Home Business for Women - Inspiration and Advice

Generate Qualified Leads

Irrespective of the kind of home based business you want to pursue, it is crucial that you set yourself up for success from the onset. That's why you should make it your top priority to have high-quality leads. However, lead generation is not just about spamming complete strangers with 'buy my product' messages; you have to do it with tact if you want to succeed at it. How exactly should you go about this? Here is how:

You don't have to wait until the product is ready for launch before you can start talking to your potential customers. The earlier you know what they want, their past experiences, their specific problems, and their worst fears, the easier it becomes for you to design the most suitable products for your target market.

Here are some steps you can take:

· Utilize Social Media

Start a thread on relevant internet forums. Search 'work at home forums' or related keywords on Google and social media groups on LinkedIn, Google+, Facebook, etc. You could even try searching for popular hashtags on Twitter.

As the discussions begin, you can throw in the business ideas you want to pursue one after the other starting with the last on the list up to the one at the top. Doing this will help you eliminate ideas that are unfeasible and keep the highly rated ideas. You can locate relevant forums where your targeted customers are online and ask their opinions about the products and services you are about to launch and how well they think it can meet the particular need you wish to address. This approach will help you know what is not good enough to solve the problem before you put your money and time into developing that idea into a business.

Focus on talking about the problem you wish to address, why there is a need for a solution, and how what you offer can be a great solution to the problem. If you have a blog or have access to someone who runs a popular blog in your niche, you can publish a post on the same issue and go through the comments to see what most people are saying on the negative. The criticisms and negative comments will help you know the weaknesses of your products and services possibly have and areas you can improve before making your products and services available for the market.

Taking this approach will also help you start gathering contacts of potential customers and talking with them to know what their specific needs and worries are even before you release what you have for them in the market.

Having your website or blog will help you get the best results from this. Such a platform will also help you sharpen your communication skills and the quality of your customer care services. At this stage, you don't need to focus much on selling your product/services. Pay attention to providing relevant information to your potential customers. Start an online discussion that will endear you to your target customers to keep them anticipating the launch of your product. You can also find potential employees and partners from such platforms, as you will have people with varied levels of experiences and skills following the discussions.

You can have a page on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn with a link to your site on those pages. Design slides of what you offer with PowerPoint, make videos where applicable and share them along with relevant posts. This way, you would have already gained some trust and strong followership before the official launch of your product.

· Have a convincing landing page

If any of the followers on social media want to know more about the product or expresses interest in becoming a customer, your site's landing page should be comprehensive. It should explain in details how the product is the best solution to the problem it is designed to address as well as how it has the edge over every other product designed to meet that same need in the market.

You can hire an experienced copywriter on Upwork.com, Fiverr.com, Freelancer.com and various other marketplaces to help you with this, as this will ensure you have a landing page that will turn visitors into customers. Your call to action has to sound as convincing and captivating as possible. It should leave a ringing note in the mind of everyone who reads and keeps them thinking about your product until they purchase it. Have you got an active landing page? Please comment on this.

· Find time to check on your potential customers

I already talked about this in passing but let me do it again here:

Find a creative way of capturing the contacts of every potential customer who has indicated a keen interest in your product, and take time to talk to them about the problem they have, how the product will address their issues, and clear all doubts they may have about the product.

You can call them, send them an email or chat them on various instant messengers, e.g., on Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, Snapchat, etc. if they don't have a problem with this approach. If they live near you, you can further strengthen the bond and trust by making out time to visit them in their homes or preferred locations. Remember the important thing is to create a relationship that will last long.

If you are going to use email to contact your leads to nurture them to become paying customers, you need to learn the ins and outs of email marketing. Remember I stated that you could not afford not to start capturing people's emails/contacts as early as when you start. Even if you don't know how you will convert these to customers, collect those emails religiously.

Let's discuss how you can build your mailing list. I will cover that in the next chapter.

Looking forward to seeing you there on this coming Friday.

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