
Every business owner wants to make sales. But before you get a new customer, you need to generate leads. These are people who have expressed interest in your brand and want to learn lead generation for service businesses more about what you do and how you can address their needs. Once they’re in your sales funnel, you can nurture the relationship, educate them on your offerings and ask them for the sale when they’re ready to make an informed decision.
Generating leads is a crucial part of building a service-based business. But unfortunately, it’s not always easy. Sixty-one percent of marketers say lead generation is their number one challenge. This is especially true for new business owners and entrepreneurs who are still establishing their online presence.
The key to successfully inviting someone into your sales funnel is to offer them something of value. If you can solve one of their problems free of charge, you’ll immediately earn their trust, and they’ll be much more willing to hand over their contact information.
Provide solutions with free consultations.
If you’ve optimized your website and content correctly, prospects will have a good understanding of who you are and what you can offer. But nothing has quite the same impact as a face-to-face conversation. This is why free consultations are still an integral lead generation strategy for service-based businesses, whether you’re targeting B2B or B2C customers.
The key to a successful consultation is to provide more than just a list of your services and rates. Give them a solution that they can act on immediately. Not only does this showcase your value, but it also establishes trust. By solving a small problem now, you’ll increase the chances of being hired for a bigger problem later.
There’s something to be said for the one-on-one nature of a consultation. However, as your business begins to generate more leads, it might not be realistic to sit down with every interested party. That’s why more and more entrepreneurs are embracing virtual events.
Unlike physical events, which require larger budgets and more resources than most small business owners have access to, virtual events are accessible to everyone. An internet connection and a video conferencing tool like Zoom or Google Meet is all you need to connect with your audience and deliver a memorable experience.
Worry less about production value and more about your content. Even a simple training session with some basic slides can be extremely powerful if the information provided solves a critical problem.