Online Leads | How to Get Targeted Converting Leads

Step 1: Capture Prospects' Attention

When prospects visit your website, they are usually searching for information on how to solve a particular problem. This is especially true of search engine traffic. If you want to keep them on your site, you must provide the information they are searching for. A good way to do this is to provide great website content such as articles, audio, video, past newsletters, or an interesting blog. If you don't capture your prospect's attention in the first few seconds, they will click the back button.

Good websites focus on prospects and include plenty of informative content educating and explaining different problems your prospects have and offering advice, new perspectives, or potential solutions. They use web copy that speaks to the problems and concerns of visitors. Put yourself in the minds of your prospects - what are their biggest concerns, problems and obstacles? What might be motivating them to solve those problems? What keywords might prospects type into Google to find a solution similar to what you offer?

Step 2 - Position Yourself as a Specialist

Once your prospects learn more about their problem and potential solutions, they will become more interested in who you are and what you might be able to do for them. They are looking for a trusted adviser who can guide them through the process of solving their problem.

At the same time, your prospects are skeptical. They want proof you can do what you say. They want to know if you are credible and trustworthy. Here are two ways to do that.

1. Use a unique selling proposition. - Your website should tell visitors who you are, why you are different from other service professionals, and why they should choose you.

2. Provide social proof. - While anyone can brag that they are the best service provider for the job, you prospects want to know what other people think about you. Do you offer client testimonials and case studies? Have you won awards? Has the press mentioned you? Do you often speak at industry events?

Step 3: Capture Leads

Offer several ways for people to contact you through your website. Don't simply provide your address, phone number and a contact form. Give them an incentive to give you their contact information and permission to follow up. Here are a few ideas for capturing website leads.

1. Include an opt-in form for your newsletter. - Place your newsletter's opt-in form prominently on your page. Ideally, your form should be visible when a visitor clicks on your page so they don't have to scroll down to find it. Use your form to capture your prospect's name and email address in exchange for joining your newsletter, downloading your free report, or accessing special content on your website.

2. Display contact forms prominently. - Use contact forms for general inquiries, to schedule a consultation with you, or to ask a specific question, which you will answer on your blog.

3. Offer RSS feeds. - Some people might not want to give you their email address but may still want to receive your updates. Make it easy for them to do so by providing an RSS feed. Services like Feedburner.com will allow you to track your feed's subscribers by providing subscriber statistics.

4. Store leads in your contact database. - Having a place to collect and store leads is critical to your follow up success. Anyone who joins your newsletter, requests free information, or inquires about your services should immediately be entered into your contact database.

Step 4: Have a Follow Up System

Most people who give you their contact information won't be ready to hire you. Instead of discarding these leads, follow up with them. Here are a few ways to do that.

1. Offer a newsletter - Email marketing is cheap. You can sign up with an email service provider like Aweber.com for less than $20/month. Decide how often you want to publish your newsletter and send prospects articles about potential problems and issues regularly. A 500-word article shouldn't take you more than a few hours to write, once you get good at it. Then, simply copy and paste it into Aweber's interface and click "send."

2. Create a follow up autoresponder sequence. - Autoresponders are emails that you schedule to send at particular intervals in response to a prospect's actions. For instance, if they request your free report by filling out your form, your email service provider (like Aweber) will automatically send them an email with the link to download that report. You can also schedule to send emails every few days to follow up, The best thing about this is that it's completely automated. You write the content once, set it up, and Aweber delivers the content to your prospects for you.

There's a lot of misconception and controversy about list building and lead generation. If you're not a guru and don't have an access to one-then you can easily get confused about what works and what doesn't when it comes to generating sales leads online. I would like to clear up all the fallacy and give you a list of ideas you can execute to generate targeted leads (free and paid) ASAP. What I share in this post is not a concrete and absolute truth. I can only speak about my own experience as an internet marketer. If I say that something doesn't work-it means it didn't work for me. On the other hand, if I say that something does work-don't assume that it will work for you 100%. This post is only to get your head moving in the direction of the list building truth. You should test what works before you do anything else.

1. Streaming Video Syndication

Anyone who's hooked to an internet connection, even if he lives in Zambia or Uganda, knows what YouTube is. Video sharing networks are a fantastic place to generate sales leads. Videos can be easily embedded into your website, shared on Twitter, Facebook and other Social Networks and have a much higher perceived value then written text. Many Internet Marketing experts say that streaming video is the future and I say that their hunch is just. Video allows you to connect with your clients even before they meet you, email you or talk with you on the phone. After watching only one clip featuring you-they feel instant empathy towards you which multiplies your chances of closing the deal on the backend.

2. Article Marketing

Contrary to a huge misconception Article Marketing isn't dead.

Amount of sales leads you generate using Article Marketing depends on:

* How Good Is Your Headline
* Quality Of Your Articles
* Author Bio Box Click Trough Rates
* Keyword Research

Article Marketing is still one of the most popular ways of lead generation online. The reason it's still one of most notorious lead generation approaches is because it's free and because it works. It works for me, it works for many of my colleagues and it should work for you too (if you don't screw it up).

3. Blogging

Blogging is my personal favorite lead generation strategy of all times. I find blogging fun, rewarding and profitable but it's a lot harder than it looks. Behind every great blog there's a great marketer. Blogging is much harder than any other lead generation method because it takes much more then writing quality articles couple of times a week. Don't be scared though, because with hard work comes great pleasure and huge success! Blogging may very well be the only lead generation strategy you'll ever need (e.g: John Chow, ProBlogger, CopyBlogger). Blogging can be much more than a lead generation strategy-it can and should become a separate income stream for you and your business. Powerful and Influential blog is not a chore-it's an asset. The difference between a blog and a squeeze page is that a squeeze page on and of itself isn't worth anything while blog does. Through a blog you can setup numerous lead generation sources and utilize them all at once-without spending a fortune on paid traffic. Besides, blogging is so popular now that every major corporation started one. Isn't about time you catch up?

4. Joint Ventures

Joint Venture is a mutually beneficial agreement that takes place between two parties. For instance, if you have a product but don't have a big list, you can approach a person with a list and offer a JV in a form of giving away 50% commission off every sale to be made. Joint Ventures are actually the number one strategy the gurus use to do big launches. They approach their friends and colleagues 2-3 weeks prior to launch and personally invite them to do a promotion. The next thing you know, every marketer on the planet talks about the launch and it's a success. If you're just starting out, you probably don't have a big list or a product (or both) so you might think that JVs are not for you. This is another misconception. Joint Ventures aren't only done on product-list-commission basis. JVs can take many forms: instead of offering a commission you can offer a service or something of value to that particular party.

5. Ad Swaps

An advertisement swap or ad swap is simply an arrangement where you agree to put up someone else's ad on your site or email newsletter in exchange for them doing the same. This is a perfect strategy for startupreneurs with small lists, because it's all about equality. You can easily find list owners with similar list sizes and exchange promotions.

Requirements for a successful Ad Swap:

* High Converting Ad Copy. Test your Ad Copy with your own list or paid traffic to develop the highest converting email template you can use to maximize the results of each Ad Swap.
* Equal Traffic And Exposure. It's important to make sure list sizes of both parties are equal or similar in size because otherwise the exchange can't be fair.
* High Relevancy. Ad Swaps should be done with list owners who are involved in similar or relevant niches.

6. Forum Marketing

Forums are another great place to generate leads, build authority and generate traffic. Forums can be used not only to build a list but also for building profitable relationships with other business owners which can lead to Ad Swaps, Joint Ventures and other profitable activities. Not all forums were made equal. Choose carefully-some of them aren't worth your time. Use these criteria to hand-pick your favorites:

* Size-forum needs to be big. A minimum of 2000 active members online at all times. If you can't find a forum this big, go for the next big thing or start your own forum.
* Activity-another important quality for a forum to serve a good lead generation tool. If a forum isn't active-it's the same as dead.
* Moderation-forum should be strictly moderated by an administrator to keep it clean of SPAM and useless entries. That way the content stays fresh and has a higher perceived value by the crowd.

Use your signature file to drive traffic to your capture page, where you offer some incentive for signing up. Provide quality content, helpful answers and link to your blog once in a while with a helpful article that is related to the discussed topic. Don't SPAM! Your forum profile is extremely important. Fill in all the necessary information and add as much descriptive details as possible. Post links to your social profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc and don't forget to leave a link back to your blog for the curious once. Did I mention that you shouldn't SPAM?

7. Social Media

It's no secret that Social Media is on the rise. Twitter is spreading faster than news about the swine flu. Facebook has grown twice the size of MySpace and has no intention to stop. Use them to grow your business.

8. Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is arguably the best way to generate new leads. By guest blogging on other blogs that are equal or greater in size you increase your marketing reach tremendously. Guest blogging traffic is more likely to subscribe because these people conditioned to trust you more than a regular visitor who is defensive about your marketing.

9. Reciprocal Link Building

Reciprocal link building is similar to Ad Swaps only instead of email newsletter the parties exchange links on their site. Party A links to Party B and Party B links to Party A. That way both parties receive an incoming link and traffic which they can convert into leads. This strategy is extremely popular amongst bloggers, however it is also useful for Thank You and Download pages.

10. Banner Ads

In his book "Purple Cow" famous Marketer and Author Seth Godin says that banner ads aren't effective. On the other hand, Internet Marketing Guru Frank Kern believes in the total opposite. My experience proves that banner ads aren't as effective as we want them to be but they generate leads never the less-otherwise you wouldn't see so many of them...everywhere! Banner ads are also effective (and cheap) because they are placed outside the content area of the website. Usually it's either the sidebar or header-either way, no matter where the visitor lands-he can see them and there's a chance he'll click on them. If you're going to use banners (chances are that you are already), make sure to set up some kind of tracking software that will help you in identifying which banners work best, where's the highest click through rate and how many leads were generated of each specific unit.

11. PPC For Search

Pay Per Click is known to be the fastest way for driving targeted traffic to a page if you have the money to invest. PPC has evolved far beyond Google, Yahoo and MSN. Today you can buy PPC ads on Facebook, as well as drive paid traffic to your YouTube videos. I am not an expert in paid traffic, frankly, because I have never paid for traffic-I used SEO to get my blog on the map. Partially because I didn't have the money and partially because I refused to believe that paying for traffic is the way to go. My perception shifted since then. I believe that PPC is the way to go. We see all the major companies prove it over and over again. Even Google, which is the most visited site in the world, uses PPC to advertise Chrome and other related products. Many advertisers are afraid of PPC because of the famous Google Slap. I say, don't listen to those idiots because they don't know how to advertise with Google. Just like any other advertising network, Google has a set of strict rules and guidelines. If you're getting slapped by Google it means that you're breaking the rules and Google is simply punishing you for being stupid. Bottom line is-paid traffic works and it doesn't cost as much as people lead you to believe.

12. PPC For Content

Basically it is the same as Google Adwords or Yahoo Paid Search only your ads are displayed on relevant Google publishers' pages instead of the SERPs. It's hard to say which source of paid traffic is more effe