15 smart Inbound Lead generation tips for Startups and Micro businesses

Authored by CTO at TobocBiz.com

Pick a Good Name for Business

Tip#1.  Pick a name that does sync with your business.  Needs to be

simple, memorable and unambiguous. Either a “.com” or ".biz" or ".in" domain should be available, for the name you have chosen. Longer Names upto 15 characters are OK as well

Tip #2.Get a Business Email, preferably on Google Apps, on your own

domain - Why Google Apps? for now, just get it done, you will surely thank for this advice later!

(Quick tip: If not opting for GoogleApps business account, get at-least Gmail account, it helps in having G+ profile, YouTube Account, Your contacts, leads, all managed centrally via a single account.)

Have a Website that works even on Mobile

Tip #3.  Put up a strong website.  The goal is to put enough

content on the site to get your pages indexed.  Make sure to uses a decent content management system (CMS) and not Dreamweaver or FrontPage based site, but a Joomla, Drupal or WordPress. WordPress would be a good choice due to sheer number of paid and free themes available. Go for Cloud hosting, it is cheap, and it can grow when your business grow.

Make sure your site is working on Mobile and all other devices, you should ideally opt for RWD+CMS+HTML5 website

Keyword StrategyTip#4 Decide at-least top 3 keywords

Think about, what text a potential customer would enter in Google search box to find a business like yours, this will give you the perfect hint for the keywords to use.

Please use at-least 3 or more words in your

keyword e.g. ‘Best Digital Marketing firms in India”

Free Promotion and Branding tipsTip #5 Create Company listing on directory portals. Look up

for good b2b portals and local directories and list your company there. Also, ask your friends with websites and blogs, to link to your new site. Always tag your listing or content with your chosen Keywords

Tip #6  Setup a twitter account.  Name of the twitter account

should preferably match your company's domain name.  Link to your twitter account from your website and to your website from your twitter account.

Promotion and Branding tips

Tip#7  Add a business e-mail subscription.  Allow interested

people to sign-up to get an email about your product or service.  A simple email sign-up form is sufficient.

Tip#8.  Get a nice logo plus branding colors and fonts .  What looks just OK is not OK. So, please take professional help here.

Social Promotion TipsTip #9  Setup a FaceBook business page for your start-up. 

You may not get many fans in the early months.  That’s just fine for now.  Just add a simple description of your Start-up, link back to your website, add photos of your business partners, videos if any. Do upload the logo created in step #8

Have a content that describes your business neatly written, and copy that text to Social Media accounts like LinkedIn

Social Promotion TipsTip #10 Setup a blog. If you have a created a CMS powered

website in step#3, it would have been easier to create a blog setup, but nevertheless, you can use one of the free hosting tools (like blogger.com), but not in their domain instead have it like blog.mynewsite.com but never make it mynewsite.blogspot.in.  The reasons are many, don't bother for now, i will tell you the reasons later, but you can quickly refer my other blogs (visit www.smallbusinesswow.com if you need the answer right away)

Remember the keywords chosen while posting

content and preferably tag the posts using those keywords

More Social Promotion TipsTip #11 Write a blog article describing your goal and challenges

you are facing as your are setting up your start-up website, twitter account, blog etc...please put it up in your own language, and DO NOT copy!

Being honest works,

Tip#12 Update your LinkedIn profile.  Mention your new Start-

up company's vision, and add a link to your new website. 

Tip#13 Get business cards printed. Please remember to keep

the logo and branding picked in step#8 is maintained throughout.

Analyze what works : Re-StrategizeTip #14 Setup Google Analytics (GA) for your website and see

where the traffic is coming from, and from where it is not coming.  How is it growing?  What keywords people are using to find your site?

Do spend daily at least 30mins on GA, this should become an addiction, hope you know what i mean. When you see the numbers picking up, you will get addicted for sure!

Tip#15 Device a Pull with Content Vs Push

Advertisement Strategies. Genuine Pull Content with right Content strategy works

in the long term. Push may be required for immediate results.

About me

For Professional Digital Marketing Services visit www.TobocBiz.com

For more such tips visit www.smallbusinesswow.comConnect with me: http://in.linkedin.com/in/sreejeshkm

Sreejesh K MCTO at Toboc International