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Posted: Thu 12th Nov 2026
5 min read
Reviewed by Amanda Peters, content manager
For most small businesses, more leads means more sales. More sales means more revenue. And more revenue means more options.
LinkedIn, search, networking, email, social media, ads, YouTube, podcasting, speaking, PR: each one can bring in new customers.
But the small businesses really growing through these channels usually didn't get brilliant results straight away. Most of them stuck at it long after it felt worth it, learnt what worked through trial and error, and put in far more time than anyone sees.
Which means that if you spread yourself too thin across different marketing and lead gen channels, none of them get the time they need to become successful. The answer is to do one channel properly first, and only add the next once it's running smoothly.
Lead generation for small business just means finding people who might buy from you and getting them to get in touch.
A channel is the route you use to reach them.
Most small businesses are short on time, money and people. Run lots of lead gen channels at once, and each gets a fraction of what it needs.
And most channels are easy to do badly but hard to master. Getting one to work means researching, learning, trying things, listening to feedback and tweaking until you find what works for your business.
I wouldn't say I've mastered LinkedIn, but it has brought me a substantial number of leads to my lead gen strategy consultancy.
That's taken months of showing up every day: commenting, connecting with people and experimenting to see which posts resonate. It hasn’t been easy – and often it’s been quite frustrating.
With any channel, you'll likely reach a point where it's easy to justify giving up. But everyone who has turned a channel into a genuine source of new business has reached that point and pushed past it.
That takes resilience and grit. It's very hard to find either if you're hitting that point five times in the same week, across five different channels.
I usually advise small businesses that the first job is getting the website working properly, so it shows clearly what you do and who you do it for.
Then we look for the biggest opportunity, which is unique to your business.
Four questions help:
Where did your last customers come from? That's often your strongest clue.
Where do your customers already spend their time?
What can you realistically keep up? If you can't produce videos at the volume YouTube needs, don't start there.
How quickly do you need results? Search, AI visibility and YouTube are long-term. LinkedIn, referrals and networking groups tend to deliver faster.
For a consultant or B2B business, the answer is often LinkedIn. For a local trades business, local search usually gives you the most for your money. For an online shop, it might be Instagram, TikTok or Facebook.
One of my clients is Love Implants, a specialist dental implant clinic in Colchester, and its sister company, Love Aesthetics.
The owners came to me considering Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, search, AI visibility and direct mail. But because nearly all these businesses’ customers are local, we started with local search.
Another client, a specialist tech start-up, had three major industry events coming up, so it made sense for the founders to put all their effort into those.
Go in knowing that your first two or three weeks are purely for trying and learning.
Setting up properly means three things:
Get a basic setup in place. Enough to start gathering information. On LinkedIn, that's your profile and company page. For local search, it's your Google Business Profile. For events, it's registering or booking a booth.
Make time to learn how the channel works. Experimenting on its own won't get you there. Set aside a good half hour a day initially. Find people doing it really well and see what you can copy. Read, watch videos, take courses.
Make time to actually do it, and listen. Work out which parts are easy (for you), which are hard (for you), which need more investment, which you can drop and which can be automated.
There's potential in most channels, so don't give up too soon. If one isn't sending much business your way yet, it usually means it hasn't had the best possible chance.
As a rule, give any channel at least 90 days of consistent effort. Some, like broader search beyond your local area, need much longer (six months of consistent work).
Part of setting up a lead gen channel is deciding what you'll measure. And not every channel should be judged purely on direct leads.
PR, for example, might not bring in a single enquiry directly. But it builds awareness, earns links back to your website and gives you trust signals like "as featured in". All of that makes your other channels work harder.
You'll also want to track direct enquiries, leads and sales from each channel. A CRM (customer relationship management system) works, but a simple spreadsheet is fine.
Just make sure you're measuring what matters. You can get plenty of engagement on LinkedIn by being ultra-controversial. If that doesn't help your business, it isn't worth doing.
Love Implants’ first enquiries came in about six weeks after its local search work began, and they picked up quickly from there. The start-up's three events brought in 11 leads in the first six weeks, and three became customers.
This approach doesn’t require you to limit yourself to one channel. It simply means getting good at that channel before you move on. And you'll take what you learnt into the next one.
The clearest sign you're ready is when your first channel has a rhythm that's delivering early results. Instead of an hour a day, you might be spending 90 minutes a week, because you know what works and have systems in place. That frees up time for the next channel.
You might also notice results levelling off. Really, the aim is to add as many channels as will bring you customers, without getting overwhelmed.
Pick a next channel that supports the first and overlaps with it. If you're starting with LinkedIn, you might add Substack and point people there to capture their email addresses. If Instagram Reels are working, you might choose to see how they could be adapted for TikTok or YouTube.
Your systems, measurement and tracking are already in place, and you know what's working. Now you're working out how that translates to the next channel.
Be realistic about how much time you can spare, and don't let your first channel slip in favour of the second.
That's what the clinic is doing now. With local search bringing in steady enquiries, PR is its next channel, chosen because the links and trust it builds will strengthen its search results too.
Look at the last five leads you brought in and ask where each one came from. Take the channel that's been most useful, and set aside an hour this week to read, watch or learn how that channel works.
