Lead generation is essential for the success of every business as it allows you to organically grow your enterprise and gain new loyal customers. Because of the same reasons, lead generation should represent an integral part of every e-commerce business strategy. However, unlike other businesses, lead generation in e-commerce has some specific characteristics that have to be taken into account in order to maximize its efficiency and build a cohesive lead generation strategy that will bring you the results you want. So, to help you out, today we are going to take a look at the four most effective lead generation strategies for e-commerce business.

1. Focus on your website

The most crucial aspect for lead generation in every e-commerce business is your website. Everything else, including your digital marketing and content generation, is just there to get customers to your website. However, the only way to make sure lead generation is fulfilling its purpose is by ensuring your website is in the top-notch state. There are many factors that go into making a great website, but let’s start with the most obvious one – its design. Studies have shown that around 38% of users will stop engaging with your website if its design is unattractive, which is a huge waste of potential customers. Because of this, you should put in a lot of effort to make sure the design of your website is constantly being improved and updated to the latest trends and standards. 

2. Experiment with non-traditional methods for your industry

Every business area that existed for some amount of time has certain ways in which they conduct business. For example, the oil and gas extraction industry traditionally used to sell and market their products through sales representatives that used to engage with potential customers directly. This is because most components they sell are highly-priced and need to be adjusted with the needs of a specific customer. However, recently, they’ve started to shift their perspective and started embracing new non-traditional lead generation and sales methods, even beginning to sell oilfield equipment online. Furthermore, this allowed them to engage with new potential customers and substantially increase their lead generation. Following this example, you should look to integrate new methods and ideas into your business niche that will help you generate leads that may not have been tried out before. 

3. Build up your social media presence

When it comes to generating leads in the modern world, there’s nothing quite as effective as the power of social media. Pretty much everyone is on social media nowadays and what makes it even better is that it allows you to easily reach out to new potential customers who you may not have been able to find through more traditional ways of lead generation. This is especially true for e-commerce, as people are only a few clicks away from doing business with you.

To get the most out of social media, you should aim to utilize all of the big platforms to your advantage in order to have the biggest reach. With that being said, if you don’t have any social media presence at the moment, it may be smarter to pick one platform to focus on at the beginning, which you will then be able to use to grow your followers on the rest of them. You should start by adding all of your social media links to your website and making sure you constantly remind people to follow you in all of your business interactions. It’s important to mention that building up a social media following is a process that will definitely take some time, so you have to be patient and keep putting in effort until you start seeing results.

4. Make use of email

While a lot of businesses do use it, email is an often neglected method for lead generation that is fantastic for e-commerce businesses. Essentially it’s all about delivering the right message to the right people and making sure you aren’t too spammy with your emails. Build up an email list and slowly build the relations with your contacts that you will later be able to turn into customers. Email automation is outmatched when it comes to making the most out of email lead generation as it can help you save a lot of time and provide you with the help needed when trying to reach a lot of customers. Email is even greater when paired with discounts and special deals you can offer your customers. Just remember how many times you have been tempted to go and buy something online when an email with a special discount has appeared in your inbox. In fact, discounts, in general, are a great way to generate more leads as they offer more value to your customers and can serve as a great reward system to entice more people into your business. 

Conclusion

While there are many strategies you can follow to help you increase your lead generation, at the end of the day as an e-commerce business, the most important thing you should always strive to do is to instil trust in your customers, both current and prospective. All in all, trust is the foundation of e-commerce and if you aren’t trustworthy, all of your plans to generate leads won’t bring you any results.