To ensure the survival of any business, it is essential to prioritize growth, which involves the exploration of additional leads. The objective of expanding your business is to both retain existing clients and increase brand recognition and sales.
Targeting local leads is the solution for building your reach, finding new leads, and maintaining your current customer pool without spending too much time or money.
Leads Are Important, Finding Qualified Leads Is Crucial
By following this guide, you can develop an effective strategy for finding new local leads. It provides proven methods that generate high quality leads for your business while also keeping your marketing efforts cost-efficient.
There are two categories of marketing leads, which are referred to as cold and warm leads. Cold leads are individuals who are not acquainted with your product or offer and may not be actively searching for your product. In contrast, a warm lead is someone who is already familiar with your brand and is actively considering purchasing the type of service or product that your business provides.
Warm leads are referred to as qualified leads as they are considered of higher quality. In our guide, we will discuss the creation of warm leads by specifically concentrating on their potential locations for living, working, and recreation.
Focusing on a local lead offers the advantage of targeting individuals within a specific geographic area, increasing their awareness of your brand and offer, and converting them from casual shoppers or website visitors to active sales.
1. Use targeted Facebook lead ads
Facebook is the optimal platform for local business owners to locate their target audience, as it boasts 2.41 billion users and unmatched targeting capabilities.
If you have recently established a dance studio in Seattle, and it happens to be close to Valentine’s Day, using Facebook advertising can help you specifically target men who are in a relationship in the Seattle area. Your message can be as simple as, “Make this Valentine’s Day special by getting her the ultimate gift!”
If your dance studio only offers classes in April, what should you do? You should begin attracting potential students now to ensure those classes are filled. This is where Facebook lead ads can be helpful. When discussing lead generation on Facebook, there are a few choices available.
- Run an ad with the “Conversion” objective and send everyone who clicks to a landing page on your website where they submit their contact information through a form.
- Run a Facebook lead ad.
What is a Facebook lead ad?
This is how it appears and this is how it operates.
In the first step, a potential customer is browsing their Facebook News Feed when they come across your advertisement promoting dance lessons as a Valentine’s Day gift. Intrigued, they take action by clicking on the provided call to action.
In step 2, an ad opens in the News Feed with a form where the potential lead can provide their contact information by filling out the selected fields.
Step 3: The lead provides their information, which is then sent automatically to the CRM that you have previously integrated.
In the Facebook Ad Manager, a Facebook lead ad for our “Seattle Salsa” example would resemble the following.
Facebook lead ads have been proven to be highly effective in converting users compared to traditional Facebook ads that redirect users to a landing page. According to a study conducted by WordStream, Facebook lead ads converted users 19.77% more efficiently than the latter.
For increased effectiveness, it is advisable to connect your Facebook ad account with your CRM to directly and automatically send new leads there, eliminating the need for manual export in Facebook lead ads.
2. Create a localized lead magnet
One of the top methods for generating leads is to create a lead magnet, which is an enticing offer that encourages potential leads to provide their contact information. However, the dilemma arises when your local business, operating solely in Hell’s Kitchen and catering to that particular region, doesn’t require leads from Singapore.
Creating a lead magnet that appeals to everyone is not a productive use of your time. Instead, focus on creating a lead magnet that exclusively appeals to your target market in your local area.
Here are some ideas for lead magnets that are specific to a particular location.
- The Complete Guide to Estate Planning in [Your State]
- The Complete Guide to Buying/Selling/Flipping a Home/Condo/Apartment in [Local Area]
- The Complete Guide to Buying a Used Car in [Your State]
- Preparing your Car for Winter in [Your State]
- A Guide to the Perfect Road Trip/Holiday/Bachelor Party/Romantic Getaway in [State/City]
You have complete freedom to choose the format of these lead magnets. It could be webinars, videos, or PDF guides—any type of gated content will be suitable.
One useful piece of advice is that utilizing email-gating video can be highly effective in generating leads. In order to implement this strategy, it is necessary to communicate with your developer in order to develop a feature that will pause or prevent the video from playing until the viewer submits their lead information.
3. Run a local contest or giveaway
Running a contest that offers a local prize is arguably the most dependable method to generate leads that are strictly from the local area. Contests serve a similar purpose as lead magnets, as they provide an incentive for potential customers to share their contact details. However, in this scenario, participants are given the opportunity to win a sought-after prize.
When running a local contest or giveaway, there is one crucial practice that can significantly impact the outcome: offering a prize that is relevant to your product or service. For example, if you are promoting a gym, holding a contest where the prize is a trip to Barbados or $1,000 cash would attract a multitude of participants. This is because many individuals desire a vacation or extra money.
And this is the issue.
When considering step by step, the same meaning can be rephrased as follows: Remember, it is more valuable to have one customer from a lead than to have 100 leads that do not convert. Similar to social media followers or blog subscribers, the quantity of leads is essentially a meaningless measure. However, if you offer a prize that is directly relevant to your business, you may obtain fewer leads but those leads will have actual value to your business.
Here are a few things to note about this simple yet effective local contest page, which you should include in your next local contest!
- The countdown timer. Countdown timers add urgency to any promotion. They’ve been shown to increase conversion by as much as 332%. They work perfectly in contests because they’re real. Your contest really will end at the end of the week, and if people don’t enter, they can’t win.
- The headline. Front, center, and large, the headline tells exactly what you could win. Put the value at the top.
- The value of the prize. A dollar value helps your contest entrants understand what they stand to win if the value of your prize isn’t inherently understood. This is usually the case when giving away a product or service.
- The form fields. This contest asks for nothing more than a name and email address. It’s (generally) best practice to ask for no more information than you need to contact your leads. More form fields tend to equal a lower conversion rate on your lead generation page.
- The call-to-action button. Make sure it’s high-contrast and eye-catching so there’s no confusion about where to click to enter this contest.
- The lack of external links. This contest page is an effective landing page. As such, it’s optimized for a single conversion goal. That means there are no links off this page to distract visitors from that goal.
One useful tip is that including social share buttons can increase the reach of your local contest or giveaway. This is because it encourages participants to share your promotion with their network in order to have more chances of winning.
4. Referral marketing programs
Leverage the power of your users to recommend your products to their friends and family. Referral marketing is crucial for certain apps like Yelp, and it works by harnessing users’ ability to recommend the platform.
Referral marketing’s effectiveness lies in the social proof provided by recommendations from friends or colleagues, which greatly influences consumers when deciding. This significance arises from the fact that more than 90% of individuals who research a product or brand make use of reviews and recommendations to guide their decision-making process.
You can motivate your customers to spread the word about your product and offers by giving them incentives to persuade their friends and social media followers to sign up for your service or visit a contact page.
Incentives could be provided in the form of an award system that acknowledges the highest number of recommendations or referrals made to a contact page. This promotion could be integrated into a contest or supplemented with extra advantages within your loyalty program.
By providing offers such as discounts, additional benefits for members, or other incentives, you can motivate your existing users to spread the word among their circle of influence. Another effective method of promoting your referral program is to provide benefits for both the person recommending and their referral, such as exclusive discounts or other special offers.
5. Loyalty rewards program
One effective approach to generating local leads is to develop a loyalty program.
Successful loyalty programs commonly provide rewards, discounts, or exclusive member opportunities to participants. These programs offer unique benefits, such as discounts on future purchases, buy-one-get-one-free deals, and more, which regular customers do not have access to. By offering exclusive privileges, these loyalty programs make clients feel special and foster a strong sense of loyalty.
One option is to consider providing the program for free to those who sign up, or alternatively, to make it more exclusive by offering it only to the most loyal customers and requiring a small fee for joining. If you choose to go with the membership fee approach or try to “upsell” customers, it is important to include extra advantages that distinguish the purchase as unique and exclusive.
6. Collaborate with other local businesses
One effective method for enhancing the potential for generating local leads is by collaborating with a nearby business and incorporating product crossovers into your strategy.
In order to promote a cause, an event planning company can collaborate with nearby vendors to organize a charitable event. The event can involve requesting a modest donation from attendees, combining it with a contest or some form of reward system, and collecting contact information for future events.
One possible rephrasing could be: To maintain the same meaning, one option is to organize an exclusive event with limited time availability for signups, ensuring a small number of participants. Additionally, you can establish a sign-up page for future events. An essential advantage of collaborating with local businesses is the opportunity to expand your customer base by gaining access to their clientele while also sharing yours with your strategic partners.
7. Optimize your online presence
To get in front of potential customers in your area, optimize your online presence on social media, blog posts, and websites. Utilize keywords focused on engaging local involvement and create content that highlights your brand within the community.
Imagine you are a local contractor seeking to attract more clients. If you want to improve your website and social media presence, you should identify keywords to focus on localized terms, thereby converting them into long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific, narrowing down search parameters.
The idea is to focus on particular communities by adding exact geographic terms like La Mesa, La Jolla, and Coronado to the keywords “home remodeling contractor”.
To effectively manage your social media presence, it is important to assign a staff member who will solely handle responding to comments and actively participating in your brand’s community. Additionally, it is advisable to develop unique hashtags for your brand and generate captivating content for various social media platforms.
The approach involves creating content in order to direct traffic towards a landing page or capture page, with the aim of obtaining additional contact information and leads.
