Generating business leads in increasingly competitive markets may seem daunting, because old techniques may no longer be working, and the landscape of digital marketing may seem so vast and unconquerable.

If your business is suffering from expensive lead generation or if you are suffering from the worst fate of all of having no quality leads for months, you need to start doing something now to connect with businesses that may need your products or services. B2B lead generation is every business’ business, no matter how well that rhymes.

And at RankLeads, we believe that supersizing business leads is completely healthy.

Now is the time that you climbed out of the pit of despair and started swinging that pickaxe at your business’ dedicated goldmine on the Internet. Here is a select treasury of tips and tricks to augment your chances of generating quality leads on the Web.

1. Engage People on Social Media

Twitter and Facebook have been around for years and yet not every business is on it yet.

Both platforms have become the primary networks of people around the globe and people actually use these platforms to learn more about goods and services.

So our question right now to you is: are you on these platforms and are you reaching out to your customers?

If your answer to these questions is no, you really need to get started. Your social media presence is probably the most dynamic aspect of your online branding efforts, one that people could see, feel, and relate to on a daily basis if you exert enough effort. In addition to product/service recall, social media can also be a way for you to spread word about your business by providing content that people can share or distribute.

2. Create Hypnotic Images Of Your Business

It is a fact of life on the Internet that people are ruled by the visual, and as a business owner, you have to maximize the benefits of using images to portray your business.

Split-testing of images is also a must.

For example, repeatedly, it has been shown that people are more responsive to images of businesses where they can clearly see the facilities or the spaces that await them when they visit.

In a business-to-business context, the same principles still apply. Other businesses that might be interested in what you have to offer have a need to see what spaces you have (if any) as this information can definitely help them make a decision.

 Renderings should be accomplished professionally, and then split-testing (A/B testing) should still be carried out to check which renderings produce the best results.

Testing is the lifeblood of digital marketing and while it takes many working hours to accomplish, the ROI equivalent of excellent A/B testing is always in the green.

3. Create a Working Sales Funnel

A sales funnel is actually an active strategy that helps develop warmer leads as you go down the ‘funnel.’ On top of the funnel would be content that would first get people interested in what you have to say.

Take note: on what you have to say. The top of the funnel doesn’t immediately sell anything (not really) but rather, introduces an idea first to the audience.

The top of the sales funnel should include a CTA or call to action. In the case of a Web design company, let’s say that the top of the funnel would be a presentation video containing tips on how to make your website more attractive.

At the end of that presentation, there might be an offer to sign up for another video (necessitating signing up for the content) and this leads the people further down the funnel.

On the second video, you can make a simple offer for a consultation (like a one hour consultation for the first 10 people who avail it). Parallel campaigns can run and follow the same track of the funnel, with warmer and warmer leads occupying the lower spaces of the funnel. When people reach the bottom of the funnel, they are effectively hooked and the chances of converting people at a lower cost are high.

Why? Because people want to be there. They want to be there because the service or product interests them. In addition, the process that allowed them to reach the bottom of the funnel will remain in place, and the process is renewed for every new visit 24 hours a day, and seven days a week.

The final part of the working sales funnel is reintroducing the concept and going strong with the actual promotion.

In more traditional marketing, the CTA to buy something is usually placed on top.

The game has changed radically with the Internet, where people expect to get information for free, and they will only buy if they really think they want or need something.

The sales funnel is the best way to promote strongly to people who really want to buy something in the first place. The purpose of a working sales funnel is to conserve your efforts and to bring in higher ROI without having to boost ads repeatedly, whatever your advertising methods may be now.

4. Take a Proactive Approach to Make Offers 

The specific reasons why people are convinced to buy are so varied that it is hard to pinpoint each one.

So what should businesses do? They need to take a multi-variable approach to the problem and test, test, test. One approach that has worked wonders through the years is giving away free stuff.

Yes, we just said that you should give away stuff. But it does not have to be physical stuff at all.  One way that you can offer unique value to a visitor as he exits a website is the free giveaway popup?

The free giveaway popup, coursed through an exit popup, can recuperate a potentially lost sale and trigger one of the strongest drives that is absolute gold when you are marketing to an individual or business: reciprocity.

 Reciprocity is all about doing something nice to the person who did something nice to you.

We see this all the time in day-to-day situations and even though the concept is so old, it still works pretty well in digital marketing. What kinds of stuff can you give away?

If you are engaged in SEO or Web design, reports, informational manuals, tip sheets, or even entire books developed by your company can serve as great giveaways.

Of course, people have to give their email in order to get the link to download the free PDF, video, or whatever content there is to give away.

Just make sure that what you are giving away as an incentive to maintain the line of communication is unique, highly useful, and contains insights that people will actually be able to use to solve their problems.

5. Make Your Content Shine 

In order to have great content, you need to have goals, and you need a strategy to go along with those goals. Here are some essential principles that top companies use to create shining content all year long:

 – The content has to be thought-provoking. It has to appeal to the needs and desires of the target reader. How you are supposed to know these things would be up to you, but research and actually talking to people in your market just might help. Hit those forums on the Web and start finding out what people are talking about.

– The content has to be illuminating. It has to situate your reader into the present or future, with real problems, and the content has to show the way out of the perceived obstacles or darkness.

Think of good stories that you have read before: there is a conflict, there is a solution, the epic struggle, and then the conclusion (or solution). Apply these elements to your content and you have a universal template for content success and organic traffic.

– Long-tail keywords are a boon to businesses. Stuffing your content for high volume keywords might “make sense” in the beginning, but viable long tail keywords can actually be better, because they have low competition and if they are combined all together, they can still produce lots of traffic, resulting in more leads for you – organically.

 – Explore the different kinds of content that you can offer people. A photography blog would fare well with lots of HD photos, but what about a website that features Web designs or SEO services? What kind of content would be more convincing to potential leads? Don’t just revert to the default, think outside the box.

– And finally, we have the pages themselves. When you put content on a specific page, that page has to have a specific action tied to it. People should be able to do something after they read the content.

It can be for signing up for an offer, calling you, or something similar. Avoid static pages that do not relentlessly represent your business’ best aspects. Create content and pages with purpose, always.