Generating a small amounts of high quality leads online is not that hard. And, the real secret is that for 90 percent of small to medium businesses that is all you need.
Increasing your sales in mortgage, real estate, debt recovery, education, software, services, or any of a hundred other industry verticals can be relatively simple online. Using this easy lead generation process, you will be generating a couple of Internet leads a day in no time.
Planning Your Website Objective
Every website should have a purpose. For your online lead generation website to be effective this is particularly important. What is the objective of the site?
- Is it to build trust and credibility?
- Is it to inform and nurture existing clients?
- Is it to capture new prospects and leads?
Each of these purposes are potentially very different website designs and content. Determine what you want the website to achieve before you start building the website.
Once you have a good vision of what you want your website to do–design the online sales funnel. Logically lay-out words and pages that describe what people generally look for when they are headed towards buying a home, getting out of debt, continuing their education, or buying enterprise software. These are your landing pages. Now simply make sure those pages tell them how to contact you for more information.
Setting Up a Lead Generation Website
Getting a lead generation website has never been so easy. You’re biggest decision is where to start.
First, break-out of the traditional corporate website paradigm. Generally, these websites perform very poorly because they lack fresh, relevant content and are poorly marketed online.
Your website should contain the following critical elements:
- Fresh, relevant content for your target customer
- Online traffic or a marketing plan to get traffic
- Easy way for customers to market (word of mouth) you business
These critical elements of a good lead generation website is why one of the following approaches is the best way to start:
Add a great friends and family email campaign and a little social media marketing and you should have a bustling lead generating website in no time.
Writing Good SEO Content
Content is certainly king online, but often how to make it king is misunderstood. There are lots of websites and blogs devoted to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and most of the advice is horribly wrong.
Here are the basics of writing SEO content that will get you to the front page for hundreds of relevant keywords:
- Always write for your customer first!
- Use simple, easy to understand words
- Never use industry jargon (your customer don’t know these words)
- Explain only one concept (keyword) per page
- Use natural variations of a keyword, not the same word over and over
- Tell people about your great content (Email, Facebook, Twitter)
Follow these simple steps and you will outperform 90 percent of "SEO experts."
How to Capture the Consumer
Lead generation is very much like sales, and like they say in sales–"Don’t forget to ask for the sale!" You have a website, you are getting consumers visiting, now it is time to make sure you get them to contact you.
Lead capture is what we call it in the lead generation business. This lead capture can happen in a variety of way. The most important thing to remember is make it easy. That means make your phone number, email, and contact form very obvious on the site. And make sure with contact forms you are only asking for the minimum information you need to get the lead to the right sales person. Consumers are busy and long contact forms can frustrate them, which means no lead.
Building Consumer Traffic
Getting consumers to visit your site is not as hard as your think. However, it is certainly not magic either. Google will not just start sending you magical search engine traffic. You need to do a little marketing. Keep it simple at first and try these steps:
- Email all your friends and family (especially your mom) and tell them about your new site
- Encourage friends and family to share that email with their friends and family
- Use your Facebook status to promote your new website and who you can help
- Use Twitter to tell people what you do and how they can get more information from your site
- Tell bloggers and other website owners that are similar about your new site
As you can see lead generation is not as hard as you might think. Follow these simple steps and you will be generating a few extra mortgage, debt, education, or b2b leads everyday.
About Bill Rice