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Three Ways Marketers Can Generate Leads During Coronavirus

Reading Time 4 mins | June 16, 2020 | Written by: Carina Meyer

The global COVID-19 pandemic has made it difficult for marketers to find leads and forced companies everywhere to navigate a 'new normal' with a heavy focus on survival. Cancellations of conferences have occurred, face-to-face meetings are no longer possible, and companies have shifted teams to work from home environments. Video conferencing technologies like Zoom, Skype and Google Hangouts are now considered office essential. While businesses are busy navigating this unprecedented telework reality, it bodes the question of how marketers can change tactics to ensure they continue to generate leads and be successful? Hint: here's three things to help.

1. Utilize Social Media

Screen time has exploded with more professionals working from home than ever. Social media is a powerful tool for marketing, especially when you factor the global social penetration rate reached 49 percent in early 2020. Social media and social networking is a great way to generate leads without spending a lot of money. If you haven't already, sit down, do your research and devise a strong social media strategy. Be transparent, let your followers know what you're doing and how you're riding the wave. Provide value to your followers by offering tips and advice, where applicable. The key to success with social media is providing value.

Just being active on social media will also subconsciously remind people of your brand. It's also easier to promote your business organically, as you aren't directly asking people to buy something. If they see your product or service on Twitter, it's their choice whether to get in touch. Additionally, there are also tons of groups on Facebook to join, and connections to be made on LinkedIn to get your company out there in a more direct way, offer your services, and do some networking. Always remember, engagement is vital. Don't be afraid to follow influencers who can help your brand. Most importantly, always comment back on social posts as engagement is critical to lead generation.

2. Improve Your Site's SEO

Consumers depend on Google and other search engines to search for products, services and necessities. As a result, if your business is pages deep in a search engine, you're not likely to be found easily. Customers need to be able to find your business; otherwise, your marketing efforts are going to waste. To drive traffic to your site and boost its overall ranking, you need to be sure to:

  • Use targeted keywords - keywords should fit naturally into sentences, so don't go overboard saturating your website with them, this will hurt your SEO. It helps to use long-tail keywords to best match your target audience's search.
  • Be consistent in sharing quality and informative content - your content needs to be high quality, recent, and relevant to make sure visitors keep coming back.
  • Enhance the responsiveness of your website - a slow website will hurt your Google ranking, and impact the way your website visitors engage with your pages.

3. Use Natural Language Generation Technology (NLG)

NLG technology helps marketers fill a gap by allowing them to use AI-powered software to create and update content -- everything from marketing emails to social media, e-newsletters, blog posts, pitches for services and more. The software is fueled by unstructured data and can automatically produce text in multiple languages, at scale. As a result, marketers can generate a constant flow of individualized content across various channels, regardless of the industry. NLG technology is especially ideal for e-commerce marketers, as it allows them to create hundreds of product descriptions. Additionally, marketers can automatically generate content, freeing up time to pursue other business demands and leads.

NLG can help boost a company's SEO and help reach customers with precise marketing copy and social media posts. It can be easily used from home and allows companies to create content within hours. Content generation powered by AI is the latest seismic shift for the printed word, as 'hybrid' content borne from a partnership between man and machine fills a need for current material around the clock. It can also be programmed to use specific words, tone, and styles that can help boost your SEO.

There is no roadmap for the days ahead. They will be difficult — on people, on businesses and employees. As you work to ride out the storm and keep your business viable, focus on what you can do to pivot your marketing tactics. Utilize the tools available now to affect change in your marketing success tomorrow. 

Carina Meyer