5:03 AM 10/1/2023Step-By-Step Lead Generating Process
As an online entrepreneur, one of the most effective ongoing tasks you’ll undertake that will contribute to your income growth is lead generation. Getting subscribers on your list allows you to communicate with them for months and years as they look to you for guidance and recommendations.
Generating leads for any niche generally requires the same steps. Each one will provide you with new opportunities to grow your audience and business to its fullest potential. Below, you’ll find a 30-step plan for lead generation that can help you build a substantial list of niche followers.
Step 1: Use the Most Reliable Response Tools
Communication is one of the most valuable assets you can have for your brand. This makes any response system just as valuable, since it would control a large portion of your brand’s communications.
If you end up with an autoresponder system that fails you, such as getting caught in spam filters or even not being functional after a short period of time, you could stand to lose a whole list of potential customers due to a malfunction.
Make sure when you are searching for a company to work with that you look for experience over cheap prices or marketing buzz during a launch. It will be worth ignoring the hype when you don’t have to stress over unforeseen complications.
Make sure the company you choose allows for you to have more than one list, so that you can separate (segment) certain people and use strategic methods to reach a wider audience with a targeted message.
Step 2: Turn Your Business Into a Brand with Graphic Design
The way you present your business will have a major effect on how people view your work and whether or not they want to sign up to your list. In order to draw in a crowd who views you as a top leader, you will need the right visuals and aesthetics for your brand.
When potential customers are browsing on Amazon, Etsy or other shopping sites (including digital courses), they will often make a quick decision based on the visuals presented to them.
When someone browses through the many options available to them in their search, they are likely to select a product that has the most professional branding. It’s important to invest in the visuals for your brand, especially your site and lead magnet graphics, since they are some of the biggest lead generators available to you.
Your brand should have its own logo, color palette, and overall aesthetic. You can create your own graphics with tools like Canva and Photoshop. If you don’t feel as though your work will suffice, you can hire a freelance graphic designer to help you complete your vision.
You can find freelancers like this on Upwork, where all you have to do is create a job listing and analyze the bids that come in. If you’re on a budget, you can turn to Fiverr for a more cost-effective graphics gig.
Step 3: Make Your Content Worthy of Their Attention
Once you’ve got the pleasing visuals figured out, it’s time to find a mission. People need a reason to do more than just glance at your pretty logo. Your brand should offer a quick solution to someone’s problem, in order to draw them into your list.
For example, if you offer a course like a fitness program you’ve designed, you could gift them a downloadable printout displaying the steps to one 30 minute workout. This draws the consumer in with a way to try out what you offer so that they can decide whether or not the full product is worth it.
Once you’ve put out a worthwhile hook, you can catch the attention of a wide range of subscribers and give them the opportunity to try out your expertise. Your lead magnet needs to address a pain point or help them achieve a goal and the more valuable you make it, the more irresistible it will be.
Step 4: Create a Blog that Search Bots Appreciate
Whenever you have a niche blog that you’re frequently publishing new content to, search engines will send a bot to crawl and index the content. Then, when a user goes to their search engine and types in a query, hopefully the search bots will feel your content was worthy of a top result and deliver it to the user.
Your niche blog can have an opt in form in the sidebar, as pop-ups or below each blog post so that when the visitor lands on, consumes and appreciates your content, they can sign up to hear more of what you have to say.
Consistent posting will help you with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Once you’ve managed to get your blog at a higher ranking in search engine results, you will be able to witness a much heavier flow of traffic to your sites and a swelling in the size of your list.
Step 5: Utilize Successful Keywords for Your Niche
One of the best ways to succeed in search results and build your list is to research the keywords that people are using in your targeted niche. It’s important to understand how your target audience searches, so that you can decide what content to push out.
You can find paid or free tools that will create lists of popular keywords for you that fit in with your brand’s niche. Once you’ve compiled a list of the best keywords to use (a list you should try to update frequently), you can begin to place those keywords throughout your content and titles.
These can be used in posts in sentences, tags, and headings. These keywords will help drive your target audience to your content, since search engines will be able to use the keywords to understand what kind of content you create.
Step 6: Make Sure Potential Subscribers Can Contact You
Once people start to discover your website, you need to make sure that they will have no difficulty contacting you for any purpose. Some readers may have questions about your business, some may want to order your services, and some may want to collaborate.
For prospective subscribers who are wary about handing over their contact details, being able to reach out directly and test the waters with what kind of response they’ll get from you is important.
If you are unsure of whether or not everything is properly working on your contact page, consider sending yourself a message through it. You can test out the system to make sure everything is connected and valid.
Use a free plugin on your WordPress blog to easily create a contact form so that if anyone is hesitant to sign up for your list, they can see how responsive and ethical you are by reaching out to you.
Step 7: Try Generating Leads Every Day With Networking
You may not see results the day after you put forth extra effort to generate leads. That is why it is essential to keep at it and try to generate leads every single day that you are working.
One of the simplest ways to generate leads daily is to network. Talking to one different person each day could provide amazing opportunities. You never know what someone may have to offer you and your business – even if it’s as simple as a public shoutout that lets their followers become aware of you.
When you increase your connections, you are also gaining the possibility of adding their connections as well. It doesn’t hurt to talk to as many people as you can. This could produce new opportunities, and broaden your perspectives on business as well.
One of the best ways to learn about new tactics and trends is to socialize with the people creating them. When you engage with other entrepreneurs, you are supporting their business, which may lead to their support in return.
Step 8: See What Thrives with Your Audience
When you create multiple versions of your content and put them both out there to see what works the best, you are split testing. As you are getting started, many of your ideas won’t perform well at first, but that shouldn’t keep you from carrying on with your split testing.
Instead of giving up, you can make minor changes to your ideas in order to determine what is causing things to perform poorly. It’s good to switch out different elements so that you can understand which business practices are the most successful with your target audience.
These things could be as simple as colors, fonts, and length of text used on your website or changing up entire lead magnet reports to have a new slant or focus. You can tweak things with different ideas until you find the right fit.
Split testing early on in your startup process will save you a lot of time. You can find out what ideas work best, so that you aren’t stuck wondering what you need to fix to gain a higher conversion rate.
One small change can be enough to completely transform your results, so try to keep each test simple. This will help you identify the culprit without you accidentally changing the wrong thing, and ending up with even worse results.
Step 9: Create Content on YouTube
YouTube enables viewers to see a video of the topic they want to search for, so it is often a top choice when it comes to search engines and can help you build a list. Videos can be much more helpful for visual learners rather than just reading about a topic.
You can use YouTube to post helpful content relating to your business that will help you gain a viewer’s trust. If you are able to help them out, they may consider allowing you to email them by signing up to your list.
For example, if you have a site about the real estate niche, you could create a video series pointing out problem areas to look out for in homes as a new buyer. Then give them a call to action to get on your list for more tips and to download your free gift.
You can use your YouTube videos for other social media as well and each one can serve as a content piece with a call to action to get leads signed up to your list. You can take the audio from your video and create a podcast.
The longer the video, the better it will do as a podcast. You can use the whole video and include it on your blog. You can even take the YouTube transcript and rewrite it as its own blog post. When posting YouTube videos, it’s important to make sure that you use the correct keywords in your title and description.
Although clickbait is common among videos, try to stray from potentially misleading anyone with your title. Your content will do better in the end when you can make exciting titles that only truly reflect what you are posting.
YouTube allows you to include links to your own lead magnet page and social media pages in each video. There are no strict rules when it comes to this, so you can include as many different links as you would like, but by driving all traffic to your opt in page, you’ll increase the odds of gaining a new subscriber.
Step 10: See If Paid Advertising Pays Off for You
If you have the money and insight to go straight for paid advertising from the start to build your list, you should go for it – carefully. This is a great way to generate highly targeted leads in a short amount of time.
Paid advertising can be done through many different platforms. You can use paid advertising for posts on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Google also provides paid ad campaigns, so that you can rank higher in search engine results pages.
As mentioned earlier, testing things out before going all in is always a helpful process. Start out small with your paid advertisements so that you can test out what message and posts work the best.
The goal is to get the most out of your money. If you aren’t in the right place to spend money on advertisements, you can take some time to save up. There are plenty of other lead generation methods to keep you busy while you save a nice sum of money to spend on generating more leads later on.
Step 11: Plan a Live Event to Demonstrate Your Expertise
Some people will have questions about who you are and what kind of business you run. There are always questions about products and courses you may be selling, and how effective they are.
You can host a live stream webinar, allowing viewers to get their questions answered. You can talk about various topics that will help your people for free and then deliver a call to action for them to download your free gift at the end.
Allow your personality to shine through in live streams like this, so that it doesn’t seem like you are just pushing sales as aggressively as possible. When you lack a personable and genuine approach, you won’t convince people that signing up to your list is a good idea.
With live streams, you are able to directly communicate with your audience. Instead of just pushing out content that no one asked for, you will be directly answering viewers’ questions and allow them to get more comfortable with you.
Have a survey included for those who attended your webinar (but who may not have signed up yet) and use those demographics to create profiles of the types of people you can target to generate more leads and determine your identify target audience.
Step 12: Utilize Facebook Pages to Generate Leads
When you create a Facebook page, as opposed to just using your personal profile, your business will look more professional and official. Creating a social media profile specifically for your business gives your brand the chance to look less like a hobby.
Since it’s important to hold a social media presence on every site where your demographic is at, Facebook is a great place to start. There is a giant audience available on this platform.
You can use your page to join groups that fit with your niche so that you can post about your content and products. When you take the time to interact with other Facebook pages and groups that relate to yours, you are increasing the chances that others will follow you and click on the link to your lead magnet page.
Make sure you avoid spamming groups or events with products and links. You may get your posts removed, or even end up kicked out of the Facebook group you are posting in.
Facebook may even block you from interacting with anyone at all for a short period of time if they believe you are spamming or being insincere. You can even create your own Facebook group, so that you control who enters and what the purpose of the group is.
As long as there are solid rules and the group is easy to join, you will start to see a small community forming and you can pin the link to your own lead magnet page so that new members are sure to see it.
Step 13: Use Pinterest to Drive Traffic
Pinterest, like Facebook, has almost every topic you could think of available somewhere in their content. You can pin almost anything to Pinterest, making it more accessible than some social media platforms and this can help you drive traffic to your lead magnet page.
Pinterest has focused on aesthetics and design above all else. Many people use Pinterest to get inspired and find helpful information for their own personal projects, pinning things they’re interested in to their personal or public boards where others can also save and share them.
In order to create visually pleasing pins or boards for Pinterest, you can use online tools like Canva to spice up your content. You want to create media that catches a viewer’s eye and draws them to your opt in page.
You will also want to include other people’s pins on your boards so that you can drive an audience that has already pinned that post for themselves. Many marketers share and cross promote one another’s content to help everyone enjoy the organic traffic from this site.
Step 14: Try to Go Viral on TikTok
Short form videos have only been gaining popularity as time goes on. People don’t always have time to listen to a 10-60 minute YouTube video, so watching a clip that only takes up a minute or two of their time is much more useful and you can create videos that pique their interest enough to follow the link in your bio to your opt in page.
Although you can’t promote your free offer with direct links on any particular posts, you can still discuss your gift and point viewers to your profile, where you are allowed to include a link.
You will have to switch your profile to a business profile first before you are allowed to edit in a link. Since you can only use one link, you may want to consider using an online tool like LinkTree, which allows you to combine all of your essential links into one.
So if you want to promote your lead magnet page and other pages like your YouTube channel, Facebook page or group, your blog, or other social media accounts, all you have to do is set them all up on LinkTree.
Although you may only want a TikTok to post content, you should still spend some time cultivating a For You page that fits in with your business niche. This will help you see what trends are going on within your community so you can post content that succeeds.
You may even get some ideas of what type of content to post when you see what other brands and influencers are creating – and you can engage with them to get more followers of your own by commenting, stitching or duetting their content.
Try to keep your posting consistent so that your content does well in TikTok’s algorithm. The best way to bring in a loyal following is to post at least 2-3 times per day, and create a series that include several parts.
Step 15: Offer a Low Content Freebie on Your Site
If you’ve noticed that people are viewing your website, but aren’t always taking the next step and making a purchase or even signing up to your list, you may need to create some extra incentive with a sneak peek of the value you offer.
Offering low content as an example of your work is a great way to show that you appreciate potential customers and want them to trust that your work is satisfactory. For example, if you are in the baking niche, you could offer a free downloadable file of a beginner recipe that you’ve created or a meal planner page they can download as a freebie and use that very week.
Once consumers realize that they can trust and appreciate your work, they are more likely to take that dive into signing up to your list. This is also an easy way to convince someone to buy your products without creating a large amount of social media content.
Step 16: Take Your Links to Instagram
Instagram is helpful for those with an artistic eye. If you can come up with exciting visual displays for your business, you will be able to attract an audience and ultimately get them on your list.
It will take time to build a large following, and the correct use of hashtags – but it’s a thriving platform for many niches. Once you’ve gained a following, you can start to post Instagram stories and include links to your lead magnet page.
All you have to do is create a sticker when editing your story, and paste your link. You can also direct viewers to your bio, which can hold one link at a time. You can also use paid advertisements to send more users straight to your opt in offer.
Step 17: Consider a Partnership
If you can find someone that you trust to partner with, you may want to work together to generate leads. You can look for brands or businesses that fit in your niche who desire the same audience.
They might have an audience that is completely separate from yours, even if both audiences have the same interests. So when you work together, you can combine audiences and potentially double your reach.
You may even exchange ideas and strategies and brainstorm together to determine what methods will work best for your businesses. Bouncing your ideas off of another like-minded person is a great way to get another perspective on things from someone who understands what your goals are.
When you are looking for someone to work with, try to find someone who has more success than you do. They could even become more of a mentor and less of a partner, if they are willing to help you out.
Once you are ready to reach out, make sure you’ve prepared a solid line of reasoning for why you two should work together to cross promote each other’s free, list-building content.
Don’t forget to include what you can bring to the table and how the connection would be mutually beneficial. For example, if you don’t have a big list to email for them, you might be able to tout your strong social media presence instead.
Step 18: Run a Short Free Trial Option
The opportunity to get something for free is often enough of an offer to get many consumers to give you their name and email address. Once you have that lead, you can send them emails or invite them to other sales and trials later on.
Some people won’t be willing to pay the full amount for something until they know that it is worth their money. When you give them a chance to try your product or service out, they can take the time to use it and decide whether or not it is worth your price.
Step 19: Become an Independent Author
Writing an eBook that covers information on your niche topic is a great way to show people that you know what you are talking about. If you can fill a whole book with useful information and tips, you will probably be more trusted by anyone who reads your book.
As long as you’ve put in the time and research, you will be able to provide a solid book that will lead readers straight to your sign up page. You can publish your work on Amazon as an eBook, so that people can just download the book on their Kindle in order to read it.
This is a low cost way to push information out into the book universe. And if enough people like your work, you can continue writing books and branch out to other topics that may be of interest.
Step 20: Experiment With Exclusivity
Everyone wants to be a part of something special. When you are able to create a community with your social media that appears to be more of a fun group, it will attract more people.
You can begin to offer exclusive content to those who are loyal subscribers. When other people see the offer of gated content on your site, they will be interested in becoming a part of your list.
Having to sign up to get a specific password to access something others can’t access makes people feel included, which is something many people are drawn to. The fear of missing out on something that could benefit them is a strong pull for many individuals.
Step 21: Collect High Ratings and Reviews
What other people have to say about you and your business matters more than almost anything else when you’re trying to build a list because it can haunt you if it’s negative and be a boon to your business if it’s positive – and people often Google to see what you’re all about before handing over their information.
People trust other people, especially when they are both consumers. It’s hard to trust people, especially when they don’t have reliable referrals or a popular brand name backing them.
When consumers can see an array of positive testimonials, they will know that this is a marketer they can count on. Every review and rating you get should be sincere and real. You want to earn those positive reviews so that you aren’t leading anyone on with false assurances.
Step 22: Work With an Influencer to Build Your List
If you are struggling to gain traction with your list using social media pages, you may want to turn to an influencer. Social media influencers commonly work with brands to promote their products and services in their posts.
Since they have such large and loyal followings, they can then direct a flow of traffic straight to your opt in page. Some influencers will charge more than others, so it all depends on who you work with and how many followers they have.
Try to work with someone who posts content related to the niche your business is in, so you can be sure that the audience would actually be interested in what you have to offer on your lead magnet page.
Step 23: Create Content That Is Easy to Share
When you get so focused on creating interesting content and making sure you share that content everywhere, it’s easy to forget about some of the mechanics that go with that content – and this can cause you to miss out on many subscribers.
You need to make sure that all of the content you post is shareable, so that the message can be spread by people other than yourself. Blogs require special plugins to be installed called social media share buttons.
You can choose which social networks they can share it on, and even allow people to share your content via email with people they know so that the recipient or follower can click on the link, visit your blog post and ultimately, opt in to your list.
Once you’ve double-checked everything to make sure it is easily shareable, you can then focus on making sure you offer a reminder to others to share your content. Make sure the call to action as a way to include encouragement on every post to get your readers to like and share everything that you put out.
Step 24: Plan a Giveaway or Special Sale to Attract Subscribers
Sometimes, people just need an extra incentive to make a sign up. And receiving even more free items is a great way to attract a larger crowd. It’s only human to love the idea of free products or services.
When you host a giveaway event, you can invite your competitors to participate and help each of you grow your lists. Not only will participants have their free offer and link showcased on the giveaway even page, but every person who joins can share your giveaway post to their stories or social feeds.
With a special sale, whenever you create a product offer, you can offer an additional discount code that you only get once you sign up for the list. You can just select a certain percentage discount they get whenever they buy other products at your store.
In order to have a successful giveaway, you need to tease the idea early on (and often), so that prospective subscribers can get excited and anticipate the giveaway event, so be sure to give them a sneak peek at who all will be participating and what types of freebies they can expect.
Step 25: Use a Live Chat Option On Your Site
Since communication is so important for a successful business, your response time matters. Some companies go to different businesses and message them to test response time, and then post that time for everyone to see.
And many potential subscribers with a simple question will not want to wait for a long period of time to get an answer. You can set up a live chat option or chat bot with answers to frequently asked questions already prepared.
That way, people feel like there is a personal touch to getting answers, and they don’t have to go searching for them. This is helpful for entrepreneurs who work independently.
You may not always have time to answer a stream of questions from multiple customers. You will still want to monitor the messages and try to connect with the people chatting so that you can ensure they get every answer that they are looking for.
Step 26: Create a Signup Popup for Your Site
When people are browsing the Internet, they often read the information they need, and then exit. Even if you have opt in forms on the side of your blog for signups, they are not likely to even notice them.
Most of those viewers will only access your website one time, and then leave. A popup grabs the reader’s attention, blocking them from reading the rest of your post until they either fill out their information or click the cancel button.
You will only want to do this once to a reader, so you need to make sure it counts. Try testing out different types of popups. You can offer a discount code to those who submit their email or you can just ask them to subscribe. Try different timing too, and test what brings you the most success.
Step 27: Generate New Leads as a Podcaster
In order to build the longest list of leads possible, you need to have access to every media form possible. Some people prefer to read books, while others enjoy videos. And some consumers just listen to audio.
You can create a free podcast and talk about different topics related to your brand’s niche. You can discuss your experiences, and give out advice about the things you’ve learned and the challenges you’ve overcome.
This allows your target audience the chance to see the personal side of your business. But make sure that during the episode, you deliver a strong call to action to get them to land on your lead magnet page and sign up.
Step 28: Recruit Affiliate Marketers to Build Your List
If you can create a product of your own to launch, then working with affiliates and allowing them to send traffic and earn a commission will inadvertently help to generate leads and increase exposure.
Your products or services need to be of high quality if you are going to ask an affiliate to work with you. Their whole reputation is based on the quality of the products that they recommend.
Within the platform you’re using, you can usually connect it to your email autoresponder so that, instead of a free lead magnet building your list, the sale of your products are building it – and the buyer is sent out a confirmation email along with the link to download their new purchase.
Step 29: Write a Monthly Newsletter
Newsletters are a great way to keep people updated on their niche news. Traditionally, a newsletter has a variety of content – from trends and new information to opinion pieces, recommendations and more.
This will encourage people to subscribe, so that they can look forward to their weekly or monthly newsletter. Some marketers even send one out daily – you have to know what the needs of your audience are so that you can meet them.
Step 30: Always Push to Widen the Scope of Your Target Audience
As you employ each of these steps, you may fall into the habit of targeting the same people over and over again. In order to achieve growth with your subscriber list, you should be consistently widening the scope you use to create your target audience.
Once you’ve reached a comfortable amount of people, expand your target demographics and include a larger group of people. There could be certain demographics that you have not yet considered that may be more interested in your niche or business than you would have originally predicted.
You can find these individuals by thinking about the various problems people have, the goals they have set for themselves, and more. For example, you may have only targeted men when you first started writing about making money online – but then you discover you have many female followers, and you can tailor some content to them, too.
Or, you can approach it in a way that targets people according to their age, income level, experience, and more. Building a list is an ongoing endeavor that can help you earn more as your subscriber numbers grow.
Whenever a new tool, platform or strategy emerges, you need to jump at the chance to add it to your collection of ways you can gain exposure for your brand and get more people interested in listening to what you have to say.
Always remember some key factors when you take steps to build your list. First and foremost, quality matters. Slapping up a dozen lead magnets that don’t have true value for your readers is a worthless attempt at recruiting new subscribers.
Secondly, you need to be engaged with your people and brave enough to consistently release content that showcases your worth to the niche audience. When you do this, it will help smooth the way for people to hand over their content information so that they can hear from you for months and years to come.