Organic Leads: How to Build a Sustainable Lead Generation System

Generating organic leads is the key to a successful inbound marketing strategy.

Paid advertising can sometimes work as an effective way to generate leads quickly. It’s not sustainable in the long run, though.

You must continue to optimize your ads over time. You might even find that Facebook deletes your paid ad account after you unknowingly violate the new terms of service rule.

To create a lead generation machine that churns out high-quality leads day after day, you need to focus on organic methods.

In this article, we’ll discuss what organic and inorganic lead generation are and how you can get more leads without using paid advertising.

Key Takeaways

• Organic lead generation focuses on attracting leads through unpaid methods like SEO, content marketing, and social media, offering a sustainable approach to generating high-quality leads over time, unlike inorganic methods which rely on paid advertising and are not sustainable in the long run.
• Generating more organic leads involves understanding your target audience through buyer personas, researching keywords to align content with search intent, and consistently publishing a mix of quality written and video content to engage and inform potential customers.
• To effectively convert traffic into organic leads, utilize lead magnets and landing pages designed to capture contact information, and employ a simple social media strategy to promote content and engage with a broader audience, thereby driving organic traffic back to your site.

What is Organic and Inorganic Lead Generation?

Organic lead generation is the process of attracting leads through unpaid methods such as SEO, content marketing, and social media.

Inorganic lead generation is the process of attracting leads through paid methods such as Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads.

Need More Organic Leads? Focus on Traffic Generation First 

Traffic is the lifeblood of all efforts to improve your organic lead generation results.

There are several ways to generate traffic, including a consistent content marketing strategy and a social media marketing plan.

Gain a Full Understanding of Your Potential Customers

One of the best ways to generate organic leads is by understanding your customers.

Start by creating a buyer persona, which is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. Here are tips for creating your buyer persona.

• Use customer surveys to get input from your target market
• Interview current customers
• Research your competitors and try to understand their customer base

Research Keywords

Once you have a good understanding of your customers, it’s time to start researching keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases that people use when they’re searching for information on search engines.

If you can find keywords relevant to your business, you can create content that targets those keywords. More organic leads will result as you put forth more content targeting the keywords used by your best-fit clients.

Search intent is a key factor to think through when conducting keyword research.

What is Search Intent?

When someone types a keyword into the search engines, they’re not just looking for any result. They have a specific goal in mind. There are three types of search intent.

1. Informational – The searcher is looking for information about a topic
2. Transactional – The searcher wants to buy something or take some kind of action
3. Commercial – The searcher is looking for businesses that can help them with their needs

It’s important to understand the difference between these types of search engine queries when you’re conducting your keyword research. You’ll want to target different keywords depending on the type of intent.

For example, if you’re running an eCommerce store, you should consider targeting transactional and commercial keywords. On the other hand, target informational and transactional keywords if you’re running a blog.

Consistently Publish Quality Content

Once you have your buyer persona and targeted keywords in place, it’s time to start publishing content. You need to publish educational and informative content that’s relevant to your target market.

Your goal is to provide valuable information that helps your target audience solve their problems. Think about the questions your buyers ask themselves and answer them in your content.

It’s important to publish content regularly if you want to attain quality organic rankings. One way to do this is by setting a publishing schedule and sticking to it.

Mix in Video Content

In addition to publishing high-quality written content, consider adding video content to your mix. Videos are a great way to engage your target audience and help them learn about your business.

Plus, they’re highly engaging and can help you rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

There are many ways to produce videos. Two of the most popular methods are by using a webcam or smartphone. You can also use software like Camtasia or Screenflow to create professional videos.

What Type of Content Should You Include in Videos?

When creating videos, you should include a variety of content. Here are some types of video content that you can use to improve organic rankings:

• Product Videos – Showcase your products and explain how they work
• How-To Videos – Teach your audience how to do something related to your business
• Interviews – Get insights from marketing coaches or customers about your niche
• Behind the Scenes Videos – Give your audience a look at what goes on behind the scenes at your company

Make sure to mix up the type of videos you create so that you keep your viewers engaged.

Perform SEO

Now that you’ve created great content, it’s time to start promoting it.

One way is by performing SEO on your website and blog posts. SEO is the process of optimizing your content so that you can rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Many business owners think search engine optimization only consists of using a plugin like Yoast SEO or All in One SEO for WordPress. They make a mistake thinking that the name of the game is simply turning all the major points of Yoast SEO green, for example.

Others make a mistake by focusing too much on a certain word count in their articles or obsessing about their website’s Domain Rating (DR) number inside their Ahrefs account.

You indeed need to work on SEO activities such as DR or your SEO plugin. However, proper SEO is about much more than that.

Three Types of SEO

There are three types of SEO: on-page, off-page, and technical.

On-page SEO refers to the things you can do on your website to improve your ranking. It includes optimizing your titles, meta descriptions, images, and videos.

Off-page SEO involves building links back to your site from other websites. The more high-quality links you have, the better overall rankings you can achieve.

Technical SEO is all about making sure your website is set up for success with the search engines. It includes things like ensuring your website loads quickly, setting up an SSL certificate on your website, making your site mobile-friendly, and creating a sitemap.

SEO is an ongoing process that requires time and effort. If you’re willing to put in the work, you can see great search results.

Quick Tips For Expert On-Page SEO Search Results

If you’re looking to improve your on-page SEO, here are a few tips that will help.

• Use keywords in your title tags
• Include your target keywords in your meta descriptions
• Optimize your images with keywords and Alt text
• Add videos to your website

Quick Tips For Expert Off-Page SEO Results

Off-page SEO is a little more difficult to achieve than on-page SEO. If you follow these tips, however, you’ll be well on your way.

• Build links from high-quality websites
• Participate in link roundups
• Guest post on other websites

Contrary to what you might hear from some people in the search engine optimization world, link building is still an important part of the SEO process.

Your goal is to build a clean link profile over time. For example, don’t create backlinks from doing guest posts 100% of the time. Mix in different link-building techniques. Vary the anchor text that points back to your website.

Quick Tips For Expert Technical SEO Results

Even though technical SEO is often overlooked by many entrepreneurs, it’s essential for success with search engines. Here are some tips to help you get started.

• Use website speed plugin like WP Rocket
• Use mobile-friendliness tools from Google and Bing
• Use the free SSL options provided by most website hosts

Focus on Middle of Funnel

Another way to generate organic leads through Google search results is by focusing on the middle of the funnel. The middle of the funnel is the stage in the buying process where buyers are actively researching their options. It’s a great opportunity to generate organic leads as you use targeted content to hook in best-fit clients.

What is Top of Funnel Content?

Top of funnel content is the type of content that attracts people from search results who are not yet familiar with your brand. It’s usually more general content, such as “outdoor furniture ideas”.

What is Middle of Funnel Content?

Middle of funnel content is the type of content that helps buyers who are actively researching their options. Customers here might search for keywords such as “best day beds” or “best lounge chairs”.

What is Bottom of Funnel Content?

The bottom of funnel content is the type of content that organic leads are ready to buy. These leads typically search for reviews on specific products or posts that compare one brand against another.

You need to post content in all three of the above categories. However, keep more of your content in the middle of the funnel. You’ll discover that you can find keywords with attractive search volume and still compete well against competitors.

You’ll also attract the type of organic leads that will convert well. Bottom of the funnel keywords might convert more easily into sales. The problem is that the search volume for these keywords is far lower than the middle of the funnel keywords.

If all your content is at the bottom of the funnel, you’ll find it difficult to increase your organic traffic over time. You’ll compete as a bottom feeder compared to competitors who focus on the middle of the funnel traffic.

Use a Simple Social Media Strategy

In addition to SEO, you should use social media to promote your content. Social media platforms are a great way to reach a larger audience and drive organic traffic back to your site.

When promoting your content on social media, make sure to include a link back to your article or landing page.

Include Quotes in Your Social Media Posts

One way to increase the chances that people will share your posts is by including quotes from your content. When people see a great quote, they’re more likely to share it with their followers.

Make sure the quotes are short and easy to share. You can also use a tool like Canva to create images with quotes from your content.

Include Images in Your Social Media Posts

Another way to increase the chances that people will share your posts is by including images in your posts. When people see a great image, they’re more likely to share it with their followers.

Use Lead Magnets and Landing Pages for Lead Flow

Now that you know how to generate traffic, you must add in the mechanisms required to convert traffic into organic leads.

Lead magnets are your starting point. A lead magnet is a type of content that you offer in exchange for someone’s contact information. You can use an ebook, a guide, or even a video, for instance.

Use opt-in landing pages with well-written headlines and bullet points to advertise your lead magnets. As more traffic converts on your landing pages, you’ll start seeing a rise in organic leads.

Here are other ways to convert website and social media traffic into organic leads.

• Use an exit-intent popup on your website
• Entice blog post readers with content upgrades inside each article
• Offer a lead magnet at the top of your homepage

Conclusion

It takes time and effort to generate organic leads. However, it’s worth it in the end. By using the techniques in this article, you’ll start to generate more leads without using paid advertising. The key is to understand your audience, research relevant keywords, create engaging content, and attract organic leads via top-notch lead magnets.

Frequently Asked Questions

You may still have a few questions about organic and inorganic leads. Let’s review two of the most commonly asked questions.