There's nothing like the face to face networking that occurs at a conference. Empathy, humor, interest, and understanding can all be shown through your eyes, your facial expressions, and your language to create personal connections with potential leads. Nothing can replace the conference experience. However, as the coronavirus pandemic continues to shut down conferences, sending more companies across the world to home computers, the digital experience has much to offer in terms of lead generation.

But don't worry! I'm not talking about cold calling or contacting a name from a purchased list of supposed "leads." 

What's the best way to attract potential clients during this challenging time? Put yourself out there and offer help!

Start with your current base of customers. Let's say you have a telecommunications company. Set-up a live conference call or online meeting to address questions about working from home and how to best utilize their phone systems. Inform them of what services are out there and how you can specifically address their current needs. Maybe they need additional phone lines, another phone, VOIP, etc. You can upsell to your current base by providing valuable information first.

What about new clients? Again, think about how you can help. For example, create a survey that asks them about their pain points.  What do they need? What are they looking for? Advertise it online where your prospects are found like facebook, linkedIn, twitter, or instagram. Many people will ignore your survey. The ones that don't are now warm leads. Ping them. Send them an email telling them what you have to offer and how you can solve their problems. Offer to speak to them on the phone. Because they already filled out your survey, your email and phone call will have relevance.

This is an example of good lead generation.

In a nutshell, lead generation is the process of attracting and converting a prospect who has already indicated interest in your company's service. Additional examples of lead generators are blog posts, podcasts, and social media posts.

It's important to find unique ways to attract people to your business. You can offer them  goodies (i.e. value) in order to spark their interest in your company like free downloads, how-to manuals,  service coupons, free products, etc. in exchange for their contact information. If they are interested enough to take a goody, they will certainly be open to hearing from your company. 

While this approach is less personally interactive at first (compared to the conference experience), the end goal will be the same. Lead generation whether at a conference or through digital media is a way of warming up potential clients to your business and getting them on the path to eventually signing a contract!