One of the challenges facing most organisations today is making their presence felt in today’s hyper-competitive market.

Start-up companies, as well as established ones, are all tasked with capturing the interest of potential clients to generate a sales pipeline for their products and services and with the abundance of activity and options out there for companies, getting your message through is increasingly more difficult.

To effectively attract and retain customers to your business, the following are the most important things to understand for effective lead generation.

1. Content

Most people today are looking for more information to sharpen their skills in their field of expertise. Therefore, to get them to your website, you need to generate enough useful content on your website, blogs, newsletters and eBooks among others.

Consumers of the information will develop enough trust with you and likely to trade with you. In generating the content, it is important to focus on what the audience needs. Make your content valuable by minimizing the content about yourself and your products. Give accurate and factual information to build credibility.

In generating the content, it is important to have an organizational goal. Usually, the primary goal should be educating your visitors with valuable information so that they can eventually make a purchase.

2. Social Media

According to research by Statistics Portal, the world currently has 2.34 billion active social network users. This forms a large chunk of potential clients to your organisation, and you need to put your organisation on the network to reach out to people.

However, when putting your organisation on social media, there are several things to consider to make it more effective. Here are some of the basics:

• Use the right channels: Putting your business or organisation on the social network does not mean you put it on every site. Select the right channels which you will effectively manage. To begin with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are some good examples.
• Be up to date and active: Don’t have stale content on your site. Keep updating your clients on important things relevant to your business and of importance to them. This will attract more followers to your page and consequently to your business. Also keep engaging your clients with questions and discussions to keep your account active. Request for feedback about your products and services and be prompt to respond to your client's questions on the social sites.
• Share with the right audience: Choose the platforms that have the highest number of your potential audience and share the relevant content with them. Therefore, it is important to familiarize yourself with various social media platforms to identify where most of your target audience lay.
• Make your social page attractive.

3. Branding

Whether online or offline a strong brand is key to generating leads to your organization.

Your brand tells the audience who you are, your beliefs and your unique values. Customers like dealing with real and authentic companies: companies that hold a clear mission and send a strong, consistent message to all their marketing platforms. So companies should not try to become everything to everyone. Customers look for experts in their field.

A strong brand attracts partners, employees and most significantly audiences to your organisation. Therefore, engage in communicating your brand and this will serve as an important lead to your business.

4. Customer Referrals

Existing customers are an asset to any business.

Happy customers, promoters in inbound marketing speak, will also pull their friends and relatives towards your business. An existing customer knows you well and what you offer and knows what the prospect customer requires.  New customers are most likely to assume the trust your old customers have for your organisation, and this saves time to build trust with the new clients.

The key to having constant customer referrals is treating your customers with value and engaging them in valuable post-sale communication, for example, requesting for their views on a particular product or service, taking part in charitable activities to interact with your customers. Aftersales services are also necessary to make customers trust your brand and recommend it to others.

Lead generation remains fundamental in doing business, and the above pillars provide the structural framework for effective lead generation.

Careful consideration of the pillars will not only generate flow to your business but will retain your existing clients and keep your organization competitive.