11 Lead Generation Strategies for Technology Companies – For Every Budget

You have a great technology company with awesome products and services, but you’re looking for ways to generate more leads. You could just start plastering your business name and logo everywhere you can think of, but there are more effective ways to use your budget and create leads. Here are 11 strategies for technology companies with various budget options to help you with your lead generation for your business.

1. Free trials

Everyone knows what free trials are, and they can be an effective form of lead generation. Trials are particularly well suited for technology because of their highly digital nature. For the consumer, free trials eliminate risk and answer questions. For you, it can lead to a high conversion rate and have a low cost.

Consumers like to know that a product will meet their needs before spending money on it, especially if it’s expensive or has a recurring cost. Potential customers can use a free trial to find answers to any questions and remove worries about the product as they receive hands-on experience.

The more someone uses a product during a trial, the more likely they will purchase it once the trial is over. They have already worked their way through a large part of the learning curve that comes with new products, decided they like what you’re offering, and found a need for it in their life. If the consumers like their experience, they're more likely to convert.

Free trials are an investment strategy

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On your end, you know that people who sign up for a free trial are highly interested in your product. By removing their fears and reservations and reducing their risk through a free trial, you’ll likely have a high conversion rate from users to customers. This is also a relatively low-cost strategy, especially if you don't have to send a physical item.

Another benefit of offering a free trial is that this can be a good time to collect information on leads with high interest. You can use this insight to provide further information on your current or future products.

If you offer a free trial, one important thing to consider is how long the trial will last. If the trial is too short, consumers are less likely to be converted, but they might not feel a need to buy your product if the trial is too long. As you decide how long the free trial will run, consider your product’s purpose and the time it will likely take to become familiar with it.

2. Landing pages

If you have an offer for people interested in your product (or service), there should be a link that takes them to a landing page. This could be a free trial or a form to gather users’ information—sometimes in exchange for information from you like a book or webinar. A landing page is a highly focused page just for that offer, so if you have multiple offers for consumers, you should have multiple landing pages.

Make sure your landing page is ready to do its best work by making it clean and simple. Since it should only have one purpose, let that purpose shine with a clear call-to-action. Whether your landing page is a click-through for potential customers or a form to gather information, that should be the only interaction a person finds on that landing page. Relevant information about that specific offer is great; other information and distractions are not.

With a clean design and clear message, your landing page is almost ready to go. However, it needs to be user-friendly in as many aspects as possible to have the greatest impact. A few other things to look at are how fast the page loads and whether it’s mobile optimized. More and more people are working on mobile devices, so you want to make sure both mobile and desktop users will have equally amazing experiences. Due to the different formats, this doesn’t always mean they will have the same experience. It’s up to you to make sure both experiences are enjoyable.

Collecting information on a landing page

If your landing page has a form to fill out, consider what information you’re gathering with that form. A name and contact information are always a good start. You might also want to know how the person found your company or this offer. If you’re marketing more to businesses than individuals, it might be beneficial to know what company this person works for and their position.

Gathering too much information makes the form more challenging for your potential customer, while not gathering enough information can hurt your efforts to learn about and reach potential customers. The cost of a good landing page doesn’t have to be a lot — it greatly depends on who designs and builds the page. Regardless of how you get your page, make sure it has a good design with a single focus to get the best results.

3. Referral program

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to generate leads. Part of this is because of the built-in trust that comes when you learn about something from someone you know. Referred customers are also more likely to be regular customers instead of one-time customers.

Referral programs are also a low-budget option. It doesn’t cost your company anything to have a happy customer tell a friend about you. While not always word of mouth, referral programs are a way to encourage customers to share about your product with others.

The basis of most referral programs is rewarding existing customers for referring people who become new customers. Many programs reward both parties, helping entice those referred to make a purchase. Ideally, referral programs are easy for customers to use, and they allow you to see and track the benefits of those referrals.

Happy customers are your best marketing tool

As you build a referral program, you want to keep it simple for both you and your customers. You can make it easy for customers to refer your company to others by having a referral page with a link. This makes it easy to share with others since you’ve created what to share. It’s also beneficial to follow up with referrals — whether they're current customers, you have asked to give referrals, or people referred to you by current customers.

Another beneficial move is encouraging your customers to refer multiple people. Three is often a nice number because it’s attainable for your customers and can create a lot of reach for your company. Since you build the referral program, you can determine what kind of rewards people get and how many referrals they must make before getting those rewards.

Reviews have many of the same benefits as referrals. They're another way to gain potential customers’ trust and business. Asking for reviews not only gives you something to share from the voice of your customers, but it can also be a way for you to learn what your customers like and value about you and your products. When you get reviews, make them visible to others and consider using them as testimonials on your website for specific products.

4. Surveys

Many lead generation strategies let potential customers grow acquainted with you and your products. It’s also important to know the people interested in what you offer. Surveys are a prime opportunity to learn about your current and prospective customers.

Surveys can allow you to gather contact information, learn about your audience, learn about problems you might be able to solve, and discover their interests in your products. As you learn about the problems and challenges other people and businesses face, you can also get ideas for new products and services. You can send out your surveys through email or share them via social media, and you should have a link for them on your website.

Elements of a survey

Creating user-friendly surveys is critical. If people who see them lose interest due to poor design, you’ll lose potentially valuable information. Surveys should have a strong visual design, be simple to complete, and be relatively short. Once you know those taking the surveys are committed to giving feedback, you can make them longer if there is reason to. Regardless of the length, sharing an approximate completion time gives users an idea of what to expect. This helps users remain open to taking your survey.

There are a few things to keep in mind regarding the actual survey questions. The most beneficial responses will come from open-ended questions. Usually, it’s beneficial to ask questions about what people need or are looking for rather than about your company and your products. This way, you can learn about people’s problems and create ways to solve them instead of just learning about your own product.

You can create surveys and distribute them on your own or outsource the task to a company specializing in conducting surveys. How you choose to conduct your survey will influence the project’s cost, though either option will tend to be on the lower end of lead generation costs.

5. Social marketing

Social media is becoming more and more popular, and there is a wide variety of social media channels. By utilizing social media for marketing and lead generation, you can get your information in front of many new people extending your reach. While social media can be a great way to expand your reach, there are some things to keep in mind so that your efforts have the greatest impact.

When using social media marketing, the biggest thing to keep in mind is to be where your audience is. Not all social media is created equal, and while there isn’t an overall better or worse media, some social media will be better for you to focus your efforts on. Different social platforms have different purposes and attract different users. By determining what platforms your target audience uses, you can target your marketing efforts to the platforms that’ll provide the greatest returns.

Hooking your audience on social media

No matter what content you’re creating for social media, it’s vital to remember that it must grab attention and make a point quickly. People have short attention spans, and they seem to be getting shorter. If you don’t grab your viewer’s attention quickly or you fail to keep their interest, they will move on to the next thing in their feed – they might not even stop for what you have to share. You need to convince viewers that your content is worth their time to stop and look.

Most social platforms have lead ads you can use that are platform-specific. Lead ads can help target individuals who might be interested in your company or products. By using lead ads, you not only get your information in front of many people, but you (hopefully) get it seen by many people who are likely to find it of interest.

Choosing to use lead ads on social platforms can increase the cost of your lead generation, though when done well, it comes with a higher engagement rate. Another beneficial thing to consider with social media marketing is personalizing your content or ads to your viewers.

6. Video marketing

Videos grab people’s attention. They work well in various places, including social media and your website, even as part of a landing page. Videos are an easy way for users to consume information, and they can utilize more of a viewer’s senses than writing or graphics alone. They're also phenomenal for showing how a product works. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video is a treasure trove since it’s a collection of pictures that work together.

Who the videos are for

Based on your topic and who you’re catering your videos to, you can make them long or short while still being effective and keeping attention. If your viewers are closer to the top of your sales, funnel a short introductory video is more likely to do well, whereas viewers further down the funnel may be more likely to invest their time in a longer video.

Top-of-funnel prospects are also more likely to watch a video than read an article due to videos’ easy and engaging natures. While many people enjoy video content, some people prefer written content. One way to cater to both groups is to have transcripts of your videos. Another way is to use both written and video formats for the same content. You can do this by incorporating both in the same post or creating two separate posts, one for each type of content, and allowing them to cover similar material.

You don’t have to create written and video content as two separate posts simultaneously. Taking previously written content and repurposing it for a video is a great way to benefit from the content you already have. One benefit of repurposing old content is you know what your viewers are most interested in, so you can invest your time, money, and effort into material that’ll benefit you and your prospective customers.

Video marketing will be on the higher end of budgets previously discussed in this list; however, the high engagement rate with videos can make the cost worthwhile to businesses.

7. Webinars

One of the amazing and unique benefits of webinars is the interaction between providers and consumers. A webinar is an online event where a presenter speaks to a group. The audience is often encouraged to ask questions or engage with interactive tools. This immediate interaction allows you and your possible customers to interact straightforwardly, something not often found in lead generation.

Webinars tend to be mutually beneficial. You get to develop and strengthen relationships, nurture leads, gain trust, and gather data, and the participants get to create connections, build their trust in you, and learn new information. These can also be pretty quick to put together, creating a way to generate and confirm leads with a short turnaround time.

By having participants register for a webinar, you can gather information on people interested in specific topics. As you track who attends your webinars, you can confirm who is most interested in what you have to share. As you share information and interact with participants, they will also learn who you are and be more likely to remember you in the future. Their trust in you will grow through these interactions, making them more likely to convert into customers. In addition to building trust, you also become a leader in participants’ minds. You’re someone who they can turn to for answers.

Why people love webinars

Participants often benefit from the ability to ask questions and receive immediate responses. People frequently use webinars to educate by giving instructions or demonstrations, so receiving immediate feedback can be valuable to many participants. This also makes webinars a great option for teaching about programs and services. Attendees can ask questions about the product and demonstrate the answers, allowing them to see the process.

Because of the close interaction webinars provide, they help create new leads and convert existing leads. By following up with participants, you can continue building a relationship with them and nurture those leads. You also have the option to record your webinars and post them for people to watch later, allowing the event to continue generating leads after it’s over.

8. Exit pop-ups

As a visitor to your website gets ready to leave, you can gather their contact information and send them more content later. These exit pop-ups can take many forms and have benefits over other pop-ups, though it’s possible to gather this information in various ways and times.

There are many reasons visitors will leave your website, and while not all visitors will want to come back (or share their contact information with you), those who choose to engage in your exit pop-ups are more likely to become customers. This is a fairly simple lead generation strategy that requires little work on your part and continues to provide results for a long time.

You can design exit pop-ups to target visitors in many ways, so put in the effort to make them engaging and friendly. You can offer a discount, a service such as a newsletter, or a reminder that visitors have items in their cart. You can create an exit pop-up relevant to your consumers by considering your website and viewers. These pop-ups can come in various styles, including full-page pop-ups or a small banner that allows visitors to continue viewing your page.

Avoid the long goodbye

Make sure to keep the design clean and simple. Since your visitor has already indicated they're ready to leave, you want your call to action (CTA) to be short and straightforward so that you’re not creating unnecessary work or inconvenience for your visitor. Just like with in-person situations, you want to consider those you’re reaching out to.

Many people find pop-ups inconvenient or intrusive, but there are ways to make your pop-ups less intrusive while still being effective. By having pop-ups happen as an exit action rather than arbitrarily, you allow your visitor to enjoy visiting your site rather than constantly intruding on them. By allowing your visitors to enjoy their visit before asking them for the information, you’re allowing them to increase their interest in you and your products. This helps them decide they're interested in a relationship with your company.

9. Content syndication

If you’re publishing wonderful content and want to get it in front of more eyes, content syndication is one way to accomplish that. While many items on this list are familiar to most consumers, even without training in business or sales, this is one that people aren't as aware of. Content syndication is sharing information where content from one site is available on other websites.

While people often refer to syndication as someone republishing your site’s content elsewhere, it’s also possible to syndicate content you guest-posted elsewhere to your site.

Repurposing your content

One of the benefits of content syndication is that a larger audience can view your content without you having to rework it. You’re not altering or adapting your content for another site; you’re sharing the same content in a way that still directs viewers back to you. When done right, this allows others to share your content without negatively impacting you or them.

You can even do this without hurting your SEO performance because you’re syndicating content rather than copying content. One way to spot syndicated content is with a phrase similar to “republished with permission from site XYZ.”

Like many things in life, there are ways to syndicate your content for free, and there are ways to pay others to help you. Aside from the actual syndication, there is the work and time it takes to find other sites to share your content. Doing this for free often involves building relationships with other sites so that they're willing to work with you. This takes more time and effort than the alternative of paying for resources that can help get your work published by others without as much effort on your part.

As you search for places to syndicate your content, you want to ensure the new audience finds your content useful. Just like you create content with your target market in mind, you should keep your target market in mind as you decide where to have your content republished. Content syndication is often mutually beneficial, largely due to matching the content with the appropriate audience.

10. Product comparisons

When people have a problem and are looking for a product to solve it, they typically want to make sure they get a product that’ll actually work for them. Part of that decision-making process includes researching a product and, frequently, comparing that product with other similar products.

You can compare your products with similar products from a competitor, or you can take a few similar products of your own and compare them. This can be especially helpful to potential customers if you have a series of products with different tiers or ranks.

When you make a product comparison, you remove some of the customer’s work. And in the case of creating customers, that is a good thing. People like it when businesses make things easy. You can let your products shine as you create your own comparisons. You know your products best and can let potential customers know what they're capable of, their strengths, and what they won't do.

What to watch out for

Making sure customers understand a product accurately helps them be happy with you and their purchase. If you make false claims, not only will a consumer be unhappy with the product, but they will also be unhappy with you.

They will also be less inclined to trust other claims you make. Creating product comparisons can strengthen prospective customers’ understanding of your products and their trust and relationship with you. It can also increase their perception of how convenient working with you is.

You can help prospective customers know what your products are and what they do as you create a clear outline of the pros and cons, as well as the capabilities of your products. This way, they can feel confident selecting a product that’ll meet their needs.

11. Co-marketing

When two companies work together and share a marketing campaign, they're co-marketing. This can have many advantages for you, including greater audience, strengthened relationships, recommendation by association, and shared resources and budget. Some other things to consider when co-marketing include the audience and products of the other company.

Your company and the company you partner with have each built up an audience that fits your products. By sharing a campaign, you can reach each other’s audience; this effectively doubles the reach of your marketing efforts. You want to make sure that the other company has a similar audience to you and that they will be interested in your products and services. You also want to avoid working with a company whose products compete with yours.

Benefits of marketing teamwork

As you work on a marketing campaign with another company, you’ll build and strengthen relationships with the company and the individuals you’re working with. Similar to how networking and building relationships are beneficial for individuals, it’s also beneficial for companies to do with other companies.

Co-marketing can act as a type of referral. Similar to how people are more likely to trust the recommendations of those they know, your audience is more likely to trust a company you endorse and vice versa. Not only are you increasing your audience, but many people are getting a giant recommendation to you from someone they consider a trusted source.

The budget for co-marketing has an enormous range, just like running your marketing campaign can have a huge range. The wonderful thing about this strategy is that you share a budget with another company. Whether you consider this as growing your budget or cutting your expenses, there are monetary benefits to co-marketing besides an increased audience.

Creating these relationships and working together will allow you to share more resources than just your budget and audience. You will be able to draw on each other’s backgrounds and skills to create a better outcome for your efforts.

Prepare for your new leads with Smith.ai

Once you put some of these strategies in place and start receiving leads from them, make sure you're ready to take care of your leads. It's easier to retain leads than create new leads, and virtual receptionists can be a wonderful way to do this. Smith.ai is a virtual receptionist resource that can help you care for your leads. We have virtual receptionists who will work with you to nurture and retain the leads you have put in the effort to create.

Some of the services we offer include:

● 24/7 phone answering services

● SMS text answering services

● 24/7 live-staffed website chat service

● Outbound calls and campaigns

We also offer appointment scheduling and bilingual call answering. Our 24/7 virtual receptionists allow you to rest peacefully, knowing that things are taken care of. We will be there for your leads and can give information on your products to those who reach out with questions.

You can call or text us at (650) 727-6484 and schedule a 30-minute consultation on our Calendly to discuss how we can help you succeed in your lead generation efforts. You can also email us at hello@smith.ai and ask questions or chat with us live, 24/7, right here on the site. You can also review or general pricing, which comes with a 14-day, money-back guarantee.

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