35 Lead Generation Ideas for Your Online Business

What would doubling the amount of leads mean to your business?

Generating new leads is essential to keeping a business in the black, but it can be an arduous process trying to stay ahead of the game and discovering new, original methods for lead generation. Whilst on paper the process may seem relatively straightforward, in practice it can seem overwhelming, particularly when inspiration is proving hard to come by.

That’s where we come in: 35 tried and tested lead-generation techniques each of which we’ve seen our brokerage clients use time and time again.

Off-Site Lead Generation Tips:

1. Testing, Testing…1…2…3!

There is no hiding from Facebook, with over a billion users worldwide it is a social media powerhouse. There are two great ways in which you can leverage Facebook for lead generation.

The first, perhaps obvious reason, is Facebook advertising. The platform allows you to target and narrow down on certain demographics. Perhaps you run a financial business and need to find high net worth individuals interested in investing. You could target users with interests such as ‘investments’ or users who have liked pages such as Forbes, Reuters or CNNMoney. Age, gender, location can all be targetted! Check out AdEspresso for their Beginner’s Guide to Advertising on Facebook.

Another reason Facebook advertising can help your lead generation activities is that it is an effective way to test copy, calls to action and images. Perhaps you have a free ebook and need to test which cover is best or you are emailing your subscribers an offer but want to know which subject might get the most amount of clicks. Run multiple ads with small budgets to test which one performs the best. You then know what copy or image will work best for your other lead generation activities.

2. Get Buzzing!

We’ve talked about the importance of using social media to improve lead generation, but it can often be a laborious process having to log-in and –out of the various different platforms. Indeed, you’re already busy enough without having to remember to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram et cetera, et cetera. That’s where Buzzbundle comes in.

BuzzBundle provides social media management software that collates all your accounts into one easy-to-use platform. From BuzzBundle you can post a single comment, link or image from one place across all of the different sites, without having to log in and out of each of them.

You can also track what is being said about your company, products and services, by analysing the mentions across the various social media networks. You can narrow down the results by selecting specific keywords. This is a really great way of finding out what people are saying, where they are saying it and ultimately how people are feeling about your brand. Using this information you can then join in with the conversations, or reply to posts via BuzzBundle.

BuzzBundle also offers you the chance to alter your persona. In other words, it offers you the option of unlimited social profiles, so that you can engages in various different conversations all over the internet, representing your company, your loyal customers, or whoever you wish to be. If you are representing your company, make sure that you include your company’s homepage in your bio page.

Finally, don’t forget that is a great tool for driving traffic to a website. You can check out How We Generated 594k Page Views In a Day Using BuzzBundle with some great tactics on using the tool.

3. Freebies For Influencers

Whilst you will no doubt send a lot of time promoting your products, why not get someone else to do it for you? Better yet, why not get someone who is really influential to do it for you? Giving away your product or service for free might sound a little risky, but if you get well-respected bloggers and online influencers to like your stuff, then their communities are likely to follow.

Just make sure that you ask for an honest review in return.

4. Have A Cookie: Retargeting Ads

Are you feeling lonely as a result of a 90% bounce rate? Well, fear not – all is not lost, you can turn to retargeting. The concept of retargeting helps to ensure that you are doing everything in your power to convert as many of your visitors as possible into sales.

Retargeting can be done through various ad display networks and this is how it works:

1. These companies give you and your company a pixel or a tag, which refers to a small piece of coding.
2. You insert this pixel into your website’s code.
3. Any bouncers; that is people who stumble across your website via an ad or a Google search, but leave before converting will automatically activate the pixel that you inserted earlier, becoming a cookie (you’ve heard that term before).
4. Using your retargeting software, you can then ‘watch’ your bouncer move around the internet and the software will then display your adverts to this bouncer as he or she visits over 1m websites on the Google Display Network, reminding them about what you have to offer.

5. Email Signature

How many emails do you send each day? 25, 50, 100? Even more? Think how many of these emails are sent to potential customers and how many of these could legitimately generate leads.

Turn your email into a marketing tool. Your email signature offers the perfect way to do this in a variety of different ways:

• Including a link to your product or service landing page. This not only increases brand-awareness, but also has the potential to increase sales.
• A link to your blog. This is far more engaging to your customers, and it is often value-laden – it is also likely to keep their attention for longer.
• Social Media – This shouldn’t need any introduction in terms of the marketing potential on offer via the many different platforms.
• Upcoming Conferences and Events – generating interest in upcoming events, offers the chance for you to actually meet potential customers face-to-face.

Most popular email providers such as gmail, Outlook and Yahoo make it relatively easy to adapt your email signature. Simply click on the ‘Settings’ tab and then look for ‘Email Signature’ and insert any of the above suggestions to start generating leads.

6. Publish A Product Video

What better way to showcase your products than to let them star in their own video. Studies have shown that customers respond well to product demonstration videos, as they’re naturally more engaging than static pictures and if you make them informative, then potential customers are likely become more interested.

Don’t make them too complex – remember to keep them simple in order to maximize interest. Keynote offers a fantastic, easy-to-use platform for producing great product videos, which you can then post on YouTube. Top tips:

1. Keep your video under two minutes. Shorter videos are watched fully and these rank higher in YouTube.
2. Include a link to a supplementary article or landing page in the first line of the video description.
3. Don’t forget that other video submission sites exist like Vimeo, Dailymotion, ZippCast and Google Video.

7. Host A Meetup

Get the tea and coffee ready! Hosting a meetup provides a great forum through which to meet potential clients and generate some solid leads, but it also provides your clients with the opportunity to meet one another and therefore share their stories with like-minded people – all thanks to you!

Meeting potential leads and customers in person is a great way to improve your confidence, networking skills and it’s really not difficult.

Here are some suggestions to help you organize the perfect meetup:

1. Sign up to aptly named Meetup and create a profile to get a feel for what’s going on in your area. Try searching for keywords directly related to your field and see if you can identify some gaps in the meetup market, so to speak. That way, you can create a group that plugs the gap.
2. Create a Meetup group. Meetup’s platform is quite intuitive and will prompt you to choose a location, a group name, as well as some categories that best match your group’s aims (make sure you choose wisely in order to attract the right sort of people). It will also ask you to create a headline and a lead statement – you really need to make sure that you capture people’s attention with these and talk about satisfying the ‘gap’.
3. Meetup advise that you don’t actually organize a gathering straightaway; instead focus on growing your group membership fist, email existing clients, post links to join on Twitter or post a link in your email signature, for example.
4. Once you have a sizeable group membership, you can start thinking about organizing your first meetup. Not all follow the same format, so you need to think about what kind of event you might like to host, is it going to be formal? Will there be speakers? Would you like to meet at a bar in downtown New York? There are pros and cons for each, and you need to consider these carefully.

Check out Mashable’s guide to organizing a successful meetup for more information.

8. Speak At An Event

Not only does speaking at an event give you great exposure, it also puts you physically in a room with potential leads that can ask you questions and receive enlightened responses and hopefully establish you as an expert in your field. Crucially though, it also puts you in a position of power and authority. Present well, and you can be sure to attract new customers, impressed by your ability to hold an audience’s attention. Think about it, how many sales calls would you have to make to equal the amount of people in a packed conference center?

Presenting is a great opportunity, but do remember, that unlike many sales calls, a speech shouldn’t be a hard-sell. It’s okay to pitch, but make sure you do it well, and link it seamlessly to the speech you are also giving.

Getting into speaking can be quite difficult at first and is a long term lead generation strategy. You could speak at a meetup you organized after heeding the advice above, or small local events in order to build up your confidence, as well as some kudos, before pitching for the bigger events. Another thing to try is to pitch a guest lecture at a university. Make sure that you update your about page and LinkedIn profile to state that you are open to speaking gigs. Also, get photos or a video of you speaking as this is excellent for social proof.

Check out our list of Top Digital Conferences to Attend In 2015. Some of these conferences have speaker submissions and some are invite only. Get pitching!

9. Lay Down Your Computer, Pick Up Your Pen

For a touch of old-school class, why not try sending handwritten notes to potential clients. This highly-personalized method of communication will no doubt impress, and get them interested in what you have to offer. For an added touch of class, why not seal the envelope with a wax imprint of your company logo? Couple this with a watermarked notepaper and you’ll no doubt be generating leads all over town, and increasing your reputation as a class act.

10. Get Yourself Interviewed On Websites Or Podcasts.

Being interviewed by a well-respected channel, whether on the radio, television, newspaper or somewhere on the big wide web, is a great way to gain additional exposure and establish yourself as a viable business. It provides additional information about the products or services that you have to offer and gives you something to link back to on your blog or website that will no doubt impress potential customers and convert them into leads.

1. Start small by searching for your niche and “podcast” to quickly put together a list of potential sites to approach.
2. Reach out by asking if they require any interviewees. Be very clear about your expertise and what you can offer their audience.
3. Leverage your first couple of interviews to get bigger ones.
4. Rinse and repeat.

11. Webinars

All attendees at a webinar must register with their name and email address, which means every participant becomes a potential lead. However, people attend webinars, because as the name suggests – webinars require the participants actually learn something, so you’ll need to make sure that you’ve got something worthwhile to teach them.

GoToWebinar offers some pretty good webinar software, with lots of in-built administrative tools, HD video recording, mobile device compatibility, full service registration and the ability to record your webinars so that you can include them on your website or blog for other users to see. Maybe include this in a password-protected area of your website so that you have the opportunity to gain further leads by requiring users to register for a password in order to view the webinar.

Some top tips for a successful webinar:

1. Create an active and engaging presentation – as with any presentation, don’t simply create slides that you will later read off verbatim.
2. Normal presentations will allow for around 2-3 minutes per slide, you should aim to reduce this to 30-40 seconds in a webinar in order to keep the audience’s attention.
3. Choose graphics over text – if possible, minimize your use of text to an absolute minimum.
4. Make them as interactive as possible, include audience polls – this will not only engage the participants, but it will also tell you what they already know about the topic.

12. “You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours”

Forming strategic partnerships with like-minded companies can definitely help with generating leads, either via referrals to a complimentary product or service that you offer, or vice versa. You can also work together to establish a lead-generation strategy, whether through advertising on one another’s website next to relevant products or directly referring customers looking for a something particular.

Basically, your aim is to locate companies who need what you do. Like anything, business partnerships can take time to cultivate, but they might well be worth it in the end, acting as a barrier for entry against new competitors, especially if you’re partnered with a larger company that your potential clients already use.

This is a long process and might take time before you get results. Try the soft approach of connecting over social media before suggesting getting on a Skype call or meeting face-to-face. You can also suggest catching up with a representative of a company at a meetup or conference and develop a relationship from there.

13. Write On LinkedIn Via Pulse

With over 330m users and 3 million companies, LinkedIn is the go-to social media platform for businesses. According to HubSpot, LinkedIn generates more than twice the amount of leads as Facebook and Twitter. Writing on a proven platform is likely to get you seen by the right people and “Pay It Forward and indirectly showcase who you are as a professional. Remember that the content you publish here will become part of your LinkedIn Brand and the way that others perceive of you, so make it count!” so says Neal Schaffer, experienced LinkedIn writer and Social Business Coach.

In other words, make sure what you write on LinkedIn represents who you are in the best possible way. You should also ensure that you do your research beforehand in order to write for your audience – what type of articles are already out there, and how will yours fit in? Knowing this information will help you to mold your social media presence appropriately and maximize potential leads.

LinkedIn articles shouldn’t be too long (around 800 words), and if you’re going to start writing on this platform make sure that you keep doing so, and consistently in order to show your commitment. Check out how you can publish on LinkedIn today with Inc’s guide.

14. Join Relevant LinkedIn Groups

Linked (excuse the pun) to the above suggestion, increasing your LinkedIn presence isn’t just about having a great profile, good connections and some articles under your belt – you also need to demonstrate that you are active in your field, and you can do so via LinkedIn Groups. Provided you don’t spam, these are great places to share blog content if it’s relevant to that group.

Top Tips:

1. As already stated: know your audience and know who the prospects are and what their problems might be.
2. Give your group a suitable name – try to give it a title that suggests you may be able to solve the aforementioned problems that your potentials clients might have.
3. Prior to making your group live, ensure that you have already posted some interesting articles and prompt questions.
4. Once your group has some good conversations happening start inviting some business prospects to join, either by LinkedIn In-mails or LinkedIn Ads.
5. Finally, always be sure to get involved in the conversations, posting your thoughts and asking meaningful, encouraging questions.

15. Google AdWords

Google Ads appear next to the results of a particular keyword search. So, if you choose the right keywords for your Ad to appear next to, it can then start generating leads for you. What a great way to tell customers that you have what they want.
How it works (it’s very simple, really):

1. Create an ad using Google’s easy-to-use template, telling people what your company has to offer.
2. Choose the keywords that you would like your ad to appear next to.
3. Set a daily budget (you pay each time your ad is clicked on).
4. Go live!
5. If your keywords are well-chosen and match the keywords people are using to search, then your ad will be displayed next to search results.
6. Customers can then click directly to your website.

Want to learn more about Google AdWords? Check out Google’s very own AdWords Online Classroom.

16. Gmail Targeted AdWords

Try extending the above by targeting your ads to appear when people open emails on Gmail containing specific keywords in the subject box. Does your competitor have a newsletter? Targetting those keywords means that your ads will display to already warm leads if they have signed up to a competing service.

17. Get Instagramming

Customers don’t just want to be told about the action, they also want to see it too. Visual marketing is a key factor in getting potential leads interested and engaged in your business and Instagram is a great platform through which to showcase your brand. Why not post staff photos, as a chance to introduce your team, or capture some snaps of corporate events you’ve been involved with. This allows new clients to see the faces behind the logo, humanizes the company and makes it more attractive and accessible, after all – people like names and faces, not just products and services. This being said, including some product snaps would also be a great way of showing off what you have to offer.

For more information, Mashable have a great guide to Instagram.

18. Show You’re Pinterested

Pinterest is the ultimate go to for the foodies, the fashionistas and those flipping houses. It allows users to ‘pin’ photos to a virtual pin board, creating a scrap-book of sorts, collating recipe ideas, wedding outfits and home-improvement ideas. Whilst not everyone will have a business in these areas, Pinterest works by giving people inspiration to try something new, so why not give people the tools and a little bit of know-how and let them try it out for themselves? Just make it visual and Pinteresters will more than likely be…Pinterested. This could be anything from blog templates to the best cakes to bake for an office cake sale. Have a look at some examples at HubSpot’s Pinterest Page.

19. SlideShare.

SlideShare basically does what it says on the tin: it allows you to share presentations with its 60 million monthly visitors. So, make it count – one way that you can, is to embed a link to your homepage into your SlideShow presentation, to ensure that everyone who is blown away by your presentation is able to visit your website straightaway. Check out SlideShare’s own about page for more information and a handy ‘how-to’.

Top tip: upload presentations from your Webinars to SlideShare for extra leads.

20. Tweet A Twitter Lead Generation Card

A Lead Generation Card in Twitter enables your followers to send you their contact information directly with one click, via a form attached to a [expanded] tweet. This is a quick, easy and secure way for potential leads to express an interest in your business, without having to navigate away from Twitter or fill in one of those annoying Contact Us forms. The user simply expands your tweet in order to see additional business information and a call-to-action – everything else, including their name, Twitter handle and email address are already completed – all they have to do is hit ‘send’.

Note, you will need to be signed up to Twitter Ads in order to utilize this feature.

21. Provide Answers To The People Of Quora

Quora is an online question and answer platform where people can post specific questions, with the hope of receiving an answer that will solve a current quandary, uncertainty or ignorance about pretty much anything in the known universe.

You have a unique feed of questions, depending on which topics you choose to follow when you originally sign up – so if you choose wisely, you will be able to answer field-specific questions from potential leads. When you have answered a question, users are able to click onto your profile and see which industry you represent, where you are located and all of your past answers, including ‘top’ answers. You can also link your Facebook and Twitter accounts to your profile and include a link to your homepage. So, you’re not only able to establish yourself as an expert in your field, but you can also increase your exposure at the same time. If you’re very clever, you’ll make sure that you build your answer around presenting a solution to your lead’s problem.

22. The Press-Release.

When we’ve done something well, we want people to know about it! Indeed, press releases are no longer the sole domain of news editors and, in the age of the internet, offer a great way to showcase original products and services, and the truth is that not many businesses are taking advantage of this tool for generating leads. In a post Google Penguin world, the effectiveness of press releases for SEO purposes have vastly diminished but they are still worth doing.

Agencies like PR Newswire provide good, paid-for distribution.

23. Produce An Industry Report Or White Paper

Knowledge is power, as they say. And this knowledge is particularly powerful in generating leads. Producing an industry report and situating your business in a prominent position within your trade is a sure-fire way to kick-start successful b2b marketing. An industry report will put you in a very strong position as an expert in your industry and by placing your contact details at the end, you’re likely to invite a lot of questions from people across the industry who are interested in what you have to say; all of whom may well become potential leads.

You have to make sure you get your industry report just right though, ensure that you complete copious amounts of research prior to writing and include up-to-date facts and figures – there’s nothing worse than looking ill-informed and your name attached.

On-Site Lead Generation Tips:

24. Getting Your Contact Form Right

Forms are often the bugbear of websites – a lot of people don’t like them, they are quite demanding after all. They are also a little intrusive, and people don’t tend to like parting with personal information, worrying primarily about how it might be used by the company behind the form. So, how do you create the perfect form – that minimizes nuisance and maximizes the potential for lead conversion?

Easy – Follow the tips below for a good start.

1. Don’t Click ‘Submit’ – Make sure you write the correct thing on your call-to-action button. Studies have shown that using ‘submit’ (‘what am I signing up to?’) reduces conversion rates significantly, as do ‘download’ (‘will it put a virus on my computer?’) and ‘register’ (‘will I now get hundreds of marketing emails?’). Using words free of the abovementioned negative connotations, such as ‘click here’ and ‘go’ are safer options.
2. Reduce the number of fields – conversion rates soar the fewer the number of entries a potential customer has to make. Try to avoid asking for a customer’s telephone number and street address too – they really hate that!
3. Keep it to the left – Apparently studies have shown that left-aligned form labels increase form readability, and therefore help increase conversion.
4. Assure security – people are much more likely to fill in a form if they know that their details are going to be kept securely.

Form experts Wufoo have lots of form templates available with the sole aim of maximizing lead generation, this includes techniques such has asking the customer to login in order to submit their information, which in turn means that they’re more likely to return to your website.

25. Optimize Your Landing Page

This is where you need to get critical, and we’re not just talking aesthetics. Whilst your landing page clearly needs to look good – it also needs to function well. Take the following points into consideration when thinking about optimizing your landing page for lead generation:

1. SEO – The leading method in generating leads via the internet is still via search engines. So make sure that your landing page is optimized for them – how easy is it to find your homepage in the first place?
2. Call-to-Action – This needs to be big and this needs to be bold. Don’t hide the call-to-action at the bottom of the page, or in the side-menu, give it pride of place so that it is easily noticed.
3. Keep it Simple, Keep it Specific and Keep it Focused – we want to know what your business can do for us, so tell us the value behind it; get your USP out there and not much else.
4. Link to Social Media.

26. Color Psychology For CRO

Color is a very powerful tool, with different colors carrying different connotations – people often associate blue with trust and green with wealth. Choosing the right color for your call-to-action buttons can therefore be an important decision in terms of conversion rate optimization. Web interface designer Paul Olyslager states that:

“A call-to-action button is a collection of 4 things: placement, shape, the message and color. If these 4 aspects are in line with each other, you’ll have a great call-to-action button.”

But, what exactly does Olyslager reckon is the best color?

1. Contrast call-to-action buttons with the background color, for example use red on blue, and use complimentary colors for less important buttons. Red is often associated with ‘action’, so is a good color to go for.
2. For larger buttons you might want to choose a less prominent color (in terms of the background and surrounding elements), and for smaller buttons choose a color that is likely to stand out.

27. Create A Custom 404 Page

Why not utilize web pages that you wouldn’t normally think about using, in order to maximize company exposure and increase lead generation. For example, having a Thank You page after a form submission where you could invite users to share what they have just signed up for on social media. The ever-so annoying 404 Error Page could include a banner to market one of your products.

28. Gated Videos

Even better than a simple product video, is a simple product video that is gated. That is, users must opt-in to view it by submitting their email address and in turn giving you their all-important contact details for a follow-up enquiry.

Wistia have a great tool called Turnstile that they describe as ‘a full-on lead generation machine.’ You can integrate it with other email marketing and marketing automation tools and you don’t have to place your ‘email gate’ at the start of the video either – you can place it before, after or anywhere in-between, or even offer users the chance to skip the email collector altogether, so that you look a little less gate-keepery.

You need to ensure that you are producing compelling content, in order to garner those precious customer emails – no one will want to give you their email if they are not wowed by what you have to offer. What problem can you solve? What startling discovery have you made that you can share?

29. Make Your Posts Downloadable (In Exchange For An Email).

It can often be a pain to trawl through a huge blogpost with a narrow reading window and it can be an even bigger pain trying to locate it again if you particularly liked it. Sparing your customers the hassle and generating a lead in the process sounds very much like a win-win situation. Offer customers the option of downloading the post in (easy-to-read) PDF format in exchange for them providing you with their email address; you’ve generated a lead and they can print off a good article to read on the train.

Check out this post by Robbie Richards. It’s a very long post but you’ll see that you can ‘Download a free PDF of this post’ by clicking the button and entering your e-mail. This is a great tactic for gaining new subscribers whilst also making huge resource posts easier to digest for your readers.

30. Produce A Weekly Digest

Rounding up the best news stories across your vertical is going to prove fruitful in the long-term for traffic, building relationships and also lead generation. As we have already mentioned, offering something of value is likely to garner a good response. Producing a relevant weekly digest also helps to position you squarely within your target industry. You could publish this digest on your blog or to your subscriber base as a newsletter.

31. Quiz ‘em

What is the great attraction about completing a quiz? Perhaps it’s a boost to our egos, or confirmation of our self-worth. Whatever the reason, research suggests that people love them. Cosmopolitan has been using them for years to find out if boyfriends are cheating, but how can businesses use them effectively to generate leads?

1. The reason why Cosmo’s quizzes are so effective is because they ‘apparently’ solve a problem. People who take quizzes expect answers afterwards – so ensure that your quiz reflects your business’s solutions.
2. Make sure that it is relevant to your brand. You might well find it interesting to know whose boyfriend is cheating, but narrowing down genuine leads from the hundreds of emails your receive might be tricky.
3. The quiz should be simple to use.
4. Ensure that you collect an email after completion of the test, possibly in order to receive the answers (make sure the reward is worth it, too!).

Survey Monkey offer great online survey templates, along with Google Forms. There are also some really good WordPress plugins out there – have a look here for some top suggestions.

32. The Pop-up Form

Pop-ups have since taken lots of different forms from drop downs to lightboxes but the principle has remained the same. Turning a reader into a subscriber enables you to market to warm leads directly. The important thing here is to be continually split testing forms to see which converts the best.

There are a number of different pop-up forms available. Here are some examples:

Optinmonster for WordPress – apparently the best lead-generation plugin out there for WordPress.

Pippity – A ‘people-pleasing’ pop up form promising increased sign ups

33. Infographics

As we’ve already discussed, people love being told how to do something, and especially if it’s going to make their lives easier in some way; but a lot of us get scared when we see a lot of text on the page reminding us of all that theory we had to digest at school, university or otherwise and some of us are just visual learners. Infographics are a great way of combining learning with the ability to generate leads and that’s because they pack a lot of punch, with very little text and a handy space for that all important button: you know which one we’re talking about now and you know what you’ve got to do to get people that click on it. However, just in case you do need a recap:

• Make your Infographic informative (of course), but crucially make sure it answers a common question or misconception that your potential clients have. You could use a number of the above suggestions to help you research, Buzzbundle might work well, or Quora.
• Place a call-to-action button at the bottom of your Infographic, inviting potential leads to ‘find out more’ by registering with your website or even buying a particular product, for example.
• Don’t overload it with text and use images (not photographs) appropriately.

Infographics do not have to be an expensive investment. Check out our free SEO tools post for some infographic goodies, or check out Sky Rocket for some great paid infographics.

34. Everyone Loves A Freebie (Or A Free Trial)!

…It’s true, people do really like getting something for nothing and though it may sound risky at first, giving stuff away really can have its advantages in terms of generating all-important leads. The idea being that once you have offered the freebie, you will then be able to upsell to a paid product.

Let’s consider the following example:

You could offer potential customers a 30-day free trial of a limited version of the product or service you offer in exchange for registration with your site, which will naturally include the coveted email address. After the free trial has expired, you can then email them with the option to upgrade to the all-singing, all-dancing, advanced version for a fee.

Alternatively, you could offer a variety of different ‘plans’ for potential users from the outset, with the most basic option available for free. This means that customers are more likely to want to pay to unlock more advanced features – take Dropbox as an example. They offer users a variety of different storages plans, whereby the space available increases incrementally the more customers are willing to pay.

Another way of garnering interest might be to create a free e-book to give away at a launch event or to give every new customer the chance to download it.

35. SEO

Search Engine Optimization is still just as much alive in 2015 as it has ever been. Ensure you are correctly doing both onsite and offsite SEO, monitoring your SERPs and continuing to rank for your keywords. Organic search traffic can be a continual source of leads for your online business. SEO could cover volumes of books but here are some useful resources:

1. Need to brush up on your SEO basics? Beginner Guide to SEO.
2. SEO doesn’t have to be expensive. Here are 105 free SEO tools for 2015.
3. Want to know if your website has been hit by a Google penalty? Here’s a free Website Penalty Indicator.

Have you tried any of these lead generation methods? Which one works best for your online business? Comment and let us know below!