Lead generation for small business: nine ways that work

The nine

1. Ask for referrals. Your happiest customers know people like them; ask, and make it easy.
2. Claim your Google Business Profile. Keep hours, photos and services accurate, and ask happy customers for reviews.
3. Be easy to find in local search. A clear page per service and area, with real details, beats a generic homepage.
4. Join social conversations. Look for posts where people ask for a recommendation in your area or category, and answer helpfully.
5. Partner with neighbours. Businesses that serve the same customers without competing can send you work.
6. Email your past customers. They already know you, and a short note with a reason to return often works.
7. Share useful content. A few honest posts or guides about the questions customers ask build trust over time.
8. Run small, targeted ads. Once you know what works, a small budget aimed at a specific audience can add to it.
9. Show up in person. Events, markets and meetups still convert, especially for local services.

Where to start

Pick two: one that costs time and one that costs nothing. Referrals and social conversations are a good pair for most small businesses, because they put you in front of people who are already asking.

Judge each by leads that turned into conversations, not by likes or visits. A weekly note of where each new enquiry came from is enough.

Social conversations in practice

Search your category plus your area on the networks your customers use, and look at the newest posts where someone asks for a recommendation. Reply quickly and name your area. If you want to collect those people into a list and keep a record, that is what Avocado Leads does for you.

What to measure

Review once a month and drop whatever has not produced a conversation in three months. Put the freed time into the method that is working.

• Where each new enquiry came from, noted the day it arrives.
• How many enquiries turned into a conversation, and how many of those turned into a customer.
• How long each method takes you per week. A method that brings two good customers for an hour of work beats one that brings ten poor leads for ten hours.
• Which questions customers ask most. They are your next post, your page headings and your reply templates.

Where Avocado Leads fits

Avocado Leads does the collecting, ranking and pacing part of this work. You paste a post, a profile or a search, and it saves the people who commented, reacted, followed or match, then scores each person from 0 to 100 on buying language, how recently they were active, how well they fit your business and how reachable they are.

It then runs a paced follow or connect campaign from your own signed-in browser, with a message after where the platform allows one. It never asks for your social passwords, and it keeps to hourly, daily, weekly and monthly caps for each network. The limits that come with each platform are on the platforms page, and the safety page explains what it will not do.

Questions people ask