8 Ways to Attract Leads That Will Grow Your WordPress Business

Keeping a steady stream of new prospects in your pipeline is one of the most important things you can do to grow your business. New clients are like gas to a car – they keep it running. Go too long without filling up on new clients and you might find yourself out of business.

Most WordPress business owners face two specific challenges when it comes to generating new leads:

1. Finding the right leads is important. Poorly qualified leads do little for you or your business other than take up valuable time.
2. Generating enough leads to not just sustain but actually grow your business.

In this post, we’re going to discuss both the importance of attracting new prospects and leads, as well as a few of the tactics you can use to get the job done. Lead generation certainly isn’t easy, but it is necessary.

Many Prospects, a Few Great Leads

We talked recently about creating a sales funnel, which is the first step in this process. We also covered the important role that targeted content plays within your sales funnel. But now we need to figure out how to start dropping prospects into that sales funnel so that it can do what it’s designed to do. Generate consistent high-quality leads.

But what is the difference between a prospect and a lead? Simply put, prospects drop into the top of your sales funnel and high quality leads come out the bottom. A prospect is someone who fits the general criteria that you are looking for while a lead is someone who meets more stringent criteria.

It’s no secret that that not every new lead turns into a great client. That’s why finding as many prospects as possible is crucial to generating a steady supply of both leads and clients. Another bonus of having many leads is that you can become more selective in who you decide to work with.

It sounds simple, but it takes time, effort, and consistency. Leave out any one of those three ingredients and your results will be lackluster at best.

8 Ways You Can Get Started Attracting New Leads

For the remainder of this post, we’re going to cover some specific tactics and concepts you can use to attract more leads. In order to grow your WordPress business, these are some of the steps you can take to get started. Don’t make the mistake of taking a shotgun approach. Not every one of these things will work for every WordPress business.

As you’re sorting through the options below, one of the first things you should think about is where your potential clients are are spending their time. Don’t waste your time where your clients can’t be found. Facebook is an excellent advertising channel for many businesses. But if your WordPress business targets lawyers and law firms, there is a good chance it’s not the right place for you to be spending your time or advertising dollars. It’s vital to pick an appropriate strategy.

1. Promote Your Content

Action speaks louder than words. Producing great content is an important part of growing your business. Your words have the potential to sell prospects on the value of your WordPress services and eventually convert them into clients. But did you know that promoting your content is more important than producing it? There’s no shortage of great content on the web and a staggering amount of new content is written every single day.

Getting it in front of the right eyeballs is the only way you’ll be able to grab the attention of new prospects. Even the best content in the industry will serve no purpose unless it’s seen and acted upon.

When it comes to deciding how to promote your content – blog posts, infographics, videos, podcasts – whatever it is, promote it via the correct channels and make sure you’re audience sees it.

2. Use Pop-Ups on Your Website

Love them or hate them, pop-ups do work

Love them or hate them, the evidence supports the fact that pop-ups work. The dilemma many WordPress professionals face is that, on one hand, they know pop-ups work. One the other hand, they hate them and are convinced that everyone else does too. Here is where you’ll need to make a decision. You can choose to be right,  making a decision based upon how you feel, or you can choose to make a decision based upon factual information. One will keep you stuck, the other will grow your business.

Check out this great post over on Crazy Egg about the effectiveness of pop-ups or you can even head straight over to AWeber and read the Nikki, In Stitches case study. If you’re looking for a way to integrate forms on your website, don’t forget to check out the Bloom Plugin right here on Elegant Themes.

3. Utilize Twitter

You will have to pay if you want to get results from Twitter

Twitter is a platform capable of producing impressive results when it’s used to it’s full capabilities. Twitter offers many more options than just promoting your content via an occasional tweet. If that’s all you’re using it for, it might be time to expand your horizons.

Consider Twitter Cards and Twitter Ads as well. Companies like HubSpot have used Twitter with great success by targeting the right prospects. If you’ve produced a specific piece of content that you feel is capable of attracting new leads, consider promoting your tweet. Twitter has fast become a pay-to-play platform. The sooner you realize that achieving optimal results will require some ad spend, the quicker you see improved result.

Twitter is also a great platform to interact directly with prospects. Be helpful, have meaningful conversations and don’t get in the habit of doing too much self-promotion. A great place to get started is by using a service like Hootsuite to monitor for relevant conversations.

4. Facebook Ads & Groups

If your clients hang out on Facebook, so should you

If Facebook is a relevant platform for your business, it’s definitely somewhere that you want to be spending time promoting your content and services. Done right, Facebook ads are both inexpensive and effective. It’s important to experiment with driving traffic to a specific post on your website as well as your Facebook business page. Don’t just drive traffic back to your homepage. Your objective should be to eventually drive clients back to your website so you can capture their contact details.

Also, consider setting up your Facebook conversion tracking pixel. Not every website visitor will enter your sales funnel when you want them to. By using re-targeting, you’ll get a second or third chance at grabbing their attention.

Facebook groups are a great place to attract new leads. However, this is one area where it’s especially important to avoid coming across as salesy. Be helpful where you can and consider not even mentioning your business. You’ll be surprised how many people click on your profile to learn more information about you or your business. Even if you keep your personal profile private, you can still create posts that are public and capable of directing people back to your website.

5. Get Linkedin

Linkedin is a the number one platform on which to grow your professional network. If your WordPress business targets a specific profession, chances are there is a Linkedin group available.

Also on Linkedin, make sure you connect with existing clients and anyone who you regularly do business with. Share not only your content but the content of people who are in your target market. Become someone who is known for connecting and promoting other people, not just your business.

6. Public Speaking

Don’t forget face to face promotion

Joining a local Toastmasters group or speaking a local events relevant to your target market can be a great way to attract new leads. In a digital era, too many people have developed an aversion to activities that require direct personal contact.

Speaking to a local trade association or group of business owners about how to get the most out of their WordPress website can produce very high-quality leads. Live events give people an opportunity to get to know you in a way that simply isn’t possible through online mediums.

When is the last time you landed a new website or design client who didn’t want to speak to you first? Live events give you a chance shorten the length of your sales funnel. The process of earning trust takes less time in person than it does online.

7. Networking

Networking groups, either in-person or virtual are a great way to build business relationships and connections with other leaders in your community. Most local networking groups offer each member an opportunity to stand-up and talk about their business.

And that’s exactly what people do. Without fail, 90% of the people at a networking meeting will stand up and spend their 5-7 minutes talking about themselves and their business. Don’t be the 90%. Instead, spend your time talking about how you helped a particular client. Alternatively, put together a series of case studies and spend your time talking about the different ways you can solve their problems. Solving problems will attract more leads than self-promotion.

There are many small business owners who struggle with managing their WordPress websites and digital marketing in general – they’re too busy running their businesses. In a networking scenario, this represents a great opportunity to show other business owners how they can utilize the power of WordPress to make running their businesses easier.

Local societies or associations are another great place to find prospects and leads. For example, it’s common for many cities to have medical-legal societies. Membership is often open to anyone who works in or with the medical or legal fields. Joining a group like this can be a great way to network within a very specific niche. When we talk about being where your potential clients are, this is exactly the kind of thing I’m referring to.

8. Join a Mastermind

Joining a local or virtual mastermind group can be a great way to grow your WordPress clientele. There’s a good chance that as a niche WordPress business, you’ll gain access to a few new clients that you wouldn’t have otherwise had access to.

Masterminds are also a great opportunity to build partnerships. If you’re a freelance WordPress designer, partnering with someone who specializes in development, SEO or content marketing can be a great way to share work back and forth. When an out-of-scope project comes their way, you could find the lead being handed over to you.

Wrap-Up

We’ve covered 8 potential ways that you can start attracting more prospects and leads to your WordPress business. We’re going to stop at 8 because as tempting as it may be to keep going, it’s more important to take action.

There is a good chance that there are at least 2-3 things on this list that you’re not doing. Since action is the most important step you can take towards generating more leads, pick at least one thing on this list and get started implementing it today.

Generating high-quality leads is an important step towards growing your business. The more prospects you drop into your sales funnel, they more leads you’ll produce and the more clients you’ll land. There are two important things to remember:

1. To attract good leads, you need to be looking in the right place.
2. The more active you are in the process, the more success you’ll have. If there is one “secret” to producing more leads, it’s being more active.

If you have a favorite method that you use to attract new leads, please share in the comments below.

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