In the past 5 years, as a part of my overall mandate, I was the leader of demand generation for a large business house with a focus on solving problems for small businesses using technology. At the beginning, we were very cautious with respect to where we spent money.
In this context, we tried multiple types of lead generation activities with zero cost. What I want to write here is a distillation of my learnings from all these years and the refined processes that really work. It is possible for a small business to generate quality leads with almost zero spends.
However, as a disclaimer, there is no such thing as a free lunch. There will be a lot of groundwork that is needed to build a foundation which will enable a small business to generate leads for free over time.
How can a small business generate leads?
Small businesses have many techniques they can use to generate leads without using too many resources. Most of these approaches require dedicated mental bandwidth dedicated by the business owner. Business owners need to master the art of targeting the right customer by using the right lead generation strategy for each type of customer.
Lets understand the broad types of leads that small businesses will end up using
Leads with intent : These are leads of potential customers who have indicated an intent or “active interest” for the specific product or service being offered by the business. The key here is the “customer intent”, which gets captured when a customer leaves a phone number or an email ID in a form either physical or online with the company during any of the interactions.
Leads without intent: This is a lead where you have only the contact information of the potential customer, these are also called in general parlance as “cold leads” where customers have not indicated any “intent” in buying your product or service.
Now small business owners have many sources of generating leads without spending any money, some of them will give you high intent leads while others will give you just contact information of potential customers or cold leads which you will have to proactively engage with.
Lets look at some of the sources of lead generation that a small business can use that does not cost much money.
What sources of lead generation can small businesses use?
This section gives you an overview of the sources of leads that a business can rely on if they are on a tight budget and do not want to spend any money. This list of leads generally carry more than 85% of all the volume of free leads that any business can possibly generate.
- Organic Search leads – These are driven by search engine optimisation of your website and the primary driver is the content that you put on your website. The leads driven by SEO generally have high intent and dont cost anything once the content is in place. They work well for both business to business leads, business to consumer leads as well as hyper local leads.
- Local business associations – These are very useful for business to business leads, where you can usually find a pdf document of all the member businesses of a local association. The leads from such a source is free, but they dont have any intent. These will be cold leads, that you as a business will have to nurture.
- Social media pages – As a business owner, depending on your sector, you should have presence across social media channels such as LinkedIn, Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram and facebook as a part of your broader digital marketing strategy. Creating accounts here are free, you will need to invest time and effort to build and audience by adding value to the platform through these pages. Leads that you generate here will be intent leads. We will cover more of this later on in the article.
- Google Maps & Google business listings – This again is a great way to generate free leads from a business to business context in a hyper local setting. There are tools that can extract these business listings and move them to a spreadsheet or a CRM so that your sales teams can work on them.
- Email Lists – One of the most underrated practices which many businesses do not use wisely to generate good quality and high intent leads. Work on building an email list using a lead magnet. Over a long term, a well nurtured email list can be a powerful free lead source for your business.
- In Person meeting and networking – Get involved in your niche as a business, meet other business owners with the intention of knowledge sharing and building a like minded community. This will evolve into a great strategy that will drive two of the most powerful free lead generation strategies
- Word of Mouth marketing
- Referral leads
The above mentioned sources of leads are the ones that carry most of the volume of free leads for a small business. There are other ninja techniques such as using whatsapp but those require a pre-existing network to work or can end up costing money if you use business accounts.
How can businesses build a strategy to generate leads without spending money?
Small businesses need to identify the right set of strategies to generate consistently increasing volume of high quality and free leads. The main principle that the small business should keep in mind is this “how can you attract customers to your business“. Once you adopt this mindset which is a “pull” based targeting of potential customers, you will be on the direction to organically acquire leads over the long term.
There are broadly 4 strategies that i have seen which work while generating leads without spending any money. Anyone can throw a billion dollars at ads and promotion, but the taps go dry once the money runs out.
The four strategies that small businesses can use to generate leads for free are
- Content based strategy
- Advocacy and influence based strategy
- Using controversy for rapid growth as a strategy
- External validation to drive growth as a strategy
Among these strategies, for any small business, the most sustainable, highest return of investment is in the content based strategy to generate relevant high quality leads for by not investing any money. I am an advocate of combining the content based strategy along with SEO to develop a solid organic lead generation machine.
Advocacy and influence based approach is where a business, genrates leads by building an authority over a specific fic industry. The business owner or the brand aspires to become known for a specifc role in the sector. This is difficult for smaller businesses to do since it involves some amount of brand building and networking.
Using controversy is a label I give to anyone who aspires to have a viral piece of content that gains a few million views and reactions within a matter of hours. I use the word “controversy” since usually the viral content has a bit of click-bait or has something that evokes a powerful emotion in others, usually having both positive and negative reactions. As a small business, it would be wise to avoid this strategy unless you are in show-biz.
External validation is a strategy i refer to when a small business relies on an external signal to boost the business’s visibility which drives potential customers as leads. These signals can be in the form of awards, recognitions, being a keynote speaker in conferences and networking events. The goodness of these factors are limited and warrant a significant investment of time and energy to get results.
Creating content as a strategy for generating effective free leads
Lets do a deep dive into “Content as a strategy” for generating free leads of high quality. Content is a term that is generally used in marketing circles. Lets define that into long form written content or just ‘long form’, video content and creative pieces or ‘creatives’ which are used for promotions as infographics.
The most powerful content strategy is to use long form content and videos to educate your target audience about your business, the problems you solve and how your targets customers will benefit. The most common manner in which this long form content is delivered is in the form of blog posts.
This one of the key reasons why you find a ‘blog‘ section in business websites. The most fundamental way in which this works is where once you have a lot of blog pages in your website, you website will contain information that can be retrieved for anyone who is searching for that information.
When i refer to ‘searching’ i mean any potential customer who is searching for something on the internet.
Lets look at why this is such a powerful way to generate free leads for any small business.
Consider your blog post as a single page in a book, which is part of a chapter and many such chapters make up a book. Your book is present in a library where the librarian knows whats is in every page of every book.
When a potential customer walks in and asks the librarian for some information, she would pick up a book that covers that topic most comprehensively and give it to the customer. In this case, the book would be your website and the librarian is the search engine like Google.
The best lead is the one that comes of its own accord with a very high interest to buy something because the customer already has a need. When you get discovered for a search on the internet, you are being presented to the customer as the best option for that product.
This is why, every business, who wants to grow sustainably over the long term, should definitely look at having an organic lead strategy that is built on top of a content strategy which is ‘optimised’ for discovery on search engines.
This optimised term is the last term of the phrase search engine optimisation. Its a field of practice for marketeers who optimise web pages for the best possible ranking on search engines. Lets take a deeper dive there.
How can a company create free leads from search engine optimisation effectively?
As a pre-curser to SEO, any small business must have a website, you should explore everything you need to do as a small business to build a good website.
Search engine optimisation and organic leads carry almost 50% of all the ‘free’ leads volume for any business so this is a topic that one cannot ignore. I am not an expert on search engine optimisation (SEO) but i do know experts and those experts have created courses that will help you master SEO.
SEO has many aspects that you need to learn, i am covering some of the key areas that any business or business owner should have a competency in if they aspire to generate free leads for the rest of their lives.
- Keyword research (or) search query analysis – look at what people are searching for, in terms of topics related to your product, write content for articles where your business can rank well
- Optimise the content – ensure that you have enough representation of your key words or contextual terms on the pages you are putting up on your website
- Give a good user experience on your website – Make sure your website is clean, not cluttered and that visitors will have an easy time finding what they want
- Publish content regularly – I cannot stress this enough. You need to publish content as frequently as possible to ensure that search engines recognise your website as a fresh source of information
- Get your business website featured in other sources – Get sources to link to your to your website which is an external signal of trust and authority.
Once you get all these factors implemented and optimised on your website, what you will see is an organic flow of search traffic to your website over time. As your rankings in google organic search increases over time, the number of people visiting your website increases.
You can capitalise these organic visitors to your platform using a lead form, where interested customers could leave their details and you could funnel these to your sales teams.
Leveraging digital marketing techniques to make yourself known in your niche
As a small business in search of leads, putting in place a solid digital marketing strategy and implementing the following techniques is key to drive consistent leads that don’t cost any money. Not implementing the below techniques will force you to pay for sponsored ads to drive leads across google and social media platforms.
Some of the below techniques are essential for a small business to build an online presence which will drive leads free of cost for the business.
- Marketing your online content via social media – As you put effort into building content, get the same content shared with your audience via social media for effective lead generation. For instance, if you have a good “how-to article” written on your blog, share a summary along with links on all your social media handles.
- Collaborate with influencers – As counterintuitive as it sounds, influencers are ‘looking’ for influencing opportunities. Partner with an influencer in your sector to contribute to their content to leverage their captive audience as an effective free lead generation opportunity.
- Host webinars or online events – This is is extremely effective lead generation tactic when paired with email marketing. use your email list to send out invites to ‘exclusive’ online events that you are hosting. Many video platforms today allow for a form to be shared during the presentation which is a good way to collect leads for free from the attendees.
- Engage in online communities – Communities such as Quora and Reddit have communities related to your business. Sign up with your business name as an alias and contribute to answering people’s questions. Direct folks over to your product page on your website and use it as a lead generation tool.
- Get yourself interviewed on a podcast – Podcasting is a great learning tool, but not a great discovery tool. Look for podcast hosts who have a fairly large audience who regularly tune in and ask for an opportunity to get yourself interviewed. This is a great lead generation tactic to tap into a new audience.
As a business owner who is looking for effective lead generation strategies while not spending money, choose your battles wisely since each of the methods described above require a consistent commitment of time.
Build authority by guest blogging to get to your target audience
Guest blogging or writing a guest post on another website is a great way to tap into an existing audience of another website. You should consider requesting another business that is related to your business, but does not compete with you to give you an opportunity to write about your business.
This way, you can put out a great piece of content on a preferably larger website that has a higher ‘authority’ and tap into their audience. Doing this with a larger business, usually opens up more than a couple of lead generation opportunities.
Guest posting has other benefits as well, more than just lead generation
- Build authority of your own website – you link the article in your business partner’s website to your own website which lends some authority to your website, that will drive higher ogranic traffic over time
- A guest post will also introduce new visitors to your website from the website where you wrote the guest post
In order to generate leads in this manner, you need to have your website that is already doing pretty decently in terms of organic traffic.
Can a business generate leads for free if they engage on social media?
Social media marketing has got a lot of hype over the past many years and a lot of larger companies and businesses have dedicated social media marketing teams that spend a lot of money to promote their brands.
In this crowded and competitive space, is there really an opportunity for a small business to generate leads?
Think of social media as a tool to build a community of potential customers and listen to their problems and provide solutions. A lot of big brands throw money into the ring just to become a one-way channel for putting out their brand promotions.
Do the opposite, use social media to listen to your customers. Connect with them where its easy for them to access you. Use it as a platform to share something of value with your potential customers.
Create a small business lead pipeline by building a target audience on social media
A friend of mine who runs a store retailing kitchen appliances & equipment uses facebook communities related to baking and cooking to share tricks and tips to use some of the most common appliances and equipment that he retails.
He also does free giveaways of some appliances during festive occasions to potential customers who provide innovative ideas while filling up a contest form. He smartly uses this contest form to build a potential customer pipeline.
Ho does not immediate reach out to those who fill out the forms, instead, he sends them greetings for a couple of seasons and build ‘positive engagements’ with them. He ensures that he is in their consideration funnel over the due course and that for any purchase decision, he is the one they check out first through his online catalogues.
He has managed to create a very closed knit community of users who are existing customers, potential customers and those who buy repeatedly from him. He perfectly understands how a small business should build a sales funnel and capitalises on it using social media.
Create social media pages to help generate leads without paying
The most important aspect of creating social media pages is choosing which social media platform your business should be present in. If your target customers are other businesses, LinkedIn, Twitter (now X) and Youtube are probably the only platforms you need to be on. On the other hand, if your target customers are consumers, you would need to be on instagram, pinterest and facebook as well.
There are some aspects you as a small business, should consider while building pages for your social media handles.
- Provide complete information about your business – be as transparent as you can be, customers would love to know the authentic you, your story and what inspired you start your business
- Good quality content – make sure that the content you post for the initial few months are reviewed so that you are sure about its quality
- Engaging visuals and creatives – keep your audience engaged with good visuals and reels
- Include a call to action – include a CTA wherever you want potential customers to express their intent, but don’t over do it
- Integrate these platforms with a CRM – make sure that you don’t miss out on the data that customers give you, get all these integrated with your CRM
Once you have the basics in place, start engaging with your audience. This will be a slow but steady build up of trust and authority on a platform. It will take you anywhere between 6 months to 18 months for you to see some traction on these platforms to get some leads from the pages you create.
Keep at it, as your overall content strategy takes shape and as you develop more content, all channels will work in unison to start driving higher number of leads for you over time.
How to start a small business and generate leads without money
If you are a small business that has just started operations now, its the most challenging phase of your business growth to generate leads for free. It is at this stage that small business owners must look to the two most powerful, yet free of cost approaches to lead generation.
Word of Mouth
This is one of the oldest marketing tactic in the book, but not much gets written about how to practically apply this principle to a new business. In my decade plus experience of working with small business owners, I have come to a few basic steps, which become a playbook for business owners to make use of.
- Personal Promist of a great customer experience – You need to be the flag bearer personally for your business. Guarantee a great customer experience as a promise.
- Shamelessly lean on to friends and family to spread the word
- You need the help of a few ‘authority’ figures to vouch for you to your first few customers, they can be well known people in the industry or veterans in your community who have the trust of a large base of people
- Deliver what your promise
- Shamelessly ask your first set of customers to give you a testimonial, record it on video, keep it authentic, ask for feedback for improvements
- Build a broadcast list of people who like you on whatsapp and send them these testimonials
- Ask them to forward it to their friends and family
- Repeat this for the first few months till you start seeing people organically reaching out to you
Referrals
Similar to word of mouth, referrals is a powerful lead generation mechanism that relies on your ability to deliver on the promise you made to your customers. As a new business, this seldom requires any expenditure. You could forego some of your revenue by giving a referral discount but its not going to cost you anything over and above what its costs you to serve the customer.
Some of the pointers I have for small business owners to increase leads through referrals is to do the following
- Try to build a membership sales program that offers more than just your product
- Have an exclusivity factor, that will make a business owner want his friends to join
- Give non-monetray incentives like exclusive service options or first access to members
- Cultivate a sense of community across referred customers
Once you have these executed well, you will be able to watch the referral leads flow in and strengthen the community further
Frequently asked questions from many business owners
While i have covered the most practical aspects of lead generation without money, there are also some frequent questions i encounter from business owners who are on a tight budget. Almost all of them are looking for quick fixes to solve their lead generation issues.
However, a successful, low-cost lead generation strategy requires good planning, time, effort and consistency to see results. I will highlight some of the questions I get asked, but which can lead businesses astray when pursued.
Can a business really generate leads without paying money?
A business can generate leads without having to spend any money. However, a sustainable approach to lead generation requires an investment of time. Now you can add a cost to the hours you spend writing content, but that investment certainly needed. As i said in the beginning of the article, there is no free lunch.
Is there a something like a lead finder or a lead generation website?
You can find many such websites that claim to generate leads for you for free. Most of the genuine businesses that offer lead generation services, offer a trial period or offer a trial database of leads for you to contact.
What you should realise is that, what you get during the trial is usually, the most public lead data out there and the potential customers would be the ones who would be inundated with calls and emails from all sorts of businesses trying to woo them.
There is no quick fix. The best set of leads you can get is the set that you build yourself.
How do you generate low cost leads or sales leads for free?
The best way to generate leads at low cost or leads for free, is to build a long term content strategy. Use the content to rank well on search engines. Drive organic search traffic to your website and convert that organic traffic into highly effective leads with intent for your sales team.
If you are business who does business offline, build a robust referral and membership program that is effective in lead generation.
Any other approach, works well for some time, but does not have legs to go the distance. You want the lead generation program to be on autopilot as much as possible so that you can focus on acquiring and serving more customers or developing newer products and services.