Generating leads is crucial for any kind of small business, creating a stable stream of customers can make the make or break your business.
To build a steady stream regarding good quality leads, you must learn multiple methods. Below are a few methods that will help produce leads on your small business and also increase your current reach for your current clients and also new customers.
Referrals
Referrals are the life of many businesses. Word of mouth is still the best source of advertising there is! People want to do business with professionals that have been recommended to them from friends, family or colleagues. They are more comfortable knowing that you have successful helps someone they know with their needs, so it builds trust and confidence that you will be able to help them with theirs!
A good starting point is to reach out to your current satisfied customers and see if they know anyone that could benefit from your services or product.
Search engine optimization or SEO is an indispensable aspect of lead generation to a business. It is a controlled and cost effective method that involves creating the website’s content, choosing appropriate keywords so that a company’s website goes up the search engine rankings and becomes more accessible to users. Choice of keywords is of particular importance here as it defines the target market to which a business is going to cater to.
Many large companies have their own SEO team to handle this task, while many others outsource the job to firms that specifically provide SEO services or hire a freelancer to perform SEO.
Mass Emailing
Another effective medium for generating leads is email blasts. It is one of the cheapest ways of generating leads but can be quite a tricky one. Mass mailing is done by sending emails to a built or purchased list of addresses and if it reaches a prospective customer, you are in with a chance of getting a new customer. Keep in mind with this method you are competing with potentially hundreds of other messages, so it is important that yours is clear and gets to the point.
Always check the legality of sending mass messages or spam laws in your country. For example, in Australia sending unsolicited email is only considered an offence if performed by a robot or from a predefined list, in other words sending individual emails by hand is perfectly legal.
Blogging
Blogging is another excellent way you can generate leads online. Make sure to write blog articles that are specific to the nature of your business. This will help drive traffic towards your website and your services.
Don’t forget to add your contact details or call to action on your blog and make it easy to find, this will translate into more leads.
Social bookmarking & Social Sites
With so many social networking sites growing in popularity, they are also being use by many companies to find leads. Why not take advantage of this opportunity for your business as well? All you need to do is register at a well known social networking site and create a page for your company, adding information that is most alluring to most users.
In Closing
Lead generation is necessary methods of advertising your business and services through the internet. The results can be rewarding but it is important that you consistently adapt to changes online. Always, follow up on your leads 
How do you generate leads? I would love to hear your thoughts below!