3 Proven Strategies for Generating Hot, Inbound Leads Without Spending a Dime

Photo: Create & Cultivate

“I'm struggling with attracting hot leads because I can't figure out how to get myself in front of the right people and resonate with them.”

“When we’ve been able to get in front of the right people, it’s great—and we see a huge influx of new members. But I’m struggling to find them, attract them to our platform, and retain them” 

“I’m not hitting my income goals because I can’t get in front of the right audience.”

Generating quality customer leads is one of the most persistent concerns for entrepreneurs. One of the things I hear most often from our potential clients and community is that they struggle to get in front of, and convert, the number of clients or customers they want to (and need to) in order to meet their goals. 

Plus, constantly promoting your business can feel exhausting for you and redundant for your community. But, the fact of the matter is, you’re running a business, and a consistent flow of leads and reliable client or customer-acquisition method is necessary for the sustainability and success of your business. 

Here are three ways to generate leads for your business without burning yourself (and your community) out.

1. Perfect Your Brand Messaging (Really Perfect It)

Ultimately, generating inbound leads starts with rock-solid brand messaging that is unique enough to capture your customer’s eye, but not too creative that it gets confusing and forms a barrier to purchase. Start by getting clear on your ideal client profile, your company values, and unique value propositions. Then, craft a transformation statement or brand bio. This is a one-sentence statement that describes what you do and who you do it for. You’ll use this statement on the home page of your website and in your social media bios. 

Example: Curate Well Co. helps impact-driven entrepreneurs intentionally scale while maintaining the integrity of their work and leadership, and without losing connection to their community.

Next, write your elevator pitch. This statement answers the question, “So what do you do?” and highlights the problems you solve and the unique ways you solve them. 

Example: Impact-driven entrepreneurs want to transform the lives of thousands of women but they lack intentional systems to scale. At Curate Well Co., we help you amplify your impact while maintaining the integrity of your work and without losing connection to your community. We take a data-based approach (because spreadsheets are sexy!) Best of all? We provide a top-shelf experience that you don’t have to put makeup on for. 

Finally, create a mission statement. This is your big picture “why.” Why did you start your brand or business? Why are you so passionate about it? If you really want to stand out, know how your ideal client self-identifies and speak to their personality, values, and soft skills — not just their goals and challenges — and get clear on the role your brand plays for them in their journey. 

Example: When I first entered the entrepreneur space, I noticed there were a lot of people doing high-level strategy and vision work, and there were other people doing purely execution. But there wasn’t anyone teaching women how to exist (and see success) in the space between manifesting and making shit happen. So I created Curate Well Co. to help impact-driven entrepreneurs put processes behind their purpose (by connecting their big vision to the data-driven details) so they could implement thoughtful strategies, instead of copy-paste solutions, to scale their businesses intentionally. The best part? We believe you don't have to change who you are to be successful — everyone has a gift that uniquely and exceptionally solves a problem.

Make sure that your messaging is consistent across your whole online (and offline!) presence, and test it to ensure it resonates with the right people. Testing your messaging will lead to higher conversion rates because you can verify that your ideal client feels a connection to you and your brand, feels confident you can support them, and feels like your product or service is a no-brainer purchase for them!

2. Prioritize Community Activation and Relationship Building

Building relationships is never a waste of time, even if they don’t seem to pay off immediately. Not only is relationship-building essential with your potential customers and clients, but being active in your community and generating a network will also help you become omnipresent in your space, and garner referrals for your business. 

By building relationships and ensuring every person feels seen, heard, and known, you’ll create champions of your brand. While there are plenty of ways to market your product or service, very few are as effective as a glowing review from someone who has experienced it first hand, can speak to specifics about their experience, and is excited about sending someone your way.

A few of our favorite ways to activate a community are to: 

Bring humanness to your online connections.

Slide into someone’s DMs and ask them to a Zoom coffee date, send voice memos, and ask personal questions to really get to know someone! Aim to get to know someone, rather than convert them.

Co-host an event, workshop, or giveaway. 

Partner with like-minded peers to cross-pollinate communities and support each other’s endeavors. 

Ask for introductions.

Need to hire someone? Looking for an expert in X? Ask your current connections to make an intro for you! This is one of the best (and easiest) ways to organically grow your community.  

When it comes to engaging your community, it’s really about removing anonymity. We pull from leadership practices to infuse connection in our business model. A few of our favorite ways are: 

Speak to each person.

Welcome people by name onto your webinar, share individual customer or client stories, hold space for people to ask unique-to-their-situation questions. 

Send personal invites.

Hosting a masterclass? Opening enrollment for a new program? Pre-selling a limited run product? Make your best customers and most engaged clients feel like VIPs by sending personalized invitations—they’ll feel special, and it supports true relationship-building. 

Make connections. 

Introduce two people in your network to each other, send referrals to businesses you believe in, share a guide of resources you love. 

Once you have effectively enrolled people in your community, be sure to reward their stewardship! We love to send holiday cards at the end of the year, birthday cards, and support our clients’ businesses by leaving reviews, promoting their offerings, and offering them our platform (such as our Instagram Stories or blog) to share their voice on. 

One of our favorite ways to encourage community participation and reward our brand champions is through a referral program. Since we focus so heavily on our client experience, a lot of our business comes from referrals. By formalizing our referral program, we not only build long-term relationships with current and past clients, but we can also maintain a consistent client acquisition funnel. 

Plus, our leads that come from referrals are generally more bought in, faster to make a buying decision, and excited to talk about their experience with us.

3. Create a Holistic Brand Experience

Last, but not least, focus on the details to create a holistic brand experience that embodies your values, which reinforces your brand messaging and community activation efforts. 

When generating leads for your business, steer clear of hard sells, pushy conversations, and anything else that feels “salesy”—after all, we’ve all had that awful sales experience that left us traumatized. Instead, try the following strategies: 

Ask permission.

Whether it’s telling someone about your program, or getting on a call, offer people a choice.  

Have clear tone guidelines. 

Ensure your communication is straightforward yet empowering so your community knows they can count on you for tangible info that genuinely supports their goals. Answer strategic questions thoroughly, with consideration for each individual’s nuances. 

Ask for feedback and involve your community in your evolution.

Listen to your ideal clients and community and make changes that account for their experience and feedback. This will allow you to continue to hone your brand experience to embody your values, and also meet your clients and community exactly where they’re at with what they want and need. 

From investing in high-quality photo and video assets, sending carefully curated client gift boxes, sharing discount codes to your favorite brands with your community, to asking for objective feedback from your clients and community (and actually implementing it), ensure that everyone who interacts with your brand has an experience you feel proud of. 

Just because you say your business is something, doesn’t mean it is. You have to show up, create processes, and grow in a way that really brings those qualities alive. Doing this will result in authentic word of mouth, leading to inbound leads that already have awareness and affinity for your unique value add.

By merging your selling strategy with your brand experience and incorporating community-based selling tactics into your processes and systems, your ideal client will already know who you are, what you stand for, and why they want to work with you before it’s actually time to close the sale—making the process of generating hot, inbound leads more natural and efficient.

Everything you do on a daily basis—your content creation, your client touch-points, your problem-solving—will do the heavy lifting for you, so you can do what you do best. And, in the meantime, you’ll build relationships that will have incomparable ROI for years to come.

“Just because you say your business is something, doesn’t mean it is. You have to show up, create processes, and grow in a way that really brings those qualities alive.”

—Pia Beck, CEO, Curate Well Co.

About the Author: Pia Beck is a life and business coach known for turning pain points into action items. As the CEO of Curate Well Co., coined “the queen of implementation,” her expertise is in connecting the big picture vision with the nitty-gritty details in order to create an instinctual strategy, systems, and steps. She helps her clients and community organize, implement, and execute. 

At Curate Well Co., she combines purpose and process to help emerging and established entrepreneurs start and scale savvy, streamlined, sensational businesses, make an impact, and launch a life they love and leave a legacy. At Curate Well Co., we believe in a curated life on purpose through sharing your unique gifts. Curate Well Co. has been featured in Thrive Global, Darling, Buzzfeed, Medium, and more, and has collaborated with brands like Bumble, Havenly, Lululemon, and The Riveter.

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