In our previous post How to Get Started with Lead Gen, we mentioned that you may have recently experienced a big drop-off in organic traffic to your website. Whether due to increased online competition, or changes in Google’s search algorithms or other causes, many small business owners now struggle to attain the same traffic volume their sites used to enjoy. What gives?

Search results are not what they used to be. A major factor is the rise of voice search. People are asking their phone assistants, and devices like Google’s Home and Amazon’s Alexa, for information on restaurants and shops nearby. This is creating a dramatic impact on search results. Many in the field of search engine optimization (SEO) are scrambling to incorporate edits to their keywords to still rank highly on voice searches.

However, some in the SEO field, like inbound marketing powerhouse Hubspot, believe that due to these dramatic search changes, focusing primarily on keywords is a mistake. They write that keywords are inaccurate and “directional at best.”

So, how can you still reach leads and customers online? Think email campaigns, social media marketing, and Google pay-per-click. If you create a marketing strategy based on these three tools, you will be well on your way to connecting with the right people.

There are additional tools you can use to boost your lead generation. Let’s take a look at three more: display ads, content marketing, and paid social media.

Display Ads

These are the advertisements that appear on web pages near the article you’re reading. They can appear at the top of the page, next to the copy, or in the footer. One of the most useful aspects of display ads is they can be shown to people who have already expressed interest in you. Say someone has been to your website before–a display ad for your product can be created to appear when that person is reading an article somewhere else online. You’ve probably had this happen. You may have shopped for shoes and then been surprised to see the shoes you looked at appear in an ad a week later when you were reading a news article.

This is called retargeting. It’s a very effective way to reach more leads. If someone has already shown interest in you, they are more likely to click your ad, which can take them to whichever page of your website you choose. This is known as a landing page. You can even create unique landing pages just for your display ads.

Content Marketing

When you use content marketing to generate leads, you create content that will interest your target audience or benefit them. You’re offering free resources in order to draw people to your website and brand. You can accomplish this by writing informative blog posts, creating useful infographics, writing well-researched white papers, making educational videos and more. This is a highly effective way to increase your brand awareness and draw more interested people to your website.

Paid Social Media

Although you can reach many potential leads through a lively organic social media campaign, you can dramatically increase the number of potential leads by paying your social media channel of choice to show your content to a wider audience. You can even target that audience geographically, by age, and by their interests.

In some cases, you can even use retargeting on paid social media campaigns. For example, if you make a video ad on Facebook, you can create a custom audience of people who watch at least half, or all of that video. Then you can make another video ad and pay Facebook to show it only to those people. If they watched all of your first ad, the chances are good that they are interested in what you have to say.

This is just a brief overview of some further ways you can use lead generation as the new SEO. We could write a whole article on each one of these tools and still wouldn’t have covered all the detailed ways they can benefit your business. If you have any further questions about lead generation, or how to design the most effective lead gen strategy for your company, give us a call!

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