If you’re a small business or home business considering lead generation strategies, the complexity – and cost – of some of the more complicated systems can be off-putting. But…it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. In fact, with a little planning you can create a lead generation strategy that is simple to use, low cost and very effective.
Generating leads for small businesses is different because small businesses are different; you don’t have the budget, you don’t have the manpower and you don’t have the time. So how can you develop an effective lead generation program?
Advertising can be expensive but small businesses and home-based businesses don’t generally have a lot of money to throw at their lead generation strategies. You need to find ways to attract people to your business so the only option is to focus your efforts on the bigger marketing picture – not just advertising.
Here are five low cost marketing ideas that you could consider:
If you’re short on time and can’t afford to have staff running around looking after your lead generation program, then the natural solution is to automate as much of the process as possible. Here are four quick ideas for automating your lead generation system:
Every small business faces the same issues – small budgets and lack of time and resources. By focusing on low-cost marketing ideas and automating as much of the process as possible, you can create a lead generation process that suits your business.
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Most sales people and entrepreneurs will tell you that they’re good in front of customers. They’re ‘people persons’. “Put me in front of a prospect and I’ll close the sale” is a common statement among salespeople and business owners. In the US, the Small Business Administration (SBA) estimates over 80% of new businesses never reach their fifth year anniversary.
If sales people and business owners say they are great in front of prospects and that they possess the traits of stellar sales people, how can the studies indicate so much failure?
Are the sales people lying?
… No they’re not.
Generating a lead and closing a sale are not the same. When you close a sale you are asking the prospect to make a decision. Making a decision is a commitment. It means risk, responsibility and stress. No matter how smooth and professional you are, closing a sale is stressful for your prospect.
Sales lead generation must be stress-free – the exact opposite of closing a sale. You need to sift through the market and allow all those interested in your offer to stand up and be counted.
Sales lead generation must adopt a soft-sell approach. Your prospect might need something you have for sale. Ideally you want her, someone who doesn’t know or trust you, to step up and introduce herself. No one appreciates being sold – not even salespeople. And without any knowledge of you or your business, every approach will be viewed with skepticism. If you push too hard at this point she’ll run away.
You want your prospect to feel comfortable, relaxed and in control – that means gaining her permission to begin a professional sales relationship. That means offering your prospect a chance to learn more about you without making a commitment. For example, to generate sales leads using a soft-sell approach you could:
Sales lead generation takes time and effort to be effective. Most small business owners don’t have lots of spare time so it should be automated. Your money is made closing sales – not generating leads. You need to automate the lead generating process so you can:
So how can you automate your lead generation process?
If you market online you should consider using an autoresponder. Autoresponders are software programs that allow you to input your contacts, add your sales messages, then program it to automatically email the messages to your list on a schedule you choose.
Set and forget.
Since you decide when to send your messages, you could be on vacation for a week and still have your sales lead generation tactics automatically working for you.
Too many small businesses fail because they don’t manage their lead generation process effectively. Understand the difference between sales and lead generation, make getting in touch with you easy, rewarding and risk free and finally, automate as much as you can.
Follow these three steps and you’ll be able to focus on doing what you do best – dealing directly with new customers and closing the sale.
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Every business with a website wants to make the best use of online marketing tools to help them attract new leads and visitors to their website. Of course, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of internet marketing tools that you could use. So how do you choose the best ones for your business?
Finding the right tools depends as much on your business and your goals as the tools themselves. But generally online marketing tools can be lumped into one or more groups, including but not limited to:
Advertising online is much like advertising offline – you need to choose the best places to advertise based on your target market. Once you’ve chosen the best places to advertise, you’ll also have a choice of advertising types – largely split into display advertising and pay per click advertising.
Display advertising is exactly what it sounds like. Your advertisement gets displayed on a page and if people are interested they can click through to your website. The amount you pay will either be based on a flat fee or on a cost per impression.
Cost per impression means that you will pay every time your ad is displayed to a website visitor. This is usually expressed as a cost per thousand (CPM). For example, if you agree to pay $10 CPM then you will pay $100 for every 10,000 times you advertisement is displayed on screen.
Pay per click can look identical to display advertising but you only pay when a person clicks on your ad to visit your website. If nobody clicks, you pay nothing. Google runs the most popular pay per click advertising network called Adwords.
Further Reading:
Online content comes in many forms but in most cases you will be talking about written content either on your own website or created for other websites but linking back to you. Good content helps you perform better with the search engines (read our free report on search engine optimization basics). It can also help demonstrate your expertise or the quality of your products.
Further Reading:
Email can be a very effective online marketing tool provided you use it in the right way – otherwise you run the risk of being classed as a spammer. The right way is based on permission marketing. Permission marketing starts with you asking potential customers to provide their contact details, usually in return for some kind of information or special offer. The prospective customer will know and accept that they will receive future marketing communications from you.
Email can be particularly useful as it can help you automate a lot of your marketing and lead generation systems. In particular, you can use auto-responders, small software programs that send pre-written emails at set times, to help you follow up with prospects and deliver useful content.
Further Reading:
The Internet allows even the smallest businesses to use a variety of media to market themselves. It is now easy for businesses to use everything from video to recorded audio to live webinars to market themselves. The possibilities are endless.
Further Reading:
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Contextual Advertising & Email Marketing & How to Buy Leads & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Website Marketing Strategy
MLM lead generation…
Building a successful MLM business depends on finding the right distributors, which is why most network marketers ask the same question:
When you first start your MLM business, you’ll likely be advised to invite friends, co-workers, family, strangers and anyone else you can grab to a hotel room for a business opportunity presentation. This can be an effective way to find distributors but there are only so many times you can do this – and only so many friends and family you can drag along.
What’s needed is a lead generation strategy that can help you connect with the right people – people who are interested in an opportunity, won’t waste your time, and are ready and able to take action.
Right now, there are people in your town or city looking for a business opportunity. Some are looking to start their own business. Others want a franchise. Many are looking for something inexpensive and simple to start, run, and grow.
It’s this last group that are perfect candidates for MLM, network marketing, or direct sales style businesses. Your job is to use sound marketing and lead generation tactics to attract them to you and your business. Use marketing and advertising strategies to become a magnet for business opportunity seekers and you’ll soon find yourself achieving your goals and developing lead generation systems that you can pass on to your distributors to help them grow their businesses (and yours).
If you design your marketing to attract professionals who are interested in a business opportunity, you’ll spend less time persuading. Your website will do the pre-selling for you. The online business presentation and autoresponder messages will answer your prospects common questions and weed out ‘tire kickers’– saving you considerable time. What you are left with are motivated people, interested in your business and ready for training.
And the best part? With a strong, automated system in place, it becomes even easier for you to train your team to copy your success – growing your business even faster.
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The best online lead generation systems are lead machines (i.e autoresponders). They help you sort through visitors to your website from potential buyers and general interest from real interest.
The first step in any online lead generation program is to get traffic to your website; the second is to gather information. The third step is where most businesses run into problems. If you’ve done the first parts well then you’re going to have a lot of inquiries, newsletter subscribers and other prospects to deal with.
Too many in fact.
Autoresponders are little software programs that send out pre-written emails at a set time or frequency. Using an automatic email follow program for your lead generation can help you handle the inquiries and still have time to do the work.
1. Use Autoresponders to Notify and Inform
Let’s say that you have a ‘request a quote’ form on your website. It’s a great idea but website visitors can come at any time of the day or night – or on the weekends. You can use an autoresponder to reply to the quote request and let the prospect know when they will receive their quote back.You could also use it to point them in the right direction of other resources worth checking out – like testimonials and information sheets.
2. Run an Email Course By Autoreponder
If you sell services, then part of your job is to show prospects that you know what you’re talking about. A free training course could do just that and encourage them to hire you to deliver the detail. You could set up an autoresponder to deliver the course to each individual recipient at a fixed interval after they signed up. For example, they could get part one on the same day, part two 3 days later and the final part after a week.Spacing the e-course out will help the recipient digest the content more effectively and gives you a chance to start building a relationship with them through the content. In even simpler terms, they will be reminded about your business every few days (or weeks, or whatever).
3. Use an Autoresponder to Deliver a Specific Piece of Information
Say, for example, that you have a rate card or trade program that you don’t want to make available to the general public. You can use an autoresponder to deliver this information only to people who provide their contact details. You’ll be able to follow up over the phone or use an autoreponder to do that, as described below.
4. Use an Autoresponder to Do Lead Management and Follow Up
Once someone has requested information from you (or registered for a free trial or similar), your job becomes about moving them from a state of ‘general interest’ to ready to buy. If you’re dealing with a lot of potential leads or simply don’t have the time to follow up with everyone of them individually, an autoresponder can be used to deliver a set series of messages and content designed to move them towards a purchase.This could include an initial email to ensure they received everything you sent them, a second to suggest a particular feature or resource they might like, another to ask for feedback and so on. The more likely prospects are the ones that will continue to respond.
5. Use an Autoresponder to Deliver an Evergreen Newsletter
An evergreen newsletter is one that is not time sensitive and therefore always relevant. For example, if you create regular informative lead generation content or blog content, then you could create newsletters based on general themes. Each themed newsletter would point out blog posts, articles and resources relevant to that theme. An autoresponder would then deliver each one in turn, say at monthly intervals, and help you get the most from your existing content.
Autoresponders can be extremely flexible and effective lead generation tools – all you need is the software and a little imagination (or experience).
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Automated lead generation simply means finding potential new customers without committing a lot of your own time to the project. It allows you to collect contact information from prospects while building your list. Or by connecting with people 24/7 who are already looking for your service.
As a business owner, your time is precious. You could spend hours every day sourcing new customers. But leads are not the same as sales; only a fraction of them will translate to customers. So it makes sense to automate the process of lead generation where possible.
By creating an automated system – such as automatic email messaging, you can spend more time closing sales and still have a long list of prospects. While it takes a little time to set up an automated lead generation system, you will reap the rewards in the long term.
Start by running an online ad campaign, which is great for your visibility. You can run a campaign with Google AdWords from as little as $10 per month. To create a good list, simply direct those clicks to a sign-up form which collects contact details and gain permission to send out future mailings.
Other forms of lead generation media include: yellow pages, coupons, radio, TV, magazine and newspaper ads.
If you want interactive lead generation, stick to online media. Most offline approaches can only tell your prospects about you but do not collect contact info.
Sales lead software is ideal for categorizing your new business leads. I recommend sales boom. Or you can use a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel for free. The aim is to get all of your sales leads listed in a central computerized database. Make a record of their name, job title, phone number, email address and physical address, as well as a comment about your contact with them to date. Write a summary of each conversation and your next action (eg, “call back on 20th with project brief”).
There are many benefits to using professional sales lead software. You will never allow a lead to go cold, or lose a prospect altogether for a lack of a decent filing system. It will also save you time searching for their details.
Auto-responders are perfect for automated lead generation. Let’s say a new prospect signs up to your mailing list for a free six-week e-course.
Your auto-responder can email them at a set time each week with the next part of the course – complete with your own soft sales pitch. Even if they don’t buy via the course, the regular contact will transform them into a warm lead, ready for your pitch.
Your time as a business owner is incredibly valuable. So boost your automated lead generation efforts by improving efficiencies. Create a library of written templates – including cold introductions, follow-up letters, brochures, FAQs, reports and media kits. Every time you need to follow up with a lead or other business contact, simple personalize your template and send it out – minimum fuss!
If you spend a lot of time answering phone calls, writing general emails and sorting through mail, hire an assistant to do it for you. The same goes for hiring a copywriter for your marketing materials. Stick to your strengths and focus on high-impact tasks, while outsourcing the jobs that will ultimately cost you more by doing them in-house.
By now, you know why you need to automate your lead generation system, and that effective online campaigns are better lead generators. You should also have sales lead software to manage your follow-up contact (whether by phone, e-mail, or snail mail), and have ideas for using autoresponders to keep your leads warm.
With this level of automated lead generation, you will soon have a healthy lead generation list for your next sales!
•We do it for you: If you’d like to free up more time with an automated lead generation system, click here for more info about the lead generation services we provide
•Do it yourself: For more lead generation ideas Download our free report
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