One of the most important goals of a business is simple: to generate sales. In order for a company to make revenue and sales, one of the roles of marketing teams is to bring the sales team quality-leads.

Start-ups need to act fast and need leads quickly. Here are 5 ways for startups to quickly generate leads.

5. Media Buying

Advertising is one of the oldest marketing tactics around and it’s still effective. While the age of print and banner ads is declining, that’s because advertising is becoming more effective. Today, it’s possible to purchase guaranteed leads from media outlets that will give you information about contacts that specifically expressed interest in your offering.

This is very common in the technology sphere. Companies such as CBS Interactive (CNET, ZDNet, TechRepublic), TechTarget, Virtual Strategy Magazine, InfoWorld offer a guaranteed and screened audience to your content (such as a white paper, case study, or trial download) who register and sign in, providing information about their company and purchasing power – which allows marketing and sales to better qualify the leads –

As a vendor, you can specify your target audience, geographic, job titles, and more. In return, for a fixed fee per lead (say $60, but the cost depends on your criteria) and a minimum lead count you can immediately get access to an audience interested in your project.  So, for example, for $12,000 you can gain 200 leads of senior managers who have purchasing power and a project in the pipeline.

4. Download Sites

Download sites are site listings that allow you to download free software. One popular download site is download.com, owned by CNET. Started in the 1990s, it remains one of the most popular sites.

If you make software for an ecosystem, listing on that app ecosystem can help you gain more downloads and leads. 

For example, if you make software that aids CAD developers, you may be able to get a free trial of your software on the Autodesk Exchange. In order to download your trial software, the user would have to register with their name and address, and you receive this information for follow up.

Providers of software development tools for Microsoft Visual Studio, Microsoft’s IDE, can list their product and extension on the Visual Studio Gallery. 

Some of these sites than provide the contact information of those who download your software.  Some download site listings cost money, but others are free.

These may only provide a few dozen downloads a month per site so it’s important to have realistic expectations.

3. Social Media Advertising

Advertisings isn’t just for Google (See #1). Social media sites are not just for conversation but you can extend your reach through advertising.

By advertising your offer, promotion, trial software, white paper, webinar, contest, or other lead gen campaign, you can gain lots of leads through social media.

Facebook

Facebook remains the undisputed king of social advertising. According to a new Econsultancy report, Facebook accounts for 41% of social ad budgets.

Facebook ads are useful both for B2C and B2B companies.

Facebook offers a tremendous amount of opportunities to filter in and get your message to your target audience.  If you are a network security vendor, you can target engineers aged 30-65 who are already fans of CheckPoint or Network World magazine.

Consumer Internet company? Facebook is a must! If you are a wedding apps maker you can target women ages 25-35 that like Brides Magazine.

According to Econsultancy, “Facebook newsfeed ads proved to be the most popular channel among business respondents (66%), followed by Facebook marketplace ads (45%) and Promoted Tweets (40%).”

As Facebook has grown over the past decade, it has become much harder for your content to be seen. It’s not enough to just open up a Facebook page anymore – even your fans won’t see your content unless it is highly engaging. Therefore, if you want to be seen, you may want to consider promoted newsfeed ads.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an essential place to be if you are a B2B company. It is the most important professional network.

LinkedIn offers two types of ads: sponsored posts and traditional ads.  

 

Sponsored ads let a brand get in the LinkedIn member’s news feed.

 

Twitter

Twitter offers two kinds of advertising – promoted tweets and promoted accounts. Promoted Accounts promote a specific Twitter account and can help your account gain more followers. This will increase exposure so your target audience is more likely to see your tweets – of which some will include links to gated content.

Promoted tweets help gain exposure for specific tweets.  This can be helpful to help promote a new offering, such as a new product release, webinar, conference, or new publication.  

2. Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a search engine's "natural" or unpaid ("organic") search.

People who are searching for what you have to offer are the best leads --- but they need to find you.

For example, if you are a database management software company, people searching for “database management” may want what you have to offer. Perhaps they have an active project and they are seeking a vendor.   If you are a mobile ad network, make sure you rank high for “how do I make money with my mobile app.” An IT virtualization company may want to rank on “slow remote desktop connection.”

By doing this, you can ensure that the people who have a problem that your company solves finds you.

SEO is not a single discipline and often you can achieve more without an outside SEO firm but rather a marketing manager who understands the rules and a good web developer, CMS, and public relations company that can generate the best form of inbound links – quality news stories and articles.

1. Google AdWords

Google AdWords is one of the best ways to quickly and easily generate leads. Google AdWords – those paid advertisements you see in Google search results – is designed precisely for this.

AdWords is set up for conversions – leads – and you can easily find out the cost per conversion and optimize your advertising to generate maximum conversions.

AdWords offers several abilities that help you find your customers:

• Search ads – like search engine optimization, but based on paid search and much easier to accomplish, search ads appear when someone searches for your targeted keywords. 
• Content ads – “traditional banner ads” – but unlike other banner ads you can select placements (as long as they are part of Google’s Content Network) for your ads to appear and still pay per click or per conversion instead of per impression. Of course, if you are looking for awareness campaigns and not leads, you can also pay per impression.
• Retargeting – your best leads are those who have already been to your website. With retargeting ads you can target those visitors who have already been to your website, but they may not yet have filled in a form. Because they are already familiar with your offering, they may be further down the sales funnel.

Google AdWords requires skill and training but a startup can invest in it and quickly begin to receive leads.

Because of the ease of editing campaigns, Google AdWords also provides a quick and easy way to test messaging, positioning, and branding. You can test your message and see what your value proposition is much quicker than relying on organic results alone.

Google AdWords – like all advertising has a cost -- but you can control the budget and so maintain control.  This level of control makes it a great venue for startup lead generation as they can develop targeted ads and experiment instead of spending tens of thousands of dollars at once, with very little control and oversight of where their money is going. Many startups need to quickly start generating revenue and Google AdWords provides an investment vehicle that makes that much easier.

 

One thing you will find in common with all of these lead generation channels it that they all cost money and require an investment. Yes, just as startups need to invest in R&D, they also need to invest in sales and marketing. Because, ultimately, good marketing is not free … but it will pay off for your startup.

Avi Hein was the marketing manager at Typemock, and is pursuing his MBA at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. He blogs at http://www.avihein.com/. Reach out to him on Twitter at @avihein or on LinkedIn.

 

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