Poor marketing and ineffective advertising tactics were two of the leading causes of new small business failure last year, the University of Tennessee's Start-up Research Study concluded. Approximately 46 percent of failures stemmed from either poor marketing or managerial incompetence, while another 11 percent reflected advertising errors. Furthermore, a March 2014 survey for the NFIB's Small Business Optimism Index reported that small businesses are list poor sales as one of their three biggest problems. A common contributor to these problems is lack of lead generation: you can't make sales if buyers aren't shopping with you. Your odds of success or failure pivot around having effective strategies to attract qualified buyers.

Define Your Market

Good market research underpins any successful marketing strategy, and how you apply market research online can make or break your marketing strategy. For instance, TechCrunch reported in August 2013 that 78 percent of Facebook users are mobile, a number expected to grow in the coming years. A Facebook marketing strategy that isn't targeted to mobile users is an automatic misfire. Vocus writer Brian Conlin recommends using Facebook as a market research tool by employing strategies like following the competition, using your news feed to study your market, and using the Facebook Ads tool to identify in-demand keywords. Other digital platforms like Google, YouTube, and Twitter can be mined in similar ways for market research.

Address What Your Audience Wants

A goal of market research is identifying your prospective customers' wants and needs. MarketResearch.com writer Kyle SoloRio recommends gathering this information by using market research reports, surveys, and focus groups. Market research executive summaries, like those provided by Gartner, represent one way to create a strategy and implement this advice. Another way is to use online survey tools such as SurveyMonkey.

Create Visually Compelling Content

Attracting your audience requires getting their attention. On social media, the best way to do this is by using visual content to support your message. Social analytics provider Socialbakers found of the posts that generate the most audience engagement as measured by actions such as likes, comments, and shares, 93 percent include photos. Status updates rank next at 3 percent, followed by links and videos, tied at 2 percent each. If you need to deliver a text-oriented message, consider introducing it with a graphic element.

Make an Irresistible Offer

Legendary copywriter Bob Bly said that one of the easiest ways to generate more leads, orders, and sales is to make your audience an "irresistible offer." In the original terminology, an irresistible offer is a brand-establishing offer that promises such a high return on investment that someone would be foolish to pass it up.

Bly borrows this branding concept and applies it to creating irresistible offers for specific products and services. He distinguishes between offers oriented towards prospects who are getting ready to buy and those who are ready now. For prospects who are still getting ready to buy, providing valuable consumer information can be a good lead generation tactic. For prospects who are ready to buy, getting them into a conversation about their needs can lead to a sale.

For prospects in both categories, you can make an offer more irresistible by adding value, emphasizing value over price, using risk reducers such as guarantees, and stressing urgency. Finally, make your offer's reply mechanism irresistibly easy to use. Amazon's 1-Click ordering system is an example of how streamlining the ordering process can boost sales.

To apply the irresistible offer strategy to lead generation, create a free giveaway of compelling content in order to generate clicks, attract a following, or build a mailing list. For example, identity protection service LifeLock has published a list of safe online shopping tips on its website, providing valuable information attractive to consumers who buy from online retailers.

Invite Interaction

A BI Intelligence report found Facebook marketing performance is not directly reflected by revenue per customer, departing from conventional wisdom. Instead, it is more accurately gauged by variables such as audience reach, engagement, and sentiment. How many shares your posts generate is one of the key metrics defining the success of your social media outreach. Motivate social shares by combining the tactics outlined above and posting visually compelling, irresistible content that speaks to the needs of your target audience.

Author Bio
Murray Lunn is a freelance writer specializing in content marketing for online businesses; his work includes business blogging, product development, and brand development.