Organic Lead Generation: Effective Ways To Generate Leads

Just as organic agriculture encourages growing vegetables in a way that will improve the future health of the land, organic lead generation is all about building lasting relationships with prospects and planting seeds that will become more fruitful over time. 

Organic lead generation efforts are an important part of any customer acquisition strategy because, regardless of the stage your business is in, finding new potential customers (or leads) is essential to increasing your revenue. Think of these organic strategies as long-term investments. When you put the time and energy into them, your business continues to benefit from them over time. By contrast, paid ads and sponsored content require continual renewal.

Read on to learn more about what organic lead generation strategies entail and how to implement them for your own business.

What is organic lead generation?

Organic lead generation is the practice of identifying and collecting information from potential customers for the purposes of converting them into paying customers. It differs from inorganic—in other words, paid—lead generation in that organic lead generation does not involve any paid advertising. 

Before the rise of the internet and organic search engine optimization (SEO), organic leads were often the result of word-of-mouth marketing. For example, a friend would tell another friend about a company’s product, equaling a new potential customer for a company without spending a dime.

Today, the basic premise remains the same. Word-of-mouth marketing still exists and can still be effective, but if you want your ecommerce business to generate organic leads, you have to take a much more tech-savvy approach. Qualified leads are more likely to come across your company on a search engine results page (SERP) or a social media platform, such as Instagram or TikTok.

6 ways to generate organic leads

1. Improve your search engine optimization (SEO)
2. Optimize your web content
3. Focus on content marketing
4. Boost your social media engagement
5. Build brand partnerships
6. Create a referral program

Before implementing any of the lead generation strategies detailed below, it’s important to understand your target audience. This knowledge will support your lead generation efforts, in that it will give you a better idea of how and where to access your target market. 

Look at your purchasing data, perform social media listening, and conduct interviews to really pin down who your customers are, what they want, what solutions they’ve tried, where they spend their time online, and what influences their buying behavior. Use this information to build buyer personas and tailor your website content and marketing accordingly.

After you’ve finished zeroing in on your target audience, here are six strategies to help you potentially land more organic leads:

1. Improve your search engine optimization (SEO) 

To bring more organic traffic to your site, focus on improving your SEO ranking. For example, when someone searches for the keyword “high-quality olive oil,” they’re much more likely to click through to an oil brand’s website if they see the company listed within the first few results on the SERP.

SEO marketing focuses on using organic techniques like keyword research and optimization, quality content creation, and link building to improve rankings on SERPs. SEO doesn’t provide immediate impact, but in a world where nearly 70% of online shoppers use Google to research products, it’s worthwhile. 

2. Optimize your web content 

Web content optimization goes hand in hand with SEO. It involves creating high-quality content that supports your brand, and then optimizing it to ensure it’s getting in front of as many people as possible. Search engines evaluate comprehensiveness, freshness, timeliness, and uniqueness to determine what makes something valuable content. Add new relevant keywords, performance-boosting video content, and more internal links, and update your website regularly. Refining your site navigation for a smooth user experience (UX) is another practical, wise move on this front.

3. Focus on content marketing 

Unlike paid advertising, which encourages consumers to buy your product, content marketing focuses on elevating your company’s expertise and building trust with your audience. For a cookware company, for example, that might mean creating a blog featuring fun, interesting recipes, developing a social media video series starring chefs, or having their founder participate in podcast interviews. Above all, this form of marketing is about leveraging your brand through quality content. If you create content that’s optimized and tailored to your target audience, you’re likely to generate plenty of organic traffic.

4. Boost your social media engagement 

Decide which social media platforms make sense for your business, develop a strategy for each platform, and regularly post engaging content to encourage qualified leads to interact with your brand. A good social media marketing strategy helps you increase brand awareness, learn more about your customers, establish authority, nurture customer loyalty, and boost your website’s organic traffic—all of which support organic lead generation efforts. 

5. Build brand partnerships 

Consider pursuing a brand collaboration. When complementary brands work together to create content or a product (for example, Graza and Ithaca Hummus creating a co-branded olive oil-infused hummus), the ideal outcome boosts sales or engagement for both companies. Your best brand partner will have some overlap with you in your industry and customer base. Your goal is to select a partner that will help you tap into new audiences and generate buzz. For example, a new company might seek an established business to help lend credibility to its marketing efforts.

6. Create a referral program 

Much like old-school word-of-mouth marketing, referral programs turn your existing loyal customers into brand advocates. By offering an incentive (e.g., the new customer receives $20 off their first purchase, and the referring customer gets $20 in credit), you potentially gain access to the loyal customer’s family, friends, and social media networks. Referral programs are distinct from affiliate marketing programs, which involve content creators instead of your customers.