA session on Twitter by using the hashtag #AskDVLTAnything. By keeping their hashtag unique, the company was able to gather questions from different parts of the world and answered them during the session.
4. User-generated content
User-generated content and review platforms have a powerful foothold in organic search, making them an eminent opportunity to expand your brand name and get noticed by the right consumers.
When a business encourages its consumers to leave a review behind on a third-party platform with strong SEO, they are exponentially increasing the chances of being discovered by qualified prospects in search; without paying a penny.
FinancesOnline is an online B2B solutions finder service that works purely on customer reviews and ratings. The platform segregates companies based on the maximum quality content reviews and helps consumers find the solution they need.
Google acknowledges their independent role in helping consumers what they want and seems to approve review sites in search engine results.
Businesses can also outmaneuver their competitors in high-value keyword searchers. Considering the Google/CEB study found that 71% of B2B searchers start with a generic keyword phrase, this is crucial.
5. Answer questions on Quora
Quora is a Q&A based social networking site that reaches more than 100 million users per month. Quora can be taken advantage of to build yourself as a thought-leader in your particular niche.
Quora is primarily a user-generated content platform. But with that being said, there are ways to get the formula right on Quora. Quora is best used as a method to open up communication threads as you engage and help out users who are looking for a particular solution.
By answering questions related to my niche, and offbeat content, I can categorize myself as an expert on the subject matter garnering more attention to the company. This, in turn, will help the company get more users to at least click on the link, open a loop, and get them interested in the platform.
Quora doesn’t allow overly self-promoting content to generate leads and bring in revenue. The laws of reciprocity come into light and consumers will reach out to you after establishing yourself as a trusted source on the platform.
6. Offer free trials and giveaways
Giveaways, free trials, and sample products are the ideal method for getting potential users excited and letting them use your brand’s product to have an insight into it.
Free trials of a brand’s features can hels to capture potential consumer. If the trial helps them greatly, they are more likely to purchase the product and become a customer.
Sephora offers a plethora of free giveaways and trial products for their customers. In fact, Sephora is hugely popular for its giveaways, coupons, and discounts which get consumers flocking to their website and physical stores.
This lead generation process for Sephora has been hugely successful and has helped the company to retarget their potential customers to turn into qualified leads.
Touchless buying can also be employed for businesses that have an online presence.
In addition to that, consumers who have tried free samples are the most qualified leads because they have actually reached out to try your products.
By offering free trials and giveaways, a brand can do its own selling and encourage people to buy their products in a low-pressure manner.
7. Optimize email marketing
According to a report by DemandGen, lead-nurturing emails get as much as 10X the response rate as opposed to standalone mails, but you need to do it right. Start by ensuring your emails are verified. This will help ensure you don’t get any problems with your Spam score.
Marketing automation is one of the biggest trends in email marketing at the moment, thus generating great results for businesses. Marketing automation tools are constructively hybrid email marketing tools that connect with your CRM that automatically pushes you to send highly personalized targeted emails to leads.
Email marketing plays a massive role in content marketing success. It plays the role of the concept of direct engagement. Some of the clues to develop a successful email content to generate leads must include –
- Subject line
- Concise content
- Integrate social media handles in the mail
- Include high-quality and lightweight images in the mail to explain the content better
- Incorporate a CTA at the end of the mail
There are several tools that integrate email marketing to send out timely emails with highly engaging content such as Drip, Aweber, and Constant Contact to name a few.
Drip is an end-to-end email marketing platform that gives an incomparable insight into the customers’ behavior; right from their click behavior, emails they’ve opened, and purchases made to help build a brand from email to social media.
Most users open emails from businesses they want to connect with. This makes email marketing as one of the best tools for lead generation.
Experiment what’s best for your business
As a recap, the seven unconventional lead generation tactics are –
- Embed know-how videos
- Leverage app-less marketing
- AMA (Ask Me Anything)
- User-generated content
- Answer questions on Quora
- Offer free trials and giveaways
- Optimize email marketing
A well-thought-out established process and subsequent focused strategy to generate leads can be wholesome and have the power to grow and sustain a business.
When it comes to businesses, the agenda “one size fits all” doesn’t hold good; what might work for a SaaS company might not work very well for a grocery shop.
Although lead generation is the numero uno challenge in this present day, identifying the bottlenecks in the funnel and tweaking strategies to take a technology-first approach always helps.
Check out our complete guide to local marketing for more local marketing strategies.
About the Author
Apoorva Hegde is a Content Marketer at MobStac. Apart from writing articles and blog posts related to QR Codes and all things related to it, she enjoys simple pleasures of life like going on long walks with her dog, eating carbs all day, and alike.
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