5 Ways to Generate Leads Online
Ideas for capturing new leads and converting prospects into customers
As an expert in your field, you’ve got a ton of really important information in your head. But you’ve got to get it out of your head and into some useful format for lead generation. Information is the heart and soul of marketing, so you’ve got to have some idea about the products you want to develop as part of your overall strategy. Let’s talk about the top five.
1. White Papers
“White paper” is the corporate, fancy-pants term for an online article. A white paper usually ranges from two to three pages and stands alone as an item customers or prospects can download. White papers work great as a lead generation tool when you ask prospects to provide their email address in exchange for your valuable”"yet free”"information.
2. Free Reports
A free report is like a white paper, just a bit bigger. From a lead generation standpoint, it holds more value than a white paper and is usually several pages long. Free reports are great products to use as an add-on to online purchases. “Buy Product X and receive three Free Reports!” You can also use them like white papers and offer them as free downloads in exchange for contact information.
3. E-Books
E-books are the killer product that can create a lead generation bonanza! Like a real book, an e-book is going to be long…at least 50 pages. The fact that it’s a real book makes the perceived value huge. If the copy inviting prospects to download your e-book is well-written and compelling, you can generate several thousand new leads from this one lead generation tool alone.
4. Audio Reports
An audio report helps prospects get a feel for what you and your company are all about. It’s a way for prospects to talk to you about doing business without really taking to you. Using audio reports as part of your campaign can boost brand loyalty and help you prospects commit to a sale. If you are well known in your industry – or if you can hire someone who is – you have the power to generate a LOT of leads using audio reports.
5. Webinars
No joke. Webinars can drive an endless stream of customers to your business. Like audio reports, they give customers a feed for your company. But webinars go way beyond teaser information. The power-punch of the webinar is that it lets you cover the entire sales pitch AND close the deal. Another bonus is that webinars can be recorded. That lets you leverage your time by making the pitch once and then playing the presentation again and again for new groups of prospects. Talk about a time saver!
How Does It Work?
Here’s the way it works, in a nutshell.
Develop information products.
Make the available on your site in exchange for contact information.
Send out an announcement to your email list that also creates a sense of urgency.
- Put tools in place to track downloads and capture new leads.
- Follow-up with leads to convert them into customers.
- Bingo! You’ve got your very own lead-generation machine!
To check out some real lead generation products, download a free report about Email Marketing 2.0.
Engage Your Website Visitor Audience
Posted by leedman in Traffic & Leads on November 23, 2010
What I’m about to say usually comes as a big surprise to many folks.
Your Website is Not About You, your website is about connecting to a site visitor, and ensuring they come back and you have an opportunity to build a relationship with them. When you create your website, and add to the website, your thoughts want to be focused upon “What would interest a total stranger to sit here on my web page and surf my website for five minutes?” This exercise, done each time you are preparing to update or change site content, ensures you begin to drill down more and more with your contributions. With the introduction of social media, the use of video, and how blogging and email marketing all tie together, there is a tremendous marketing mix available and at your disposal. As social media was introduced, email marketing slowed a little as everyone jumped on the social media bandwagon. And yet, email marketing, updates for clients quarterly, and other informative tidbit emails have always remained the number one traffic generator for a website.
How to Get People On Your Email List
The basic home page, no blog, embedding a YouTube video, and a newsletter sign-up box, you’ve got a bare bones beginning. Of course, once you do have a fully functioning website, this old home page then gets customized and updated, and can now be used as a squeeze page. A squeeze page is simply a page you direct people to with links out on the web, and on this page you are offering them an incentive to give you their email address. Always be clear about the offer, make it something that has value, and be clear about what you are collecting their information for, and that you don’t sell their contact information. The other important way to add people to your email list, requires some of the traditional approach. Personal, in-your-face networking. Exchange business cards, meet people, exchange email communications as you follow-up with new people you’ve met, and ask if they’d mind receiving updates periodically. Don’t jump on it right away, necessarily. Listen, develop rapport and relationship, and either in conversation, or after a period of time, (you’ll know when) you can extend an invitation. Quite often, if they engage in conversation with me first, they go onto the list automatically and are informed, with thanks, for sharing their interest, and that I’ve included them in our updates. There is always more to this subject. These basics will hold you good stead to get you going. Post your comments, and your questions.
Understanding Google Keyword Tool Research
Research Your Market Online
Google Adwords is an important service for many in business looking to generate leads online. It requires a level of expertise to research and create the best advertising results, and to ensure you are drawing the right BUYERS to your website. It is NOT my recommendation for anyone getting started online to buy traffic this way unless you already have this expertise. Too often, the novice spends money for clicks that yield zero to low results.
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What Google Adwords does offer that is of extremely high value is a Keyword Research Tool. Using this tool, you will discover the monthly search volumes for keywords both globally, and locally. Be sure to make note of your local market search volume as much as you take note of the global search volume.
Along with this, you can also investigate more deeply with “Insights for Search” which is found by clicking the magnifying-glass icon in the Keyword results list.
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From the new page, Insights for Search, you can hone your research based upon the various search terms you are exploring for your market. You can zero in on geographic locations, adjust time ranges and see trends, and explore various categories to gain a much more accurate picture. When increasing the time-range, an option to see Google’s Forecast for the search term is also available.
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There is much more available through the Insights than just these few tips, so explore a little, discover, and learn.
Going back to the Keyword Tool and the list of results with search volumes, you will also find how stacked the deck is against you, or in your favour. This doesn’t mean throw in the towel if the competition is high and the keyword search volume is low: It simply means it is time to think outside the box.
When the keyword tool is used, it not only returns results directly matching your search criteria, it also returns many relevant, and potentially relevant keywords. This allows you to find that sweet spot.
The “estimated Avg. CPC” column tells you how much the bidders are paying for clicks from Google Adwords traffic on each search term. Where it shows a higher dollar value, it stands to reason that the buyers of that traffic are experiencing positive results that justify the expense; although this is not always the case.
Using the Keyword Research to Buy the Domain Name
Once you’ve completed your research with Google Adword Keyword Tool and identified a number of potentially viable keywords, you are ready to buy a domain name.
A versatile and favourite tool used to find a well-chosen domain name is found at DomainsBot.com.
Entering the keyword(s) as separate words, this handy service includes a tool on the next screen containing the domain name availability results. Located at the right column, called LiveBot, the semantic dictionary allows the user to filter, add, and play with the variations. This assistance is invaluable in an ever competitive space where domain names are desired and already purchased and owned by someone else.
Using the synonym selector, you will be able to massage the search criteria until you successfully find the best matching combination that fully supports the keyword research you’ve already done.
click the image to visit the site… this is a designer’s perspective
Many people getting online for the first time will have traditionally gone to a web designer first. With a marketing type brochure concept in mind, they hand over their content for the web-pages, ask for the domain name to represent their brand or company name, and the designer buys the domain name on their behalf and hosts their website on their own server, and charging you for each item including hosting.
I strongly advise against this approach, and now that your research is completed, and domain name chosen, you are ready to buy your own domain name yourself. Buying it yourself ensures it is registered properly to your name as the owner, and ensures you always remain in control with the management and hosting of your website.
Best practices in today’s fast changing online world of web implementation requires a website that can quickly and easily launch additional web pages for the purposes of marketing. Simple design, focused upon the evolution and development of a content strategy are critical to:
- Attract website traffic
- Turn visitors into leads using lead capture
- Convert leads to sales
To do this requires the right elements and tools, along with the strategy and processes to create the right mix of marketing elements quickly and easily. If you’re not able to post to your blog quickly and easily, and also link a “Call to Action” to a new “Landing Page” created in as little as 15 minutes to capture leads, you’re website marketing will not be effective.
Email Marketing: Tips for Improving Your Stats
Tips For Improving Your Stats- Would you believe? Go ahead and be plain, looking a little boring.
- For the subject line of the email, don’t buy into the habit of selling; Tell them what is inside the email.
- Getting past spam filters is integral to effective email marketing. People are avid at filtering out spam, and so are email inbox systems. Avoid using keywords or phrases that are known to be spammy, and never use CAPS. A quick visit to your own Spam folder in your email can educate you enormously.
- Old lists often have many invalid addresses, hard bounces, and indicate a need to implement a control system to keep your email list up-to-date and accurate. There are many people who will change their email accounts every few months.
- Keep in regular contact, at least once per quarter, so you keep your email list as up-to-date as possible. As well, this encourages maintaining the relationship with your email marketing list customers/audience.
- A soft bounce typically indicates an email address is temporarily unavailable. It could be someone on vacation, or a full inbox. Keep these and try them again at a later date.
- A hard bounce is a failed email delivery. Often it is a non-existent email account, or an incorrectly typed email address entered when someone became a subscriber. It’s also possible that it is a spam filter rejecting the email.
- When email recipients receive an email and they click the “This is spam” button it creates an abuse record. This will happen when someone in your audience doesn’t remember you. Ensure you have your From and Subject complete with your company name so they will recognize you.
Email Marketing Tools – Comparison Review
Posted by leedman in Email Marketing on October 29, 2010
Email marketing remains the most effective form of communicating with your audience and converting leads to sales, and those sales into loyal customers. Many business people are aware of this and are willing to tackle the chore of email marketing, and can easily find themselves bogged down with the task of managing their email list and ensuring the follow-up happens.
Automation
For some, automation is a dirty word. For others, they understand that it is the process of knowing what they want to communicate and putting the processes in place to ensure their message gets out consistently and effectively. The personal touch remains, as the opportunity for further follow-up happens as a result of effective automation processes.
An interesting statistic is that it is the 5th point of email contact with a customer that results in 80% of the sales that occur via email marketing, and yet, less than 10% of small business owners will consistently do this follow-up.
Email Marketing Tools – Choices
There are many services available for email marketing, and today three email marketing tools are presented, plus a fourth that is part of a much more comprehensive software service which does considerably more than just email marketing. Read on!
Constant Contact
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Constant Contact has various price points and is an excellent choice for the beginner who is only interested in marketing with a Newsletter Sign-Up. As you grow in confidence and learn more creative approaches, however, you will find this email marketing tool will leave what it offers lacking for implementation on your site.
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The difficulty with this tool is it limits the number of forms and targeted lists that you can set up. During the initial exploration of the service only one Capture Sign-up Form for your website was available. With excellent email marketing, it is important to be able to create additional capture forms for a website that enable segmented sign-up offers that capture leads based upon preferences.
See Aweber below to learn more about other uses of multiple forms.
Aweber is an excellent tool for email marketing, and particularly for bloggers. This email marketing system allows the creation of various lists, and accompanying Sign-Up Lead Capture forms. This permits new forms to be created for Newsletter Sign-up, as well as others for specific offers that may be created on other website pages or blog posts.
With a specific offer posted to a website, when people sign-up, their contact details are being captured in specific and targeted lists that make future follow-up sequences much more effective.
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The pricing plan is competitive and adjusts according to the volume and quantity of email lists and marketing. A particularly popular feature with this tool is that it will auto-email new blog post updates as a newsletter, thus taking more work off the business owners plate when new blog posts are published on the website.
Email Marketing 2.0 sophistication: InfusionSoft offers a superb tool with two price points. The Basic Plan is for a business owner engaged in email marketing for their own personal business reasons. It also allows an additional user account access for support and administration.
InfusionSoft offers plenty of templates and sequences already in the resource library to help business owners to get started with creating and implementing their email marketing campaigns. This helps take a lot of the guesswork out of the equation, as existing campaign sequences can be utilized and customized to fit the business needs.
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The Deluxe package takes things to a whole new level with features for handling ecommerce, affiliate tracking, and collections.
With the basic package, up to 25,000 emails per month can be sent out, and the Deluxe affords 75,000 emails/month.
A special mention is introduced with XLsuite, a hosted solution for a website, particularly suited to anyone wishing to leverage every aspect of Internet Marketing. This is a serious tool-set for the serious marketer, with blogging tools, content management system, ecommerce, affiliate tracking, and email marketing tools and API tie-ins, the business owner has much greater access and flexibility with their marketing.
While the setup and implementation can be more costly for some who require more customization, the long-term savings with all the tools managed from one central login, the business owner will experience greater savings.
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There is much more that can be said about each of these product offers. With each service, there are additional options for add-ons that can enhance your online marketing efforts. More information can be found on their sites. Many of these services will interact publishing to social media accounts and profiles.
3 Email Mistakes That Will Cost You
If you use email as part of your marketing strategy, deliverability is probably among your top concerns. After all, emails need to arrive in the inbox before they can effectively generate leads. Unfortunately, there are a few gaffes that can cost you when you send your next email marketing message. Here of the top three mistakes.
1. Sending to an Old List
We know it’s tough to let go of people on your email list but the consequence of sending to people who haven’t heard from you in over six months is quite severe. If you email 1,000 people and two hit the “Report Spam” button, the odds of your other emails being delivered drops drastically. Yes, it’s that serious! The 0.1% industry guideline is mandated from ISPs and burdened by email service providers.
To overcome this, do NOT email people you have not had recent contact with (we’re talking longer than six months). Email permission typically expires after about nine months and spam complaints go up exponentially after six months. Alternatively, you can use a reconnect campaign via direct mail like a postcard or letter to help “ignite” their permission again. Permission is key.
2. Sending the Wrong Message at the Wrong Time
Over the years, small business users grow comfortable sending to their entire list. This can irritate recipients who don’t want every single announcement from your business. What do these people do when they receive a poorly-targeted/timed message? They unsubscribe and report spam. Tough love, eh? This isn’t the time for list scrubbing – it’s the time for targeted, segmented and truly relevant messages to be delivered to your recipients.
The solution is to narrow your broadcasts to smaller groups in your database. Leverage technology that allows you to segment the interest, needs and previous activity of your subscribers so you only send to the ones who expect your email and are interested in getting specific and targeted information from you.
3. Infrequent, Inconsistent Contact
Similar to above, sending infrequent, unexpected emails to your subscribers can be just as damaging as sending too often. Email recipients often expect to be notified on a monthly basis, maybe more or less frequent depending on your expectations when they opted-in. Exercise discipline when maintaining a quality email relationship with your subscribers.
If you plan on changing your email delivery schedule, let them know. Some marketers allow subscribers to self-segment into “Daily,” “Weekly” or “Monthly” communications. This reduces spam complaints and allows recipients to receive messages when they want them (not when you do).
A Costly Mistake
The cost of making these email mistakes will vary by the type of business you have. Undoubtedly, it will often cost you valuable email relationships as people unsubscribe. If you don’t adhere to best practices, your email service provider could drop you for spam.
There is a laundry list of to-dos and don’t-dos out there but it really comes down to one thing: respect. Respect your subscribers’ needs and interests and they will reciprocate. These top three mistakes small business email marketers do are often overlooked until after they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Consider this advice before you send your next email marketing broadcast.
To learn more about email marketing best practices, download a free report about Email Marketing 2.0.
A Website’s Business Purpose vs. Client Purpose
Purpose: This is the single most important consideration to being laser-focused on your research to get the results you desire.
When thinking about Purpose, most often we think about our own sense of purpose, dreams, and desires related to the business we are creating. Too caught up on this singular point-of-view, however, can and usually does interfere with reaching your market.
Creating any business, the end-goal is to create business relationships that will become customers who pay, stay, and refer. The only way you will achieve this is by putting your focus upon the customer and serving their needs.
The Client’s Purpose
When any of us jump on the Internet to seek out information, we have a purpose driving our quest. This could consist of:
- gaining knowledge
- accessing services
- exploring solutions
- entertainment
- answering questions
- and buying products
When we endeavour to “search” online for what we’re looking for, it is typically very rare that we search for the item by name. We usually will search based upon the outcome we desire.
Get Help: Often this perspective shift is difficult to explore alone. You can attain better results establishing the best viewpoint through brainstorming with someone. You can use the help of an Internet Marketer, a Business/Career Coach, or through a Mastermind group.
Examples:
Geography: The Good Life Vancouver
This site is a food and lifestyle blog created and maintained by a Vancouver wine representative. With the geographic place-name, Vancouver, in the domain name, her website gains immediate traction in search results for her local market.
Product Name: i2i Eyewear
This eyewear wholesaler ships product to optometry shops across Canada. With the keyword in the domain name, the ranking factor of the keyword, and the repetition throughout the website’s content (web-pages, blog, products), there is a dramatic improvement for being found via search.
Solutions: Internet Tools Startup
Understanding what people search for, keywords strategically chosen aid search to bring your website to the top of search results; more so when accompanied with a content development strategy. (at time of writing, this site is just under development)
To learn more about a Content Development Strategy, contact OMC Social Media Solutions.
About Your Web Hosting
Posted by leedman in Domain Hosting on October 25, 2010
Buying a domain name simply registers ownership of the domain name to you, reserving it from being scooped by anyone else. Once purchased, when the site is hosted somewhere else, the domain name needs to be pointed (directed) to the server on the Internet where you website will reside (hosted).
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A personal favourite web-host, Dreamhost, offers One-Click Installers, and a whole variety of other accessible services that supports your online development and marketing activities. With the One-Click Installer, for example, you are able to quickly and easily install and setup the software that will help you build and launch your website.
The top-favourite software to install today is WordPress.
Once the hosting software is installed that will allow you to build and adapt your website to your needs, you are able to access hundreds, even thousands, of theme template designs for the website that will give you a functional web design to get you started.
For more sophisticated online marketing & business management tools, contact us at OMC Social Media Solutions about the turnkey hosted tools that offer a full suite of contact management and communications, email and autoresponders, member management, ecommerce, and content management system.
Your Biggest Challenges
When you give thought to your biggest online marketing challenges, getting a website online, utilizing the tools of social media, automating and so forth, what are your most significant challenges.
Buying Your Domain Name
Posted by leedman in Domain Hosting on October 25, 2010
A top favourite for buying domain names is 1and1.com, where the domain name can be purchased and other hosting options too. Alternatively, you can contact me to purchase it through my own reseller account if you feel uncomfortable with any of the steps involved with this process.
Buying the domain name at 1and1.com walks you through up-sell pages during the initial transaction. It is unnecessary to spend anything more than the initial purchase-price of the domain name, so you can skip past these up-sell items and proceed to the checkout to pay for the domain.