Wondering how to generate quality leads during the coronavirus crisis?
During these uncertain times, businesses have to make some adjustments to their strategies. With the buying power of many customers decreasing, it’s time to rethink your lead generation.
The impact on both businesses and customers is quite real. It’s not every day that Google, Amazon, Apple, and others come together and decide to donate $1.4 billion to fight a virus.
Here are three easy-to-implement ideas for lead generation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read More: 6 Reasons Why You Should Market Your Business During This Covid-19 Crisis
1. Offer Features for Free (For a Limited Time)
Yes, you’ve worked hard to design a new premium feature for your product. You spent time, money, and resources. However, this time you should make it free for your paying customers.
Making this decision, obviously, isn’t something you’d do often if things were normal. However, by doing this now, you can:
- Encourage more people to sign up and try your product
- Increase brand loyalty in current customers
- Improve your brand image.
And, more importantly, you’ll support your partners and customers during this time.
Organizations in all industries are following suit. The NFL, for example, has recently made Game Pass, a premium feature, available for free. For everyone.
Microsoft is another example: the company has announced making the premium plan for Teams chat app free.
As soon as the crisis ends – very soon, hopefully – you can return to the usual pricing model.
2. Drive Traffic with Super Relevant and Helpful Content
The main goal of this strategy is to create engaging content that describes how your product or service can be helpful during the COVID-19 crisis.
What kind of content can you create?
Interactive Content
People might not be aware that your product/service or specific features can be especially helpful during the pandemic.
For example, CountingUp’s Grant Calculator is relevant for self-employed traders looking to know if they’re eligible for grants. Although the app was designed for accounting, the company has done a great job of relating the feature to the ongoing crisis.
According to Dan Belichick, a head of growth at WowGrade, businesses should now think of ways to create interactive content – generators, interactive infographics, etc. – to present your product as especially relevant.
“Interactive content also improves the quality of leads by attracting people who are interested in knowing the result,” adds Dan.
To generate leads, request emails to download a document with the results based on the user’s input. Basically, equip every interactive content piece with a lead magnet like a subscription box or a textual CTA like the one below.
Blog Articles
By creating content that your target audience might find helpful to cope with the pandemic, you can attract more visitors.
“One idea is writing articles and guides describing useful tips and strategies your target audience can apply,” says Maggie Yang, a content marketer at Studicus. “For example, you can write helpful guides on remote work and connect them with your product if possible.”
For example, this article from Tidio talks about creating a virtual customer service to support businesses during the pandemic. Such content is helpful for the website’s target audience, eCommerce businesses.
To generate more leads with blog articles, you can place extra CTAs and other lead magnets. Make sure to write different texts to make them more relevant, too.
Here are a couple of examples to show you the difference between a typical and an updated CTA copy.
CTA texts
Ordinary: “Contact Us”
More relevant: “Help Me Support My Business.”
Simply put, adjust your lead magnets in coronavirus-related content. This technique can make them look more relevant in the eyes of readers, so they will be more willing to convert into leads.
Read More: Brick-And-Mortar Brands Must Adapt More To Survive COVID-19
3. Provide Extended Trials
Free trials can make a difference for any business.
In the video service market, for example, over 50 percent of customers say that free trials have played a critical role in their subscription.
You can use the coronavirus crisis as an opportunity to show off your product. If you offer free trials, say for 30 days, extend the timeframe to 60 or 90 days. Try to expand the trial by at least a month.
This move can encourage more people to sign up and convert into leads.
Many businesses have already taken this option to support customers and generate more leads. Companies like Sundance Now and Acorn TV have extended their 7-day trials to 30 days.
Above: An example of an ad promoting an extended trial offer created because of the coronavirus outbreak
Make sure to advertise your offer to collect as many emails and information as possible. Others are starting to realize that this decision can bring a lot of leads, so they won’t wait for long.
Treat This Time as an Opportunity
The global outbreak of COVID-19 is impacting businesses all over the world. Already, they are adjusting their marketing and lead generation strategies to protect themselves and support their partners and customers.
For your business, these uncertain times could also be a great opportunity to generate leads. Applying the above techniques, for example, makes your product/service/content more relevant for your customers.
Hopefully, these tips will help your business adapt to the current conditions and stay strong. As you can see, there’s no reason you should treat this period as hopeless, so do your homework and stay focused.
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