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January 12, 2022
2 Small Business Owners Reveal How Lead Generation Helped Them Reach New Potential Customers
As a result of the pandemic, more and more small businesses are leveraging digital tools to grow their business. Beau & Belle Littles and Cake Mall were interested in finding ways to build brand awareness and grow their customer base online, which led them to lead generation — marketing solutions that helped both small businesses identify potential new customers and initiate conversations.
"It is difficult to sell a product that people may think they don't need," says Lauren Petrullo, one of the owners of Beau & Belle Littles, a family-owned company in Colorado that creates reusable swim diapers.
Lauren's business aims to educate families on water safety and solves the need for quality swim diapers. She is passionate about communicating the brand's message but struggled to find the right audience at first. "Many parents are unaware of the environmental cost [of] disposable swim diapers, including the amount of trash pollution and clean water consumption used to make disposable diapers."
Across the Atlantic, Anand Vaidhyanathan also once faced challenges connecting with new clients. Anand is the owner of Cake Mall, an institute in India that provides training for home or professional bakers. From basics in fondant to master classes in cakes, Cake Mall develops hands-on programs for bakers of all levels. Anand was in the process of opening additional locations, but the COVID-19 pandemic has since delayed Cake Mall's brick-and-mortar expansion.
Both businesses utilized lead ads for their lead generation efforts on Facebook. "Initially it was quite tough [to get started]," Anand says. "I had to learn by experimenting."
This type of ad allows interested customers to fill out a form and get more information about a business. Hear more from Anand and Lauren on their experience with lead ads and how they found new customers over the last year.
Why did you choose lead ads?
Lauren: We found this to be a cost-effective way to start conversations with our ideal customers. They led us to recruit new brand ambassadors, who are now one of our biggest sales generators.
Anand: Because we are in a niche field, customers want to know exactly what we do and how it works. Lead ads were the perfect strategy for [Cake Mall] to reach out and brief potential clients on the value that we can add... I used Instant Forms for all of my lead ad campaigns. Some of the answers that customers provide (after filling [out] the form) help us to understand the customer better. It helps us to pitch accordingly rather than provide too much information.
Who was your audience? What tools did you use to reach your audience?
Lauren: Our core audience are moms, grandmothers, eco-conscious mothers and military mothers. We used interest-based targeting similar to our customer base to create personalized ads. We also uploaded customer lists and did lookalike audiences.
Anand: Our audience was mainly men and women ages 18 to 45 interested in topics related to baking. Although we get mainly women who show more interest, we found that even men are picking up and have started showing interest quite recently.
How did your campaign perform?
Lauren: Our results included 692 leads for a Black Friday campaign running for 32 days... Through our lead ads, we were able to start hundreds of conversations through Facebook Messenger.
Anand: We were able to generate close to 50,000 leads or more for a campaign running from May 2019 to October 2021. Our return on investment was close to 5x. 65-70% of our clients have been acquired through lead ads. During the pandemic, it was 80%.
What advice can you share for other businesses?
Lauren: Ads on Meta's (formerly Facebook's) platforms are a part of our budgeting. It is a lever we use for paid ads for new customer acquisition [and] new subscriber acquisition, as well as a vehicle [by] which we can start new conversations that we believe lead to conversion. Most ecommerce brands neglect a lead generation strategy. [Our business] may not have survived COVID if we had not generated leads of individuals who became brand ambassadors for our company.
Anand: My tips for other business owners who are advertising [with Meta] would be:
- Understand the platform well and seek help wherever required.
- Don't hesitate to experiment. Have patience and measure your campaign success.
- Have a well-defined process to help get maximum conversions.
- Have a very good follow-up mechanism.
I strongly believe Meta can help take my business several levels above the current position. Be it lead generation, awareness [or] publicity, this platform will play a crucial role.
Thanks, Lauren and Anand, for sharing your stories! These interviews have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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