8 Best ways for lead generation for consultants in 2024!

The global management consulting industry is expected to grow at a CAGR of 9.2%.  

This shows steady progress in the consulting industry.  

Thus, it indicates a more extensive customer base and tough competition to survive.  

And to attract more prospects and potential customers, you need an effective lead generation strategy for your consulting business.

Here you’ll learn 8 top methods to generate consulting leads.

But before, you need to get these elements sorted out!

Fix this before starting with lead generation for consulting companies

Not every person out there is your client.

You need to discover who are those people who can benefit from your consulting services. Also, you must know what their needs and potential solutions are. 

1. Know your audience 

This initial step is like following the 80/20 rule. You’ll have to put 80% effort into determining the potential buyers. And 20% efforts will turn them into your leads.  

This can be done in two simple steps: 

Identifying your ideal client:  

Conduct market research, collect the latest updates, understand what categories the brands fall under, and so on.  

Begin answering questions like;  

• Who can benefit from this consulting? 
• What are the demographics, preferences, and interests of such prospects? 
• What problems are they facing that your consulting can fix? 

Your client will only engage and pay you when they benefit from your services.

For example, let’s suppose you’re a marketing consultant.

So, the businesses that have just launched or are in their awareness stage need you more than the already established ones.

You’ll have to know their objective and goals. This will make it easy to approach them.

However, knowing their pain points is equally important. 

Understanding your potential audience’s pain points: 

The challenges faced by your potential consulting clients will assist you in consulting them appropriately.

You can research or ask directly about their pain points, challenges, or roadblocks.

For example, a brand that just launched might lack funds, have a poor strategy, etc., while spreading awareness.

In this case, you can devise a tailored lead generation strategy or an action plan for them.

2. Create an exciting message 

Next, you must create a compelling message to grab clients’ attention and entice them to engage with your business.  

You need to create a smart portfolio. This should include your consulting services, expertise, the unique value you possess, and your pricing chart.  

For instance, you can make your LinkedIn Bio to present your values to attract the right clients.

See how Caterina Rando, a consultant serving women primarily, showed her expertise in her bio.

She even has used relevant hashtags to be visible to their potential audience.

3. Propose an undeniable offer   

This could be a value-packed package or a deal, a discount on your services, or any other thing. 

For instance, offering a free consultation can be a good trick for new consultants to drive leads in mass. 

This works as an opportunity to build a rapport with prospective clients.  

You can establish trust and develop relationships with those ideal prospects.  

Further, it gives room to understand your potential client’s needs and pain points.  

And eventually, it brings the client and the project to the table. This increases the likelihood of converting them into paying clients.

Another way could be providing a free newsletter that helps prospective clients to overcome challenges. 

4. Create a strong online process   

The final groundwork activity is creating a strong online process.  

There are various ways to create an online presence like… 

• Building a professional consulting website 
• Creating social media profiles and targeting with audience-focused content 
• Demonstrating thought leadership through blogging and guest posting 

Moreover, this will help you establish the creditability of your consulting business.  

If you’re looking for the best lead generation strategies, click here. 

How to generate leads for a consulting business: 8 best ways to do it!  

Once you understand your ideal buyers and their persona and have created a compelling offer, you can ease your lead generation efforts with these powerful practices.

We have handpicked 8 methods to generate consulting leads. 

1. Content marketing 

Content marketing allows you to share valuable content, which helps build trust with potential clients.  

Blog posts, social media posts, newsletters, and email campaigns are effective content for generating leads. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind while creating compelling content: 

• Produce content that resonates with your audience’s interest
• Talk about the basic problems your audience face and provide solutions 
• Focus on offering informative content

This helps in positioning yourself as an industry expert. 

You can convert your short form pieces of content into an eBook as consultants Dana James Mwangi did: 

You can attract prospects to your website, market your service, gain more web traffic, and ultimately generate leads.  

2. SEO 

70% of marketers think SEO generates more leads, so consulting businesses must leverage it to generate sales worthy leads. 

SEO increases your website’s visibility. This makes it easier for the prospects to find you.

To boost your reach to your potential audience organically, SEO can help. 

Here are some tips for using SEO to generate leads: 

• Do strong keyword research and list all the relevant and high intent keywords that your prospective clients are searching for. Then, optimize your site content and meta tags accordingly.
• Check for internal links and meta tags, making it easy for search engine results pages to comprehend and index your site. 
• Invest in creating high-quality and informative content that addresses the needs of your potential buyers, plus try to include both short and long tail keywords in it. 
• Optimize your website user interface and experience.  
• Register on local directories and on GMBs to increase your visibility in local search results. 

Ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, as most users use mobile phones to facilitate their tasks. 

One excellent SEO tactic is guest posting. Consulting businesses can leverage it to drive traffic from websites with a similar audience. 

It is a great way of building website backlinks and relationships with other thought leaders in your domain. 

Moreover, this is useful in driving potential traffic to your website and increasing leads for your consulting business. 

In concise, SEO excellently helps in getting more site traffic.

Read more: SEO for lead generation 

3. Leverage social media platforms 

68% of marketers say social media marketing enabled them to get more leads. 

As a consulting business, you can provide valuable content and build trust with potential clients.  

Giving out some of your best advice for free will help you establish brand trust and boost engagement.

You can leverage social media in many ways. For instance, share your blog content in a slider post and drop a link to drive traffic to your website.

Further, you can set up a Chatbot to communicate with those visitors and generate leads.

Here are some actionable tips for consulting businesses to leverage social media fully: 

• Use more than one social platform to boost lead-gen efforts  
• Interact with your potential prospects to build trust and relationships 
• Craft valuable infographics to improve engagement and brand awareness. 
• Answer reviews through social media to show you value client’s feedback 
• Schedule posts for a consistent presence and boost engagement 
• Use social media ads and sponsored posts for better-targeted visibility 

Also, you must track your social media metrics to gain more insights and improve future actions. 

4. Webinars/podcasts 

95% use webinars to generate leads, and 76% claim that webinars empower them to attract more leads overall. 

This is because you establish yourself as an industry expert and attract relevant prospects here. This also helps in increasing your brand awareness and website traffic.  

By providing educational and valuable content, you build trust among your audience and increase the chances of turning them into paying clients.

Podcasts are of great value; thus, one of the biggest consulting companies, McKinsey, has dedicated podcast streaming named “The McKinsey Podcast.” 

Here’s a step-by-step approach to generating consulting leads via webinars/podcasts: 

1. Identify your potential buyers and choose the right format 
2. Select a topic that showcases your expertise and create an engaging presentation 
3. Promote your webinar or podcast to attract the right leads 
4. Offer a lead magnet to capture contact information through Web Forms
5. Engage with your audience during the event to build relationships 
6. Follow up with attendees to continue building the relationships 
7. Repurpose your content to extend your reach and generate quality leads. 

Consulting businesses must conduct a webinar/podcast to generate interested leads as they are… 

• An excellent way to communicate complex ideas and educate prospects 
• Practical to build brand trust 
• Boost sign-up rates upon effective promotional activities 

Moreover, webinars/podcasts are low-cost plus straightforward to host. 

5. Use referrals for lead generation consulting

You can always leverage your existing clients’ contacts to generate new leads.  

Referrals are a powerful lead generation strategy that can help you get ideal prospects with the support of your loyal customers.

You increase the chances of getting their references by providing exceptional services and results for your existing clients.

Thus, getting quality leads for your consulting services.

Further, you can even use partner or associate referrals. These people have worked with you and have a taste of your services.

Using their reference will require more effort to turn them into leads.

This is because they haven’t experienced your services as consumers.

In all, referrals are a great way of getting potential leads. 

6. Targeted paid ads to generate leads quickly

Targeted ads are a great way of reaching out to your prospective clients.

It brings you to the audience actively searching for consulting services that fit your ICP.

For example, suppose you’re a marketing consultant running Facebook ads to generate leads.

Here, you’ll start by creating lookalike audiences. First, however, ensure you don’t use prospects but your existing customers for the same.  

The most eminent paid advertising platforms are Google Ads, Facebook Ads, and LinkedIn Ads. 

Here are a few tips for consulting businesses to make the most out of their paid advertising:

• Choose the advertising platform for ads that aligns with your business goals and has your target audience. 
• Create a compelling ad copy that grabs attention and highlights the unique value proposition of your consulting business.
• Use visually appealing images or videos that are relevant to your ad copy. 
• Optimize the landing page for conversion and align it with your ad copy. 
• Monitor your ad performance regularly and make changes for better results.

The below LinkedIn ad example will be helpful to understand the magic drawn out of following the above tips. 

Read more: Lead generation ads: What, why, and how with examples 

7. Retargeting 

Retargeting or remarketing is a tool for approaching the audience who has already interacted with your website or content through specific ads or messages.

This results in staying on top of your client’s minds and encouraging them to take action. Moreover, this helps increase qualified leads and improve conversion rates.

Retargeting is an efficient use of advertising budget. You can use two effective ways to gain better results as a consultant.

The first way is to retarget specific URLs; this works on two platforms, i.e., Google and Facebook.

Secondly, you can retarget the existing customers and use lead-gen based on page engagement.

To learn more about these strategies, click here. 

8. Cold outreach  

Cold outreach is reaching your target audience for the first time who haven’t expressed any interest in your services.  

This method offers benefits like no barrier to your outreach, using multiple channels, tapping into new markets, and a high probability of finding potential leads.

As a consultant, cold outreach will require you to put in smart efforts. You can use email, social media, or telephone calls to reach our prospective clients.  

However, you need to strategize your content and have a highly targeted database to have a successful outreach.

Using Automation will help you get an edge in your lead generation task.  

Are your consulting leads worthy for your sales team? 

Note that all the leads generated aren’t of the same value or quality.  

Some of them might need to be nurtured; some might be ready to get started with your consulting pitch, and some might not be the right fit. 

But the question is how to discover potential leads. 

That’s where lead scoring can help you. It scores leads based on the specific criteria you decide to qualify leads. 

Don’t worry; it won’t take your time once you build an ideal lead scoring model for your consulting business, as you can automate your lead scoring process. 

So, concisely, you can charge which lead should enter your consulting sales pipeline. 

Moreover, better lead management and nurturing can help you improve your conversion rate. 

So, investing in a one-stop solution like a CRM and automation tool is effective. 

CRM helps to… 

• Collect leads from multiple channels and store them on a single platform 
• Score and assign these leads to the respective consultant 
• Automate and schedule conversations that makes your prospect feel valued 
• Track and manage your process 
• Get valuable insights to make rational decisions 

Sounds promising, right? Witness with a FREE trial today! 

Wrapping up 

Generating leads is extremely crucial to make money with more and more consulting projects in your hand.

There are various ways of doing so.

Following the above methods of lead generation for consulting, you can create more business opportunities.

If you want to optimize your lead generation process, taking the help of a lead generation consulting company can work great for you.

Lead generation consulting services or lead generation consultants help businesses guide potential methods to generate new leads.

However, a lead generation consulting company helps your gain leads, but to get your desired results, you must build a tailored lead generation process that targets your ideal clients.

Also, a CRM tool can help you boost your efforts in various aspects.

Frequently asked questions