(This is a guest blog post by Kevin Jordan, a trusted partner and referral source for Third Marble.)

Before you spend one more penny on lead generation tactics of any kind, read through these three tried-and-true methods for increasing your lead conversion rate.

Sometimes I can’t believe I have to mention this, but if nobody answers the phone when someone calls your business, your chances of converting a lead drop dramatically.  Unless there is something very unique indeed about your service or product (a rarity in the small business world), the person is just as likely to move on to the next business that turned up in the Google search results for whatever search they just did.  Even after years of working as a marketing consultant, I am still shocked to encounter the following on a routine basis when I call a small business:

Obviously, none of the above experiences screams “great customer service.”  The funny (or sad) thing is, frequently I will have one of the experiences I just described with a business that I know for a fact is spending money on advertising.  I guess they were just hoping that people who saw or heard their ad would call during the one hour of the day when they were available to answer the phone.  If it’s been a while since you called your own business, I highly recommend that you stop what you’re doing right now and do that to make sure that you’re not making one of the mistakes I describe above.

One very common mistake I see business owners making is using advertising to promote high-priced products or services.  I guess their mindset is that advertising is expensive, so they want to make sure that when they get a lead conversion from an ad it results in a big sale.  The problem with this approach is that someone who has never heard of your business before they see your ad doesn’t yet like or trust you, and probably won’t drop a large sum of money on your products or services without getting to know you first.

Instead of trying to make a sale in your ads, use advertising and other lead generation tactics to promote a way that people can try you out for free or at a greatly reduced cost.  This could be a free workshop, a coupon for a free service for new customers (like an oil change or a car wash for an auto shop), a free buyer’s guide or ebook, or an invitation to a free event at your store or place of business.

Be sure to have a plan in place for converting people who take advantage of your free offer into long-term customers.  This is called a “sales funnel”, and it will take you a small to medium amount of time and energy to set up.  The payoff will be a dramatic increase in your lead conversion rate and much lower customer acquisition costs.

One sure-fire way to convert more leads into customers is to educate them about why they should do business with you vs your competition.  Hint: you’ll need more than a pretty logo, a cute tagline, and some variation of the message “we have the best quality, prices, and service”.  There’s a lot of different types of content you can create, but I recommend at least the following:

Once you’ve created this basic content, make sure to put it on your website, use it in your marketing materials, and reference it in your ads.  It will go a long way towards making people feel more comfortable doing business with you.

Unfortunately, as with lead generation, there is no magic bullet to increasing your lead conversion rate.  It’s a matter of doing lots of little things that, collectively, yield big results.  The important thing is that you spend time working on this area of your marketing before spending more money on lead generation in order to get a better return on your investment.

Kevin Jordan is a small business marketing consultant based in central Virginia, and the author of the soon-to-be-released book The Small Business Owner’s Guide to Local Lead Generation.   He’s also the host of the Small Business Marketing Minute Podcast, which is available on iTunes and Stitcher radio.  He is a Certified Duct Tape Marketing Consultant and specializes in helping local business owners create a rock-solid marketing strategy for their business.

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