WebMaster Solutions
Web Site
Marketing
Sales Leads
the Key to Online Marketing
by Kenneth Catto
NO matter what
business you are trying to build online, you
will need sales leads if you are ever going to
make sales, and sales leads are what you are
trying to generate if you are marketing on the
internet. In order to survive, any web site
needs a steady flow of qualified leads.
The aim of any
lead generation campaign is to build your
mailing list. Internet marketers often say "the
money is in the list", which is totally true. A
list of responsive buying customers that trust
you is worth its weight in gold!
While spam
filtering has lessened the impact of email
marketing, it’s still a viable means to getting
your sales messages out there. In theory, email
is marketing is free, although of course its
costs you in terms of your time. The theory
behind email marketing is that by using a "hook"
such as a free product or some other incentive,
you can "funnel" interested parties onto
specific products and services.
When you consider
generating leads via an email campaign there are
basically three avenues you can explore: email
signatures, joint ventures and safe lists. One
word of warning though, and that is avoid spam
at all cost, one spam complaint can seriously
damage your online business. You should
familiarize yourself with the laws concerning
spam, and at the very least ensure you include a
un-subscription link in ALL your marketing
emails. Due to spam, it is advisable that you
avoid buying leads, no matter how reputable the
company, buying leads can easily lead to a spam
complaint, you have been warned!
In its simplest
form, email marketing is a matter of putting a
signature in all your emails that contains a
link to your main product.
If you are looking
to vastly increase your list quickly then a
joint venture (JV) may well be the key you need.
In its simplest form, in a JV you supply the
product and a fellow marketer supplies the leads
and you share the profits. Hopefully, you will
then get the emails of your fellow marketer’s
customers, so you can then mail them with
further offers.
When considering a
joint venture there are many considerations you
have to think about, but the main one, before
you consider contacting anyone about mailing to
their list, is "what's in it for THEM", not
"what's in it for me". NEVER write to a fellow
marketer unless you can offer them something of
value in return for their help, and that is not
necessarily just a share of the profits, be
inventive!
Finally you have
safe lists. A safe list is a list of people that
have agreed to receive marketing emails in
return for being able to send their own
marketing email. The value of this form of
marketing has never been that good. After all
you are trying to sell to people who are only
interested in selling to you!
You can use pay
per click advertising such as overture or Goggle
AdWords to advertise your site and draw in
interested leads.
One other highly
effective way of generating interested leads is
posting in forums that are related to your area
of business. Include a link to your site in your
signature and people interested in your sphere
of business will often click it if your forum
post was interesting.
Three other
popular sales lead generation techniques are
submitting articles to Ezine publishers and
article directories, press releases and
testimonials for products in your target market.
No matter what
lead generation technique you employ you will
need a way to capture your leads email address
when they arrive at your site.
The traditional
method has been to use a pop up or pop under
which contains some incentive to get someone to
sign up. With the invention of pop up stoppers
their effectiveness has dwindled and therefore
unstoppable pop ups (also know as hover ads or
slide in ads) have evolved. This new generation
of pop ups are built into your webpage and as
such cannot be stopped. Simply do a search on
Goggle for "unstoppable pop up" and you are sure
to find a software solution to produce these
types of pop ups for you.
The other
alternative is to use what is called a "name
squeeze page".
In essence a name
squeeze page is a web page whose sole purpose is
to capture an email address.
They generally
contain a small amount of information about the
product or service you are selling as a "teaser"
for the reader and will contain a sign up form,
with a message like "to find out more simply
fill in the form to be immediately directed to
further details on this amazing product".
A name squeeze
page not only helps build your list, this
information can also be used with certain
software to help personalize your site for your
visitor, a technique that has been shown to
increase sales. Again, simply do a search for
name squeeze page generators.
No matter how you
generate sales leads there is one thing always
to bear in mind, and that is to be effective
your leads must be in your targeted market. If,
for example, you are selling internet marketing
products, then it's no use advertising on a site
that is all about scuba diving!
When you start to
build your online business, ensure you include a
well thought out sales lead generation strategy
from the beginning. Do not make it an
afterthought; this should be in place from the
very beginning if you want your business to be a
success.
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