No matter where on the highway of success you currently are, there is always room for improvement. Passivity is the enemy of success. One needs to move forward, especially in business, to keep giving something of value to the community. It’s not enough to sell just one item to a single client; you need a steady line of return customers that want your brand.
For this reason and more, this article will deal with online tools and websites that help increase the number of prospects in your CRM. We will talk about strategies that help increase your marketing strategies and bring new (and old) clients to your business.
Use LinkedIn to expand your mailing list
LinkedIn is the premier website for business-oriented users. It works similarly to other social networks such as Facebook, meaning that this is a platform designed for connecting people. LinkedIn has a user base of several million, making it one of the most common business tools that can be used for free. It’s the perfect place to start finding new prospects.
While not your typical place for conducting B2C business, LinkedIn caters to the B2B (business-to-business) niche. There is an untapped goldmine of prospects out there just looking for someone with the right idea to come along.
Every user on LinkedIn has one thing in common: they want to be successful. As such, over 90% of users have publicly available contact information. Why? Because building a successful business relationship with others and expanding your email marketing campaign can bring more prospects. If you believe in your brand and your product, sharing it with others will create an avalanche effect. All it takes is for one person to talk about your product for the buzz to be created.
To interact with other users, you need to ‘connect’ with them. LinkedIn allows you to create a network of users with similar business and professional objectives. Inside every user profile is a Contact Info section which often includes an email and a phone number. You can use this info to expand your email marketing list. Luckily, you don’t have to do so manually. There are many email finders online that can pull contact data from LinkedIn, for example, https://www.signalhire.com/.
Use entertaining social media sites to find prospects
Besides LinkedIn, you have Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. Even if you don’t use any of these platforms (which is unlikely), it’s creating a business page on any of these platforms — especially in the B2C segment. Having a Facebook account with your business’s name, logo, purpose, and contact information can promote your company message and boost brand credibility.
A properly maintained Facebook page will leave a lasting impression on anybody who visits it. You might have noticed that many celebrities have their own fan pages on Facebook. This isn’t a coincidence. Unlike personal social accounts, business accounts allow you to interact with customers in an entirely different way. Using a Facebook business account, you can:
- Update your clients on upcoming changes to your business;
- Announce raffles or discounts on products;
- Generate publicity by sharing insights;
- Engage with your audience by answering questions;
- Post polls;
- Participate in studies;
- Start ad campaigns and more.
Honestly, the sky is the limit when it comes to customer engagement. The more transparent your business looks, the more trust it will generate. Trust in a brand leads to the excitement that spreads from long-term customers to new prospects. Still, do not forget that the term on your mind should be ‘customer retention.’ It’s not enough to attract a single person to your business; instead, you should aim to build a lasting chain of new and returning prospects.
Some social media platforms offer marketing ad plans where you pay a fee, and the website will feature your page to other users. The price can be as low as $5 to $10 per campaign. The bonus of advertising with sites such as Facebook and Twitter is that you can reach out to an unlimited amount of users. Whether you are selling or increasing brand awareness (to sell more in the future), it’s a good idea to look into.
Use Pay-per-Click advertising
Launching a full force advertising campaign costs tens of thousands of dollars. Even if you successfully land a few hundred new prospects, the amount you will earn will likely not cover the expenses. It’s always better to start small in advertising, even if the results will be humbler. Depending on the type of ad that you want to display, costs can rank up exponentially. For this reason, it’s better to aim for a smaller (cheaper) and tighter plan to get the word out. Pay-per-click advertising plans allow you to get your message across without upfronting thousands of dollars in advance. Similar to how Facebook advertises, other companies allow smaller businesses to reach a demographic for a fraction of the fee that an entire marketing team would cost.
Google Contextual Ads is one of the most popular PPC solutions out there. It’s used by large and small companies as an alternative marketing method. You might have wondered what those ads in front of YouTube videos are – they are most likely advertisements enabled by the content creator using Google Adwords. The basics of PPC is that, whenever a search is done and your online prospect ad appears, there is a chance that the client will click on that ad. You will then be charged a token fee depending on your plan. This fee could range from 0.01 cents to $1. The more people who see and click on the ad, the more you will have to pay. As they say, you can’t make money without spending money.
Google Ads is a relatively simple way to have a powerful presence online where your ads are shown to a select section of customers. The plan can help you set an uprising curve to increase brand recognition. There really isn’t a limit on what you can advertise as long as it complies with Google’s terms of service.
It’s worth mentioning that Google Ads and PPC campaigns aren’t completely user-friendly. While you can pay someone from Google to manage your campaign for you, it’s always better to oversee what you are actually paying for. Because of this, complete newbies might find this type of advertising off-putting or even daunting. It requires time to grow an online marketing campaign, so do not expect results overnight. Most Search Engine Optimization strategies that come bundled with PPC campaigns offer a 1000% interest increase in your brand in 6 to 12 months. That is a lot of time spent wondering whether you have made the right choice.
Try professional contact finders to reach new prospects
One of the tried and tested methods of expanding brand recognition is through email. Virtually anybody on the planet has one or more email addresses under their name. The reason is that almost every major service online requires its users to sign up with an active email address. In addition to finding the right contacts, it’s equally important to understand how to effectively reach and engage them. Implementing smart Google search strategies can significantly enhance your approach to finding and connecting with potential clients or partners. Out of 7+ billion people on the planet, most have a valid email address.
Building a sizable email marketing campaign can take time. That’s why you should use simple yet powerful email finder tools, such as SignalHire, that already came up earlier in this article. SignalHire is a Chrome extension that attaches itself to your browser and retrieves personal information from social networking websites. From there, you can extract a valid email address that you can add to your email marketing campaign. The best part is that it works super-fast.
One more benefit of using SignalHire to reach new prospects is that the extracted emails have a surprisingly low chance of bouncing back. No one needs to tell you how important that is for any email marketing campaign. You rarely see such a versatile tool that also guarantees high accuracy rates. Besides, its online database supports bulk email search by industries and other parameters, which can prove very useful while building an email list from scratch.
The right combination of these tools should help you increase your prospect list quickly and without spending enormous amounts of money. Even if your business is small, you should take time to figure out methods that work for you and start from there.
