Developing a website marketing strategy is a must for any business that wants to succeed online…and it doesn’t matter what kind of business you run. Here are a few things you should consider when you’re deciding when and how to promote your website.
1. Research
To develop a marketing strategy that is effective, you need to know a few things about your business and your customers. Research other businesses – both your direct competitors and successful businesses outside your industry – to see what’s working for them. Find the answers to these questions:
Research your customers to learn how they use the Internet. Do they get information from doing a Google search, or do they ask their Twitter followers for help? Do they look for video tutorials on YouTube? Are they participating in forums or blogs? Know where your customers are, and make sure they can find you there.
2. Methods
When you’ve finished your research you’ll need to choose the methods you want to use, and make a plan for success within those methods. Online you should consider search engines, directories, social media, and placing ads in the “content network”, meaning on other websites that are relevant to your product or service. If your research shows that your customers do their research in the search engines, for example, you’ll have to create a step-by-step plan to succeed in the search engines that will probably start with an attractive, user-friendly and search engine-friendly site design. Then you’ll have to learn how to drive traffic to your website (see my FREE eBook to learn all about this!), and you’ll need to constantly test for maximizing conversions.
Don’t forget to promote your website offline too! Print the url on all business literature, and include it in any offline advertising.
3. Media
Once you know the kinds of marketing and advertising you’ll use, you need to choose the particular media – i.e. which website or what directory? Obviously it should be relevant to your business but more importantly, it needs to be relevant to your customers. For example, if your research shows that your customers are very active on YouTube, your plan of action should start with a video marketing strategy.
Keep your goals realistic and measurable. Don’t try to conquer the whole online marketing game at once, or you’ll quickly get overwhelmed. Instead, tackle the most critical media first, then move on to others one at a time. But don’t just jump on the next media that sounds good; make sure you are moving strategically, based on what you learned in your initial research.
4. Test, Test, Test
Effective marketing always requires some trial and error. Put Google Analytics on your website (it’s free!) to get data on user behavior on your site. Track the results you see, make changes and keep tracking. Over time you’ll find a mix that works for you. Make small bets when testing new ideas so that you can afford for some of them to fail.
Every business wants the perfect strategy and every marketer wants to promise results every time. Unfortunately marketing – especially online – just doesn’t work like that. However, if you plan well and ask yourself good questions before you start, you can raise the chances of succeeding.
Be willing to test ideas, track results and make changes and over time you’ll see the results you need. It just takes a little time.
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download My FREE eBook
Articles & Online Marketing Services & Website Marketing Strategy
Everybody wants more leads for their business but the number of leads isn’t always what’s important. You need high quality leads and that means leads that are likely to be interested in your product or service. You need qualified leads.
For most businesses the first question they ask about their lead generation program is how many leads did it generate? But you don’t make any money from generating leads; you make money from closing sales. The better qualified your leads are, the better chance you have of closing the sale.
A qualified lead is one who has the desire and ability to buy now. Both are important. Some customers will be more suited to what you have to offer than others – these customers will be easier for you to sell to. But if they are not in a position to buy, your efforts are wasted – they may not have the budget, they may not have an immediate need, they may be under contract with some other provider.
A good qualified lead generating program will include a number of steps designed to separate the most likely potential customers (the qualified leads) from the unqualified ones.
1. Profile Your Target Market
The first step is to determine exactly who your target market is. A good way to do this is to identify the benefits (not features) of your product of service. This exercise will help you notice common characteristics of your target market and what messages appeal to them. Ask your salesteam, managers, and other employees how they’d define the ideal customer, and compile their answers into a cohesive definition of your target market.
You also need to define different levels of interest, such as “suspect”, “prospect”, “inquiry”, “qualified lead”, etc, and make sure all employees understand the various labels. As potential customers surface, they should be tagged with one of these labels in your CRM database.
Finally, you’ll need tools in place to determine and track WHEN your potential customer is ready to buy, whether they have the BUDGET to buy, and whether they have the DECISION-MAKING authority to buy. When these three aspects are in place, you know you have a qualified lead.
2. Create an Appealing Marketing Message
Once you know exactly who your target market is, you should create a marketing message that appeals to their needs, desires, or fear of loss. Your marketing message should be directed tightly at your most likely prospects – if your sell dog toys, for example, your target market is dog owners and your message should be ‘…fun, durable dog toys with XYZ safety credentials…’.
Simply targeting your message will turn off unqualified prospects, such as cat owners. This is crucial when you’re spending a lot of money advertising, such as with your pay per click campaign. You don’t want unqualified prospects clicking on your ad and costing you money. Learn more about this in my FREE ebook.
It also makes your message more relevant to the people that you are targeting – making them more likely to respond. On a similar point, you can target the methods you use to your well-defined ‘most likely customer’ group.
3. Manage and Nurture Leads
Do your marketing right and your leads should all match the basic criteria for your product or service. But you still don’t know whether they are really interested (or are just window shopping) or whether they are in a position to buy. Your lead management program can be used to introduce a number of sanity checks to further weed out the less qualified prospects. A sanity check is simply a point in the process where you ask for a small commitment. It may be signing up for your mailing list, agreeing to an initial phone call or being willing to set up a meeting. You can even try a ‘trial close’ where you ask them to make a small purchase or commit to a test project.
Each step asks for an increasing level of commitment and at each step a few people will decide that they are not ready to go to the next step. If that’s the case that prospect should simply be added back into the pool of future customers – and you’ll need a good lead management system in place to nurture them until they’re ready to buy.
By the time someone reaches the point where you close the sale, they’ve already shown their interest. And closing the sale is much easier when you have good qualified leads to work with.
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download My FREE eBook
Do you want to develop leads online? The Internet can be a great place to develop and grow your business. In particular it offers a perfect opportunity to attract customers, build your prospect list and ultimately help you close new business. The good news is that internet lead generation is not all that different from traditional offline lead generation.
Yes, the Internet changes the way that people look for information. Yes, the Internet allows you to automate lead generation. But, ultimately the steps involved in good lead generation are the same:
Let’s take a look at each step:
Imagine your website as if it were a store. Your first job is to attract people to your store using effective marketing techniques. You can’t sell anybody anything until they’re in your store. Some of the marketing techniques to consider include:
It’s also worth remembering that you can still use effective offline strategies like direct mail to drive traffic to your website as well.
Once you have started to generate traffic to your website then the next step is to turn some of that traffic into a list of prospective new customers to follow up with. Usually this will involve you creating an incentive for them to provide their contact details, the first part of any good permission based marketing campaign. That incentive could be a special offer, or, more likely, further useful information.
What form this information takes is up to you. You could consider a blog that people can subscribe to, a free newsletter, or a webinar that people can take part in, for example.
Once you start building a list the next question becomes, ‘what do I do with this list?’. The goal has to be to move people from being interested to being willing to buy your product or service. Of course not every prospective customer on your list will end up becoming a customer.
That’s fine.
However, it is important for you to find ways of separating those with a genuine interest from the ‘tire kickers’. Tools like newsletters and autoresponders can help you automate much of this process.
Of course the final step is to close the sale. You can create online marketing tools that will encourage customers to buy from you. But unless you are actually selling a product via your website, you will almost always have to close the sale through direct contact with your prospective customer or client.
However, if you set your lead generation program up effectively; the advertising you use, how you build your list and what you do with that list can all help ensure that the people you actually spend time selling to are the most qualified prospects you could hope for.
Do It Yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download My FREE eBook
Articles & Contextual Advertising & How to Buy Leads & Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & List Building Strategies & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Qualified Lead Generation & Website Marketing Strategy
Are your lead generation techniques working for you?
Have you tried different lead generation techniques, only to fall short of your goals for inquiries and new business?
If so, here are our top ten techniques to increase sales and new business inquiries.
1. Market and Advertise Offline and Online
A lead generation strategy is useless without a way of getting prospects to the first rung of the ladder. This means successful advertising and marketing of your business. A good marketing strategy can motivate cold prospects to become warm leads and take the first step in doing business with you. Read my FREE eBook for more information on this.
2. Build a List
Your list is your most important asset. Most prospects aren’t ready to buy the first time you come in contact with them, but they may be ready at some stage in the future. A well developed list, packed full of prospective customers allows you to see better returns, cut marketing costs and maximize the returns from the money you do spend.
Of course good list building is not just an excel sheet with everybody’s email address. A good list is detailed, segmented into different types of buyers and is regularly updated with new information. It’s the backbone of every good lead generation system.
3. Schedule Appointments
For those businesses with a more complicated sales process that requires a personal approach, the next step after a prospect shows interest is to arrange for a meeting. Depending on your business and resources, you might consider using a professional appointment setter to do the legwork.
4. Close the Sale
If your prospect expressed an interest or met you for an appointment, they’re interested in what you have to sell. How interested? Ask them to buy it. They can either say “yes”, “no” or “not now”.
Whatever the result, by closing the sale you’ve moved the process along. You may have a new sale. You may move a prospect along your sales system towards a future sale. You may have eliminated a prospect that could have cost you time in the future. Of course you don’t want to come across as pushy, but don’t make the common mistake of shying away from asking for the sale.
5. Build a Follow Up List – Clients and Prospects
As your list grows you’ll want to split it into two (or more) kinds of follow-up lists. One is for current and past clients. You’ll ask them for future business, sell new products and services and ask for referrals. For existing customers you’ll also need to use effective customer retention programs because these are the people you need to pay the most attention to. After all, it’s always cheaper to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones.
The second is for prospects who aren’t clients – yet. From that list you’ll want to implement Step 6.
6. Identify the Most-Qualified Prospects
As your list grows even more you’ll want to segregate it to make more money by spending more energy and time on your “A” prospects. Spend less time and energy to your “B” and “C” prospects. The first step is to create profiles of who the A, B and C prospects are.
The next trick is to starting using your automated systems to make C prospects into B’s and B prospects into A’s (and A prospects into paying customers.)
7. More Closing
If your prospect didn’t buy from you the first time, you should have put him on your mailing list. Find ways to follow up with him so you’re there when he is ready.
[Alec Baldwin - Best Performance On Closing]
8. Keep in Touch with Prospects
Keep delivering useful content to your prospects, keep making offers, closing, and asking for the sale with all your prospects who haven’t bought yet. You never know when they’re ready to buy. But when they are, you want to be there.
9. Keep in Touch with Customers and Clients
Once you convert a prospect into a customer, don’t ignore them! It’s more profitable to do business and keep in touch with clients who know and trust you. Advertising and prospecting for new business, in the cold marketplace, is the most expensive kind of business development.
10. “Rinse and Repeat!”
Turn your long-term lead generation techniques into a repeatable cycle. Turn lead generation techniques into a system. Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas, Download My FREE eBook
Articles & Autoresponders & Closing Sales & Current Customers & Customer Retention Program & How to Buy Leads & Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & List Building Strategies & Qualified Lead Generation & Setting Appointments
Why do you need a lead generating system at all?
Simple, a good lead gen system can:
In this brief overview we’ll consider both the advantages of an effective system and how you can create one for your business.
Lead generation starts with your external marketing, captures initial interest and passes the most qualified and interested prospects through to you.
Done online, it can be not only be hugely effective at attracting qualified prospects but also a huge time saver too.
1. Marketing and Advertising: The First Step in Lead Generation
The first thing to consider when constructing a system that generates leads is where and how to advertise. Offline marketing can include just about anything, from print ads to direct mail. Effective offline marketing needs to attract attention and lead the prospect into the first stage of the system – your website. Again, the point is to attract attention and then lead people to the first stage of your system.
Where and how to market your business – online or off – should be based on your ideal customer. Where do they hang out? What websites do they visit? What terms do they use to search for businesses like yours? Start with a detailed knowledge of your prospective customer and it’s hard to go too far wrong.
Online marketing can also include any number of tactics, including; search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC), display advertising and social networking activities. Read my FREE eBook for details on how to do this.
2. Your System Should Be Automated
Once you’ve got your system set up, the system should be left to do its own thing. The less effort it takes to manually run the system, the more efficient it will be. That means automation. More specifically, your automated system should be able to:
3. Your System Should Develop Trust
Your lead gen system should also promote a trusting relationship between you and your customer. They should be made to feel appreciated and looked after. The better job your system does, the more responsive they will be.Your system should also provide you with a chance to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise, which is why so many lead generation programs start with an offer of information. By keeping these simple guidelines in mind, your system will be on a par with the best online. Moreover, you’ll be generating leads with enough regularity, accuracy, and effectiveness to ensure a healthy profit from whatever endeavor you undertake.
Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas Download My FREE eBook
Articles & Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & Lead Management & Online Marketing Services
