Generating more business consulting leads is the only way to keep your business and services on the float. Thus, working around the right marketing plan with the proper lead generation strategies is part of the main needs.
Although existing clients are valuable, you will quickly run out of them since they don’t always require your services. Hence, new leads must be generated steadily to ensure continuous work and growth.
That being said, there are many ways to generate business consulting leads. But before diving into the strategies, be sure to pre-qualify leads according to the criteria you are looking for.
You don’t need to accept every single person who approaches you. Many people will be difficult to work with or require guarantees that you can’t provide. It can be difficult to decline business, especially when you are just starting out, but you will be better off if you do.
Be a bit more selective in this niche to ensure you are going for the right clients that won’t bring difficulties your way.
When settling your mind, work towards inbound and outbound marketing strategies that usually include over seven lead generation strategies in your plan.
Below, we will dive into the crucial ones, where you should start, and what can work for your business consulting entrepreneurship.
Work on Your Lead Generation Website
Websites are the new buildings for businesses since most people search for services on the Internet, just like with products.
Now, there are two types of sites: websites that serve as a digital brochure, resume, or to provide information about the firm or consultant; and websites that serve to generate leads.
Your aim is, of course, the latter.
A lead-generating website showcases your thinking (your intellectual capital) in your unique voice (your brand) to attract the right kind of prospects. In addition, you must include the right elements to help them convert into leads and then clients easily.
This website can help you attract prospects to your sales pipeline and move them down the pipeline until the time comes for them to make a sale, which is hiring your services, in this case.
When creating it, worry about design but also user experience and how elements are layout.
It’s Time to Rank the Website
Your website will be a product of your hard work and investment in time. But it won’t be useful unless it tanks in Google’s search results for keywords related to your offerings.
The lack of website traffic can ultimately affect your lead generation. Or more like it is all about traffic to convert into leads then into clients. Simple math.
Strategically focusing on keywords ranking is the best way to generate qualified leads. Start by trying to identify highly targeted keywords that are relevant to your offer.
Make sure to strike the right balance between search queries and competition. These keywords will be easier to rank for, and you will get more qualified leads.
If you offer business consulting services to businesses in New York and rank in the top three to five results on Google for “business consulting expert New York,” then you will start generating high-quality leads.
Keywords and other elements fall in the usual category of Search Engine Optimization or SEO, which is a set of best practices and techniques for improving your website’s rank on search engines.
Google will reward you for publishing consistent content and writing in a way that benefits your prospects. Not only for stuffing your website with keywords, things we don’t recommend.
Search rankings will increase for content, case studies, or resources on your site, which makes it easier for prospects to find your website.
SEO is all about creating useful content consistently. Outbound leads convert up to 10x more than inbound leads. Therefore, ranking high can have huge benefits for your business consulting company.
Follow Up with the Right Page
Follow-up with people you meet is the key to bringing more leads later. Remember, it isn’t always about instant results but aiming for future ones as well.
To make it simple to follow up, you can simply add a “Hello!” page to your site.
It provides recipients with a “call to action” through a link that takes them to your website. Here they can remember who you are and what your expertise is. It gives them the chance to sign up for your mailing list.
You can include a link to your hello page on business cards that you hand out frequently. Include it in both your LinkedIn profile and signature. It can be used to help people you have met recall who you are, what your work is, and how they can help you.
It is easy to create this page by adding:
- A picture of you and your UVP.
- A short paragraph that reminds them who you are (introduction/presentation).
- A paragraph explaining how they can benefit from you.
- A paragraph explaining who should sign up for your newsletter and how it will benefit them.
Creating a Landing Page for Lead Generation
It can be difficult and time-consuming to create a website. You won’t be able to create every page and element that should be there. At least, not in the beginning. However, you should always include a landing page that converts, even before the previous one.
A crucial yet straightforward landing page with one offer is a great place to start for every lead. Sometimes, you can even opt to create this while you have more time to work around your entire website.
These pages are much easier to build than full-on consulting websites. They also give prospects a clear path. Simply enter your name, email address, and offer details.
This basically transforms your contact page into a complete business consulting website, at least for the beginning.
You will learn more about your prospects and their problems as you drive traffic to your page. Then you can begin to write content for the website.
However, a landing page should always be included in your website when developed. In this way, you have a specific converting point for sales-qualified leads and ensure they don’t have to look any further to take action.
Learn About Your Decision Makers
There are many details that you will need to know in order to create qualified leads and take a particular approach. One of them is to remember that it is easier to identify decision-makers and understand their needs in order to do so.
Although it may seem simple, it is important to first speak to decision-makers in order to make sure that you aren’t selling to people who aren’t in a position to buy. Also, to understand their common problems.
These questions can be used to guide conversations with decision-makers or more like your potential clients:
- What is their current situation? What are their current feelings?
- What are they looking for in a solution?
- What can you do to help them get there?
You will immediately know if your offerings can meet the needs and desires of the client by asking a series of questions. If you don’t have the right offerings to meet their needs, move on to another prospect.
It is a matter of “filter” in order to ensure you are aiming for the right leads in the previous and following lead generation strategies.
Use Content to Establish Yourself
You can establish yourself as an authority by sharing content that addresses the issues your ideal client will face.
A blog on your website is a place where you post valuable content that assists people in a specific area of their business. As they become more familiar with your knowledge and the amount of great content you are willing to share, you will be contacted, or the possibilities at least increase by a lot.
Strong lead generators can be found in search engine optimized blogs. You will see great conversions if you have enough search engine traffic.
You can increase search engine traffic by creating a blog publishing schedule and making sure to work on it properly. This will allow you to create high-quality content that is shared and optimized for search.
You can build trust with your audience by sharing information that helps your ideal clients or audience solve a problem.
Your content can be used to generate leads and organic traffic. It can also double as collateral for sales. Prospects can use it as marketing material as they are being nurtured to close contracts.
But what type of content should you create besides a blog?
Overall, you can rely on downloadable content and focus on adding more to your site and creating other formats. This strategy covers many options and goes along with what is known as lead magnets.
Lead magnets are valued you offer through specific content and exchange it with the leads’ email address and name. These are some examples of educational content you can download to generate leads for your consulting company and, in addition, include in your content marketing strategy at once:
- Content Upgrades.
Your website articles should have the main purpose of educating your prospects and readers so they can achieve their goals by using your advice.
You can help them achieve the same result with a content upgrade. But it will take you less time.
Use Google Analytics or your comments to find the most popular blog posts. These are the best posts to help you get more leads since they bring you the most traffic.
The main message of your article should be written. Once you have a clear understanding of the reasons this piece of content is so popular, create a resource to help your prospect get that result quicker.
The lead magnet should be placed in line with your content so readers can opt-in for your newsletter to access this resource. The resource should directly relate to the content they are reading when they visit your article.
- Publishing a white paper.
White papers are reports that focus on one topic within your industry. This white paper is meant to be authoritative and inform your reader about complex topics. It will also give your firm’s perspective on the topic to help you make better decisions.
White papers are a great way to attract leads because they make you a trusted advisor for your prospect.
Your white paper answers their questions. A trusted advisor is in a better position than any consultant for selling conversations. This position is one that your white paper can help you to take.
- Making a Video Course.
A video course is more than what your prospects are expecting to get as a lead magnet. It can help you propel your marketing far beyond your competition and add more value to your company.
You don’t have to make a super long course. It can be a 3 to 5 lesson video course that allows your prospect to get to know you and hear your voice as if they were at a presentation. This is a powerful, trust-building, and educational marketing strategy.
This video course is designed to help clients understand the problems they face in their business and offer solutions.
You want to end it by introducing them to your options for working together if they are interested in hiring an expert to solve the problem or implement the solution that you discussed in the video series.
- Host Your Own Podcast.
To build a high-growth business consultancy company, it is important to position yourself as a trusted adviser. You’ll get more leads if you establish yourself as an industry resource.
You can become a great resource for your industry by starting your podcast and interviewing thought-leaders from your industry.
It can also be used as a networking tool. Everyone loves sharing their knowledge and expertise publicly.
It doesn’t have to be difficult to start your podcast. You can record a Skype interview and upload it to iTunes. Each episode will be a win-win for you, your guest, and your audience.
- High-quality Written blogs.
Going back to the blogs and how you should work with them, you need to consider this.
First, blogs are an important part of your content strategy. They can be used to create relationships with the right people. We mean people who are interested and will turn into clients or leads.
Before you decide to publish a blog post on your topic, you need to know why you are writing it and how you plan to promote it.
These are some questions that will help you get started:
- Is the content able to help prospects in any way?
- What can you do to offer better content than your competition?
- Is your target client spending time online? If so, where? Are they browsing blogs? Perhaps they are a member of LinkedIn groups.
- Do you prefer 100 readers from your target market or 1,000 readers with just a few customers?
- Which content medium is most preferred by your target clients to read your content in?
- Do you have the core competencies to produce high-quality content?
Search Engine Optimizations (SEO) can also be used to optimize your content marketing. You can also actively search for potential readers using:
- Engaging in online communities.
- To increase social sharing, make the most of your existing connections.
- Run ads.
- Email marketing.
- Connect with the right people via LinkedIn.
- Repurposed blogs can be used to spread the word across different platforms.
Consider Guest Blogging
Traffic is the hardest part of acquiring business consulting leads online. No matter how great your website design is, traffic will be the limiting factor in obtaining leads most of the time.
Writing guest posts on a website serving a similar audience is the best way to start gaining traffic if you cannot afford SEO or don’t know how to work properly around it yet.
Blog owners are constantly under pressure to produce quality content. Many people will be open to guest posts if you approach them with a focused pitch on their blog and their readers.
The website owner may ask for a brief bio at the end of your post. This allows readers to find out more about you and can be done via a link to the site.
Guest posting is more than just writing articles. It will also help you to build stronger relationships. Consulting is a relationship-based business. The stronger your relationships, the better your business will be.
List Posting Works
You can list posts if you have something your audience is interested in.
You could make it a “Best of” post about which one you think the podcast business owners should listen to or just provide some relevant listing.
You should also reach out to the person you are featuring in the post to get a snippet of information. You might ask each podcast host why they started it, who they are for, and what goals they have for it.
List posts are easy to read and create. You can also use them to build new relationships via outreach. After you have completed your post, you can ask each person to share it with their contacts.
For your next piece, consider a list post. Reach out to experts to create a list and get them to share their knowledge. Then combine all that information into one post.
Use LinkedIn to Build Your Lead Generation Strategy
LinkedIn can be used for lead generation, especially in the business consulting business, since the platform is aimed at a more professional approach.
How can you make the platform work for your lead generation goals? How can you generate business consulting leads?
Let’s get to the basics. LinkedIn is your online resume. This is why it is important to have a good profile for people to be able to trust you.
It is crucial to optimize your site and to learn how to use it best. We will help you with the basics, as this can be quite complex.
- Make your profile stand out.
Your profile should be original. Someone should feel that they can trust and know you after reading your profile.
Upload the best photo of your company and professional image. Avoid selfies, beach shots, or photos with friends. Just go for a professional yet a bit casual photo to add good vibes.
Next, write a concise summary.
The summary should include your professional background and experiences. This section contains information about you, your career highlights, and why you decided to work with business consulting.
Many people won’t scroll to your entire career history if you don’t provide a concise summary. Focus on the most important details and only provide the most relevant information.
When discussing your work history, don’t just list the dates and job titles. This section should be formatted like a resume with bullet points that highlight each job’s accomplishments.
- Share your knowledge.
LinkedIn forums offer a great way to exchange industry knowledge and generate leads.
Be polite and respectful. People will be more likely to reach out to you if you answer more questions based on your knowledge.
It’s all about providing valuable information that will help them understand your work and, indirectly, about your services.
- Keep in touch with your contacts to maintain good relationships.
LinkedIn is not effective if you reach only people in your contact list to get leads or referrals.
Reach out to family and friends to offer support, wish them a happy birthday, or congratulations on a recent promotion.
Even the smallest of social media posts can sometimes indicate that someone is interested in your services as a business consultant.
The “connect and nurture” strategy is easy to implement. To do this, you’ll need to research LinkedIn to find potential clients. You then communicate with them using personalized messages that highlight a common interest.
This is quite common on the platform. We receive messages from users every now and then, and we do send them as well.
After you make the initial contact, you can send the lead a video or article that is helpful or content you have created. This will help keep them interested.
Continue the conversation and ask questions.
It is possible to nurture leads who are already interested, as you will be spending lots of time with them.
It doesn’t have to be via a face-to-face or phone call later. Instead, you can continue nurturing and keeping in touch with potential qualified leads via the platform until they are ready to convert.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Consulting Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Consulting Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Business Consulting Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.