Top 17 Online Lead Generation Strategies to Get More Clients in 2024

One of the most common and widespread struggles which today’s entrepreneurs face is that of client acquisition. Especially when launching a new business, finding potential clients can be quite overwhelming.

Thankfully, when it comes to online lead generation, the process is streamlined enough that can help virtually every business to acquire more clients. You may be looking to get clients for a software development company or trying to get it together for another industry, this is the ultimate guide to generate effective leads.

So, keep scrolling to learn all about it!

What is the Importance of New Clients for a Business?

Whether you are operating from a physical store or have an online shop, client acquisition is a major part of sustaining a profitable business. It is also one of the difficult things to manage for up and coming businesses. Regular client acquisition allows a business to plan its growth and expansion accordingly. In the long term, making lead generation a vital part of any successful operations. If you are wondering how to get clients for digital marketing or trying to diversify into other domains, sustained lead generation is crucial.

That is why businesses often search for how to get more clients in order to maximize their operations and derive growth.

Check out our list of techniques to find new clients for your company.

Top 17 Strategies & Ways to Get More Clients

The following are some of the tried and tested methods to acquire more clients for your business. Keep scrolling to find out the sustainable methods to attract and retain loyal customers for your company.

1. Leverage LinkedIn Network

For any B2B business trying to create a reputation on the internet, LinkedIn is among the best places to connect with other fellow businesses in the industry. To unlock the full potential of the platform consider implementing the following tips:

• Grow your personal and organisational network by connecting with people from your industry.
• Use LinkedIn profile to contribute informational posts and interact with the posts of other fellow connections.
• Reach your connections personally via DMs and build relationships with them.
• Promote your product and services both organically as well as through paid promotions.

2. Optimize On-Page Performance

If you are wondering how to get clients, then the most potent tool is your website. Make sure that the site is SEO optimized and attractive enough for the visitors and has enough value for people to stay hooked to your site. Ideally, you will want them to keep coming for more! Here are some of the tips to achieve that:

• Ensure a Core Web Vitals optimized site that is quick to respond.
• Create engaging value-driven content that highlights your unique value proposition in the industry.
• Create a solid link building strategy to improve your authority.
• Place CTAs at strategic locations to lead traffic to commercial pages.

3. Connect with Professionals on Niche Forums

One of the effective ways to attract more clients is through developing a robust network around your business. Today, there are multiple industry forums, facebook groups and online communities helping business owners connect with fellow entrepreneurs and develop a connection. The following are some of the tips to connect and engage with professionals in your niche:

• Choose relevant forums that align with your business and industry.
• Introduce yourself and your business to the audience group.
• Participate and collaborate with other members in the forum discussions and activities.
• Strive to contribute value through informational posts and ideas that ignite communications.

4. Showcase your Work Portfolio

A work portfolio is a tugboat that pulls your business to the deep waters aka to the clients. Having a robust portfolio across multiple genres proves your versatility and quality of work to the audience. Especially for B2B businesses, a work portfolio asserts your credibility while also justifying the promises associated with your product and services.

For any services sector business, the following tips can be helpful to create an impactful work portfolio:

• Showcase high profile clients on the website
• Curate a customized work portfolio highlighting the tenure and scope of past or existing collaborations
• Highlight your contribution to the company.
• Articulate the USPs of your business through the portfolio.

5. Seek Referrals from your Network

A sure shot way to find clients is by asking for referrals. It may come from social connections, friends, family or previous clients. Referrals can be a good way to onboard your first client. That is why offering quality service and ensuring happy clients must be at the top of your concerns. This ensures to get better, more earnest referrals that contribute value to your operations. You may consider the following tips:

• Request a forum or social media post about your services from satisfied customers.
• Introduce some sort of referral scheme that incentivizes the referrer.
• Send referral incentive structure to the potential referrer.
• Determine the right time to send the mail for high impact.

6. Promote Product/Services on Social Media

Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are good places to attract new customers. Mostly useful to get retail customers, social media platforms can also prove useful to enhance your brand value to the target group. The following are some of the tried and tested methods to use on social media:

• Create engaging and relatable content like reels and memes.
• Engage and interact with your audience through regular posts and updates.
• Run ad campaigns to widen brand awareness and pique consumer interest.
• Share customer reviews to ensure better performance.

7. Use Engaging Web Content

Content marketing is one of the top and most cost-efficient options when you are trying to get new clients for your business. Helpful content tends to reach a wider audience group to create a robust brand impression in the market. Thus, sharing authoritative content on your website and social media platforms establishes the business as a thought leader in the industry – attracting the ideal client. Try out the following tips to leverage to power of content to grow your audience base:

• Strive to create value for your target group.
• Use both informational content and commercial content to highlight your USP.
• Publish new content regularly as per schedule.
• Send email newsletters to nurture leads.

8. Contribute Value with Guest Post

When trying to attract leads for your business online, relying on the website itself is not enough. It so may happen that people who are looking for your services are searching for you elsewhere. Quality guest posts can help you find the right audience group. So, a prevalent rule of thumb is to create a robust network of content on your peers’ websites. The idea is to draw audience from peers’ websites:

• Create information-rich content that contributes to the peers’ target group.
• Inform and engage the peer’s network about your services.
• Adopt a problem solving approach to address the user pain points through your services.
• Create interactive landing pages with information-rich content to ensure consistent messaging across all pages.

9. Use Attractive CTAs

Once you are able to drive potential clients to the website, the next part is encouraging them to convert. For that, strategic placement of CTAs is vital that nudge the audience towards the right direction. You can refer to the following CTA rules to get new clients for the business:

• Ensure contrasting colours with CTAs for better visibility.
• Use sensory words that evoke emotions and sensations.
• Analyze the heat map to gauge user behaviour and place CTAs strategically.
• Highlight value in the CTA instead of product or service.

10. Run Promotional Offers

First time clients can be difficult to onboard especially if you are a new player in the market. Offering trials and freemium for products and services respectively allows new businesses to get a competitive edge over the existing market players. At the same time, this allows you to familiarize the target group with your value propositions. Consider the following tips when using promotional offers to get new clients:

• Bundle multiple services together.
• Offer trial packs for products to familiarize people with the brand name as well as product quality.
• Use free trials and access to freemiums to generate leads.
• Launch introductory offer for first time visitors.

11. Start a Subscription Model

Getting clients to return can be as challenging as generating fresh leads. However, the good news is that the challenge to client retention is easy to overcome with a subscription model for your products and services. Offering added perks and benefits with discounts through subscriptions ensures returning clients. You may consider the following tips about launching subscription models:

• Offer both plans for subscribers and non-subscribers highlighting subscription benefits.
• Launch exclusive benefits for subscribers.
• Keep the subscription prices nominal and encourage clubbing subscription plans with the first transaction.
• Ensure transparent and flexible pricing.

12. Display Multiple Trust Signals

Many times users do not convert simply because the website seems suspicious or not trustworthy enough. You change that with quality trust signals that reassure the users about the authenticity and legitimacy of your business.

You may consider the following tips for using trust signals to ensure client assurance and get more clients:

• Display customer reviews/certificates/reputed clients below the top banner of your website.
• Get SSL encryption certification and social proofs to build trust with the audience.
• Put up a physical address with proper information about the company
• Optimize the site for Google Business profile.

13. 3 Click Conversion

One of the prevalent ways to boost client acquisition from the website is to implement the 3 click to conversion formula. The idea is to design the website interface in such a way that a user should be able to reach the landing page in no more than 3 clicks. To implement this strategy, you may consider the following tips:

• Streamline navigation path with intuitive, simple and clutter-free designs.
• Simplify the menus and use drop-down options for users to give a complete idea about the services and product offerings.
• Leverage Google Analytics and Heatmap analysis to keep track of user behaviour and place important CTAs strategically.
• Perform A/B testing for different landing pages to identify which pages work better for users.

14. Enhance User Experience

Having a clean user interface and maintaining a balanced text and image ratio ensures to deliver a uniform user experience. It is quite evident that any website that feels right will undoubtedly attract and retain the attention of the visitors. While most users may not be aware of it, the user experience of a site does impact the audience’s behaviour on the platform. You may follow the following tips:

• Maintain proper formatting of content across the website.
• Use a pleasant font that ensures contrast between the theme and the text for enhanced readability.
• Implement JavaScript to ensure an interactive UI that retains user attention for a longer period.
• Optimize the page speed for faster response and reduced bounce rate.

15. Host Webinars or Conclaves

Webinars and virtual events are the golden opportunity for any business to showcase its authority and commitment towards knowledge creation. They create an opportunity to interact with the audience and network with industry professionals. Keep the following hacks in mind:

• Perform surveys to zero in on the most sought-after topic for the webinar or conclave.
• Develop engaging materials that offer the audience scope for interaction.
• Create a custom webinar landing page.
• Determine the date and time strategically for maximum attendance.

16. Establish Robust Public Relations

If you are wondering how to get clients for your online business, then the foundational element is to have a network of communication with the public viz. the target group. Engaging with your audience in a holistic capacity can give way to a solid relationship with the audience that you can fall back on to generate leads with little nudging in the right direction. You may try the following tips:

• Engage and interact with users on website and social media platforms.
• Ask for recommendations and input from the public.
• Listen to user feedback and implement in your processes.
• Expedite grievance redressal and ensure user satisfaction.

17. Send Newsletters

In business, we often come across visitors who are potential leads but not ready to convert yet. Well, not all leads are hot but that does not mean they cannot be persuaded. Informational newsletters that keep your email list informed and updated contribute to creating value for individuals. With authoritativeness, the potential leads often turn into paying clients:

• Keep it short and informative.
• Ensure newsletters are sent periodically. Once a month is sufficient for most businesses.
• Redirect to relevant blogs and landing pages through the newsletters.
• Take feedback about the helpfulness of the newsletters and adapt accordingly.

Conclusion

So having learnt all about how to get clients for your online business, it should help you streamline the lead generation strategies. Note, we mentioned organic strategies for lead generation. The idea is to create informed and valuable relationships between the customer and a business that always helps in producing long-term connections.

If you think we missed a point or have a new idea to contribute, let us know in the comments below!

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the best way to get clients?

Some of the best ways to get clients are to have a thorough perception of the target group and cater to their pain points through your products and services.

2. How do I get my first clients?

The first few clients are always vital to creating a good reputation in the market. For B2B businesses, referrals are a common way to start with your first client. Ask friends and family to recommend your product and services to their network. Alternatively, you may also post ads on personal and professional social media handles to generate enquiries and land you the first client.

3. How can I attract clients online?

Attracting clients online can be done through both organic and paid channels. Organic channels include social media posts and search engine optimization through relevant keywords in your industry. Paid channels include social media ads and PPC allowing you to connect with customers interested in your services.

4. How do I get my first B2B customer?

You may send personalized cold emails to prospective clients and foster a relationship with them. The goal is to aspire to deliver value unto the client to ensure sustainable client acquisition.

5. What is the client first rule?

Client first rule is always to keep in mind the best interest of the client as a means to improve customer satisfaction through high quality product and services.