Business Opportunity Lead Generation
Bill Brine
- by Bill Brine-Lead Generation Master
Business Opportunity Lead Generation Techniques - an Overview
What is Lead Generation?
According to Wikipedia, lead generation (commonly abbreviated as lead-gen) is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective consumer interest or inquiry into a business' products or services. Often lead generation is associated with marketing activity targeted at generating sales opportunities for a company's sales force. Therefore a lead is correctly described as information regarding or provided by a consumer who may be interested in making a purchase. Generation is one of a myriad of activities that may produce that information and perceived interest.
Every conceivable business participates in some form of lead generation. After all, businesses must make sales to stay in business, so they are always looking for leads that they can turn into customers.
Lead generation is a very broad subject. For the purposes of this article, we will concentrate on the various forms of business opportunity lead generation that are available on the internet:
1. Email marketing, e-zines, newsletters
2. Search engine optimization
(SEO)
3. Pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-lead (PPL), pay-per- action (PPA),
pay-per-impression (PPI) and pay-per-sale (PPS)
4. Free classifieds and Free
For All (FFA's)
5. Hire a lead generation company.
6. Buy leads from a
Co-Registration lead broker
7. Generating your own leads
(1) Advertising in e-zines or newsletters can be a good method for acquiring targeted leads. You should subscribe to various e-zines to verify that the readers would be interested in your offer. Then select those e-zines you feel are targeted to your niche and place a solo ad, a sponsored ad or a classified ad.
Usually the solo ad is more expensive, since this type of ad gets a full page or a separate mailing, whereas the sponsored ad is about a quarter page and the classified ad is only a few lines. Your best bet is with the solo ad.
Costs can vary widely among e-zines. The total circulation of the e-zine guides the price of these e-zine ads. The larger the e-zine circulation, the higher the price per ad.
(2) Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it "ranks", the more searchers will visit that site. SEO can also target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines.
SEO is an art as much as a science, and much work and testing has to go into improving website results. The key here is consistency - producing lots of relevant content, on a regular basis, which subtly promotes the main website.
(3) The terms pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-click (CPC) are sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes as distinct terms. When used as distinct terms, PPC shows payment based on click-through, while CPC shows measurement of cost on a per-click basis for contracts not based on click-through.
In a PPC agreement, the advertiser only pays for qualifying clicks to the destination website based on a pre-arranged per-click rate. Popular PPC advertising options include per-click advertising networks, Google's AdWords or Yahoo's Search Marketing, and affiliate programs.
To utilize PPC. you write a short, three or four-line ads to be displayed by the search engine, that contain the keywords on which you have bid money. Each time one of the ads is "clicked on" by a viewer; you must pay your bid amount to the search engine.
If you manage to convert enough of your visitors into sales, your PPC campaign will be profitable.
It is very important to track your income and expenses and the ROI for your ads when utilizing PPC. You can lose a lot of money very quickly if you are not very careful.
Pay-per-action is the action defined in a cost-per-action agreement that relates directly to some type of conversion. A sale being made or a registration of some sort is the most common type of action.
In a pay-per-lead agreement, the advertiser only pays for leads generated at their destination website. No payment is made for visitors who do not sign up.
Pay-per-impression is a typical referral link/banner ad arrangement where the website wanting to purchase advertising space pays the host's website for each time it displays the ad.
Typically, prices are set per 1000 exposures and software is added to the hosting web server to track the number of impressions displayed.
(4) Free Classified and Free For All advertising is not really recommended. No-one really looks at these sites any more. The main use of such services now is to provide backlinks to the site you are promoting.
(5) Buying leads from any of the various lead generation companies out there can be very costly, both in terms of time and money. You will normally find that when you call such leads, they have already heard from many other entrepreneurs pitching them all sorts of deals, and they will insult you and hang up. You'll be fortunate to get 1 or 2 out of every 100 leads who may be interested. Unless you're a crack telemarketer who enjoys this sort of thing, you will soon give up in disgust.
(6) There is one type of lead purchase that has recently seen some success: Co-Registration leads.
Co-Registration occurs when someone registers for one thing (for instance, a membership or a magazine subscription) and then is offered more information on a related topic (such as making money from home). In another case, they might be visiting a website targeted to entrepreneurs and a pop-up asks if they would like related free information by email. Those who sign on are very good targeted leads as they have opted in to receive more information.
Once you have your leads opt-in to your own list, now you can pamper them, shower them with gifts and take extra good care of them because they are now your future.
You must gain their trust and once you have that, you have to live up to that trust by being honest and above board with them at all time. They will then buy from you again and again.
(7) The best way to generate leads is to learn how to generate your own targeted leads. The best way to do that is to grab yourself a Gold Veretekk system, which will provide you with all the tools and training you will ever need to dominate the search engines for your chosen keyword categories, and also to generate leads who are already familiar with your name, are expecting your call, and are interested in what you have to offer.
I hope this overview of Business Opportunity Lead Generation Techniques has been useful. For more information on any of these strategies, you can contact me. I have tried them all. My contact information is at the end of this article.
And if Business Opportunity Lead Generation seems like a lot of work, you're right! But there is a way to shortcut the process. Drop by my website at
for more details.
-------------------
Bill Brine-Lead Generation Master
PO Box 121,
Amherst, NS B4H 3Y6 Canada
Ph: 902.667.0798
Fax: 760.280.8685
Skype:
billbrine
http://business-opportunity-lead-generation.wavefour.net/
http://trivita.proboards83.com/index.cgi?board=businessopportunitylead
http://billbrine.linkscout.com/
Bill Brine
Lead generation is absolutely necessary to run a profitable business. Whether you are a Fortune 500 company or a small work from home business operation, you need people who are interested in what you have to offer if your business is to be viable and profitable.
Word of mouth is fine, but getting started in a small business, or growing an already existing operation, requires more proactive steps.
One common approach is to purchase leads. On the surface, this seems like a good approach. In the vast majority of cases, you will simply lose your money doing this, especially if you buy generic leads or those who've shown only a marginal interest in your business.
One of the worst strategies is to purchase a list of email addresses for generic leads. These have usually been sold to multiple users. If you do this, don't just start sending the marketing messages. You must send am introductory email that asks them to opt in to your autoresponder series only. After all, these people don't know you. If they start receiving marketing messages out of the blue, you will end up with a lot of abusive replies and maybe even some spam complaints.
A safer, and more profitable approach, is to develop an automatic lead generation system that is either free or else costs very little to set up and maintain. In particular, you require the exact steps that will put your lead generation on auto-pilot - techniques that come with step-by-step instructions.
If your business requires phone numbers, this can be taken into account when you set up your free lead generation system. Design it so that your leads are not only pre-qualified but you are able to obtain telephone numbers at this time.
Postal leads (snail mail) are another solution, but these are also risky, as well as being expensive. As with generic email leads, don't just send a full package and hope for the best. First, send a post card with a reply coupon to find out who is interested. This way you won't incur costs on people who simply aren't interested or who may have already joined your program. It isn't easy to even recover costs with postcards.
It isn't all just doom and gloom, though. You still need leads and there are methods which enable you to set up an automatic lead generation system, put them into an autoresponder for a series of emails, and send them a postcard later. One of the best systems I have come across for doing this is the Veretekk Lead Generation system.
More details are available at this site:
http://www.GeneratePremiumLeads.com
The secret is to pre-qualify. The essential ingredient in building a lead generation system is to be sure you pre-qualify them for your offer. Fortunately, there are free and low-cost methods for doing this. Some of them will be mentioned briefly here. You should follow-up with a fuller, in-depth study of each.
Method 1. Viral List Builders: Techniques that encourage users to pass the product onto others, such as ebooks, jokes, cartoons, pictures, and important information.
Method 2. Ad Co-Op Publishing: Co-operative ventures with others who agree to place your advertising on their web pages in exchange for you doing the same with their ads.
Method 3: Forum Marketing. There are thousands of forums covering just about every topic. These provide opportunities to become known and to introduce readers to your informal advertising through your forum signature.
Method 4. Article Marketing: Articles are valuable as sources of content and information, as well as providing back links to your web site and pages.
Method 5. Special Bonuses: There are many ways incentives can be used to persuade prospects to join your email list and to convert visitors to buyers.
Method 6. Reverse Marketing: Join every offer you can find that is related to your market and contact the person making that offer. They have already demonstrated an interest in your particular niche and are likely to require more quality information.
Method 7. Joint Ventures: Contact others who have shown a similar interest and invite them to joint venture with you. They provide leads and you just close the sales, offering a discount to their list.
Method 8. Buy Customers: Instead of buying or generating leads, there are
certain businesses for which you can buy customers. This shortcuts a lot of the
work necessary to create a viable and profitable work from home
business.
You'll find more details at http://ItsGoodBusiness.net
Business Opportunity Lead Generation can be a costly and time-consuming process unless you have the right tools and the right training. But it is possible to put in place a low-cost automated system that generates pre-qualified leads with whom you can develop a relationship.
Do further research in any of the areas I have touched on in this article and you will no doubt find something that fits your business.