Internet Marketing For Sales Leads
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.
About the Author
Jim Hoffman is founder of Internet Marketing CPR.
His free members only site offers resources, live training, tips and
tricks to help you succeed online.
http://internetmarketingcpr.com
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