For most businesses, creating a constant stream of leads is essential. There are many different ways to approach this task, from email outreach to cold calling.
However, some lead gen strategies tend to require regular input from your marketing and sales teams. If you take your foot off the gas, the leads will dry up.
If you want to guarantee your stream of new leads, it makes sense to invest in evergreen sales lead generation. In this guide, we’re going to look at what “evergreen” means in this context, and which tactics are worth your attention.
What Is Evergreen Sales Lead Generation?
The idea of evergreen sales lead generation is to create systems that attract leads without any active input. It’s the marketing equivalent of passive income.
Just like passive income, evergreen tactics allow your sales and marketing staff to devote their energy to the “day job” of actively chasing new leads. All the while, leads keep piling up in the background.
In turn, this helps your business to avoid dead months and maintain your pipeline, even when staff are busy with a short-term project. The more evergreen tactics you employ, the greater your long-term returns will be.
The Best Evergreen Sales Lead Generation Tactics
Want to adopt the evergreen approach to sales lead generation? We created a list of our favourite tactics:
1) SEO
The vast majority of buyers still use Google and other search engines to find solutions. If your website appears near the top of the results page, you have an excellent chance of turning the interest into a lead.
For this reason, search engine optimization (SEO) is a smart investment. A well-executed strategy can offer better results than almost any other tactic, and the leads you attract will already be qualified.
While you may need to work on your SEO to stay ahead of the competition, it’s not something you will be managing every day. Hence, it’s a really good evergreen strategy.
2) Blogging
We know what you’re thinking — “Blogging is definitely not an evergreen strategy!”
In many respects, you’re right. Publishing content takes a great deal of time, thought, and effort on a weekly basis.
That said, it’s entirely possible to see long-lasting results from a handful of skillfully written blogs with good backlinks.
In plain English: if you create the best possible guide on a specific topic and optimize the article for search, people will keep finding it for years. In turn, you can expect to see more leads coming through.
3) Pay Per Click Advertising
When it comes to minimizing your input, advertising is surely the easiest way to reach out to potential clients. A good PPC campaign takes only a couple of hours to set up, and it can be very cost effective.
The key to harnessing this tactic is pairing your PPC ads with a good lead magnet. This will ensure that only people who are really interested in your offer will click the paid-for link, so you can expect a high conversion rate.
It’s possible to keep the same PPC ads running for months or even years at a time, making this tactic the definition of evergreen.
4) Promoted Tweets
The fast-paced world of social media usually requires constant input to bear fruit.
But as with PPC advertising, running ads on social media allows you to reach a lot of people with relatively little effort.
Promoted tweets can all siphon people towards your funnel — even if you have a relatively small following.
5) LinkedIn Ads
Whereas most social media ads provide only a button as a call to action, LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to put a lead generation form inside your ad. Potential clients can hand over their details without even leaving the page.
As with other forms of advertising, you may be able to run the same campaign to good effect for long periods of time.
6) Retargeting
This form of online advertising only targets people who visit your website and then leave without making a purchase or leaving contact details. The ads appear on third-party sites, and they remind the user about what they left behind.
Retargeting is a proven evergreen strategy that can turn near misses into nailed-on sales.
7) YouTube Videos
Both YouTube and Google are subsidiaries of a company called Alphabet. For obvious reasons, the two brands tend to work together. When you search for something on Google, you will often see relevant videos from YouTube.
Uploading search-optimized content to YouTube, aimed at your target leads, is another good way to attract interest. You can then include a link to your site in the description or even within the video itself.
8) Contributing to Q&A Platforms
Sites like Quora and Stack Overflow allow users to source answers by asking a large online community. Each question has its own page, which will appear on Google if enough people are interested.
If you leave a genuinely helpful answer to questions in your niche, you have the opportunity to make a long-lasting impression. Within your answer, you can mention your company and even link to specific content on your site.
Your answer will be there as long as the platform is operating, and every visit will enhance the search ranking.
9) Case Studies
In the world of B2B marketing, case studies are a very powerful tool. In addition to providing social proof, they can act as lead magnets to attract new prospects.
While many businesses simply highlight success stories, you may earn greater traction from creating industry case studies. Bundle a few together, and you will have a lead magnet that will draw interest for years to come.
10) Industry Research and Reports
Everyone in B2B likes a good stat. Figures are informative, and they form the backbone of many marketing campaigns.
By doing research and publishing the results, you can create a resource that will draw people to your site for some time to come. It can be something as simple as a survey of professionals in your niche, or analysis of your own data.
You can either use your report as a lead magnet and lock it behind an email form, or leave it open and allow other sites to reference your work.
11) Webinars
Just like a good blog post, an insightful webinar will provide value to exactly the kind of people who may become your leads. In return, they will provide you with their email address.
Although webinars are usually live events, most hosts will record the show and later recycle the content. In this way, a single livestream can live on for months and years as an effective lead magnet.
12) Chatbot Marketing
When it comes to sales lead generation, it doesn’t get much more passive than chatbot marketing.
Chatbots are designed to engage with visitors to your website through a live chat-style interface. With a little upfront effort, you can create a bot that can answer questions, provide useful information, and collect the contact details of leads — all while you sleep.
Some chatbot solutions can even set up client meetings in your calendar.
13) Optimizing Your LinkedIn Page
The vast majority of business professionals today are on LinkedIn. Many use this platform as a tool for finding partners, clients, and suppliers.
For this reason, optimizing your profile and company page for search on LinkedIn is almost as important as optimizing your website for Google search.
Including keywords in the headline of your profile is a sure way to reach leads with minimal ongoing effort. You can then write a sales page in your main bio, leading them towards your offer.
14) Gated Social Media Content
Another great strategy for LinkedIn is to post some gated content.
Just as profiles appear in the search results, so do posts. Rather than giving out all your best magnet material upfront, you can post a preview and ask people to request access through comments or email.
Although sharing these updates is a hands-on task, successful posts usually hang around, collecting more and more leads as the post is shared through a network of connections.
15) Guest Posting
Of course, building an audience for your blog can be quite labor intensive — even if your posts are optimized for search.
As an alternative, you might want to try guest posting on a more established blog. This gives you instant reach, without the need to upload more posts or promote your content via multiple channels.
Of course, most sites won’t allow you to insert a massive plug for your own brand — but you can still link back to lead generation landing pages on your site. This will have the beneficial side-effect of enhancing your SEO.
16) Mini Sites
Sometimes, a website that is laser-focused on one particular idea does better than a larger site that covers a wider range of topics. For this reason, some businesses publish mini sites that are separate from their main website.
You can either set up a lead generation form or call to action on your mini site, or use it as a kind of satellite of your main website.
Either way, your mini site is likely to attract leads who might not have found your main website organically.
17) Learning Resources
While some potential buyers will actively be searching for solutions within your industry, many more will primarily be looking for information.
By compiling a collection of learning resources, you have the chance to connect with these prospects at the very top of the funnel.
Two businesses that have used this tactic to good effect are HubSpot and Ahrefs. Both have extensive education libraries, containing courses and video tutorials. To access the content, visitors simply need to sign up with their email address.
18) Referral Systems
When it comes to making a sale, referrals are usually more powerful than any sales pitch or expert reviews you can supply. People trust people they know, rather than a faceless brand.
While a few people may recommend your product or service without being prompted, you will see far more referrals if you build a dedicated system. This can include rewards for people who spread the word, such as money off their next purchase.
This strategy costs you nothing in terms of time, and it motivates your customers to do some prospecting on your behalf.
19) Email Drip Campaigns
Depending on your email marketing strategy, it might be that not everyone on your list is a qualified lead. However, they have clearly shown some interest in your business in the past.
By setting up a drip campaign, you may be able to convert some of these people into hot prospects.
20) Offer a Free Tool
Everyone likes free stuff, including your ideal client.
Create an online tool that prospects will find useful, and make it free for people who sign up for your newsletter. Boom, instant leads.
Better still, the people who sign up will probably tell their professional friends and share the link on social media. So in many senses, this evergreen strategy will actually get better and better with time.
An excellent example of this tactic in action is CoSchedule’s Headline Generator — a free tool for bloggers.
21) Offer a Free Trial
For some businesses, offering a free trial can be a good sales lead generation tactic. This might be one month of service or a sample of your product in return for creating an account.
Many SaaS companies use this form of lead generation to great success, and it is completely evergreen. The key is creating a package that won’t cost you dear, but will interest potential clients.
22) Share Promo Codes
Many online retailers now offer a discount on first purchases for people who sign up for a newsletter.
This particular tactic only really works if people are already looking for the kind of product or service you are offering.
However, promo codes that are published publicly tend to be shared on social media and dedicated coupon sites. Once again, this means someone is spreading the word on your behalf.
23) Submit to Online Directories
In every industry, you will find websites that provide a directory of solutions and products. Some also collect customer reviews.
By submitting your business to such directories, you have the chance to reach more eyeballs at the cost of zero ongoing effort.
More Lead Gen Strategies
To complement your evergreen tactics, here are a couple more sales lead generation strategies you might want to explore:
24) Cold Calling
If you need quick sales, cold calling is still an effective strategy — especially in B2B. The key to success is researching prospects in advance, and creating a connection before you dial.
25) Email Outreach
While cold calling requires quite a lot of time for each prospect, email outreach allows you to connect with hundreds of potential clients every day. Once again, be sure to do research and personalize each message.
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