Words: Erik Bunaes

Most business leaders aim to increase sales and keep their pipelines full. In today’s online landscape, increasing visibility and attracting new website visitors is a proven, effective strategy for generating new B2B leads and sales.

There are a range of strategies and tools available to help you target and generate new leads online. These strategies use a sophisticated mix of engaging content, informative websites, consistent email marketing, interesting social media and targeted digital advertising.

What is online lead generation?

Online lead generation (OLG) refers to the process of attracting and capturing potential customers or leads with engaging content and exclusive offers through online channels. It involves digital marketing tactics that identify and engage individuals interested in a product, service, topic, or brand.

OLG is essential for several reasons:

• Business growth: A steady stream of leads is critical for any business’s growth and success. Without regular new leads, expanding the customer base and boosting sales becomes difficult.
• Targeted audience: OLG lets businesses target specific demographics, interests or behaviours. By honing in on the right audience, companies can increase their chances of attracting qualified leads likely to convert into customers.
• Cost-effective: OLG offers a more economical approach than traditional marketing. Digital methods, such as social media, search engine optimisation (SEO), content marketing and email campaigns often deliver a higher ROI by reaching a larger audience at lower costs.
• Measurable results: OLG enables businesses to track and measure their marketing more effectively. With analytics tools, businesses can monitor campaign performance, evaluate conversion rates and make data-driven decisions to improve lead generation.
• Relationship building: OLG allows businesses to connect with potential customers early in their journey. By providing valuable content and personalised experiences, companies build trust, nurture relationships and increase the chance of converting leads into loyal customers.
• Competitive advantage: Many businesses actively use OLG strategies. By adopting effective lead-generation techniques, companies can stay ahead of competitors and reach potential customers first.

OLG supports inbound marketing—a concept particularly relevant in the commercial cleaning industry in Australia. Property managers and owners often have concerns about health, safety (including virus control), indoor air quality, productivity and compliance with Australian health standards, such as those from Safe Work Australia and the National Construction Code.

When it comes to researching complex topics like safety, indoor air quality and compliance, property managers often turn to search engines, starting their journey online. Here’s where an inbound marketing approach can make all the difference for Australian businesses.

Know your customers

What is inbound marketing? It’s a form of marketing that attracts customers by providing valuable and relevant content or experiences. It’s a form of demand generation designed to draw prospects in, unlike traditional (or outbound marketing), which pushes a particular brand, product or service.

The businesses that know their customers best will win over the long term. For Australian commercial and industrial cleaning providers, understanding customers’ challenges—such as meeting state-specific safety standards—allows them to recommend appropriate strategies and products.

Australia has a robust commercial property sector and property managers regularly seek cleaning advice and expertise. This environment creates an ideal foundation for inbound marketing and lead generation.

Target a specific audience with useful content

Before diving into lead-generation tactics, let’s revisit the trusty sales funnel, covering awareness, interest, decision and action stages. For instance, let’s say our target customers are local property managers or facility managers in Australia. By understanding their challenges, we can create targeted content on topics they care about.

An essential element of the “Awareness” stage is that customers are not yet looking for a specific brand, company or even product. They have a question, issue, or problem and go online to see what they can find. This is precisely when we want to “get found.”

Google data from Australia shows an increase in searches related to “commercial cleaning services” and “office cleaning” in the past year, suggesting that demand is growing. Property managers and owners look for reliable cleaning providers who understand Australian standards. By focusing on these needs and using location-specific SEO tactics, we can create engaging content that draws these potential customers to our website.

Attracting leads

Once we have identified our target audience, the next step is to create content that attracts interest. Here are three ways to do so online:

1. Search engines: By optimising content to rank on search engines like Google, we can capture organic traffic.
2. Digital advertising: Ads can target specific demographics, ensuring that our message reaches the right people.
3. Social media: Creating engaging social media content allows us to reach and interact with potential customers directly.

If our content and messaging are on target, we can illuminate a need/issue related to the office environment to the point where a property manager decides they must do something about it. What step do we want this manager to take next? Perhaps click the link on search engine results, advertisements or social posts?

Where does the link go?

Does the link take the reader to a blog post, article, landing page or website? Wherever the link takes the visitor, there should be a logical, well-defined path leading the visitor through a process of learning about the issue (potential liability) and offering clear next steps for some type of “special offer.”

In this situation, an “offer” can be anything of value to the customer. It’s not necessarily a “deal.” Access to a video, article, checklist or other resource is available. This “offer” must be valuable enough that the customer will trade their contact information for access.

The use of video at this stage is beneficial. Abundant research shows the benefits of using video during this “conversion” process. Plus, there should be a contact form to collect contact information and request (or better yet schedule online) a call or ask questions. This is part of what should be an ongoing, continuous process of building your company’s email list.

This “special offer” process should be designed to take the visitor through an online process to collect contact information, schedule a call and connect to someone to facilitate a solution (perhaps a review of existing cleaning contracts or a visit to the premises to review needs).

Generating and capturing leads

After attracting potential customers, the goal is to guide them through an easy conversion process. This is where email marketing, especially automated email series, can work wonders. In fact, a well-crafted email campaign can generate significant ROI for Australian businesses.

Did you know that 77% of the ROI of email marketing comes from targeted, automated emails?

Tracking and measuring performance

Australian companies can use tools like Google Analytics, SEMrush, and Hootsuite to track and measure campaign success. Analysing data enables improvements to content, targeting and creative assets. Regular performance assessments ensure that our efforts align with customer needs and industry trends.

Improving campaign performance

Our marketing model includes these steps:

1. Website: This serves as the central hub of communication.
2. Optimisation: Ensuring our website is SEO-friendly helps us attract the right audience.
3. Communications: Using channels like websites, social media and email to keep customers informed.
4. Campaigns: Promotional campaigns capture new customers and engage existing ones.
5. Analysis: Analysing user data enables us to refine and improve our campaigns continually.

After analysis, we return to the website optimisation phase to apply insights, making ongoing improvements that yield better results over time.

Keep customers’ needs in focus

Given the complexity of regulatory and operational risks in Australia, particularly within the cleaning industry, our customers continue to seek reliable information to make informed decisions. By keeping our customers’ needs front and centre, we can position ourselves as a trusted resource and ultimately attract more buyers for our services.

About the author:

Erik Bunaes is president of Endorphin® Digital Marketing, a professional speaker/trainer for Constant Contact, and an adjunct professor of marketing at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York.

Photo by Kindel Media on Pexels.