Inbound Marketing to Generate Internet Leads That Grow Your Business

  

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This is the 3rd post in a series that when finished, will give you and your company insight on how to plan and execute a successful inbound marketing program to grow your business online. At this point we've talked about some of the fundamental considerations of planning your inbound campaign, followed by a number of approaches to enhancing the quantity and quality of your website visitorsand the next logical topic is how to generate internet leads. It's great to get all those new visitors to your website, but that doesn't help your business grow much unless you can find a way to turn them from a visitor into a lead, so what's a lead?

A simple definition is that a lead is someone who has expressed an interest in the product or service that you offer. Does that expression mean that they are ready to buy? No. Does it mean that they are going to become your customer? Not necessarily. As with any lead that has come in from any of your marketing efforts, a lead means that you have an opportunity to begin a relationship, that, if properly nurtured, and if your product or service solution is the right fit for that new prospect, you have a good opportunity to convert into new business. We will be talking about lead nurturing in our next post so stay tuned. For now, let's begin looking at how you're going to generate internet leads from your website.

8 Steps to Creating a Successful Online Lead Generation Program

1. Understand what problem your company offering solves for your target audience- Sounds obvious right? Most companies have a deep understanding of what their offering does, but they haven't necessarily framed it by what problem it solves. For example, Inbound Marketing Experts, do we help companies transform their websites into active, engaging stops on the internet highway? Yes, but is that the problem we solve? No. We help businesses grow, more specifically, by using the internet. Do you see the difference? So, does your offering smooth operations, improve efficiency, reduce costs, grow business etc.?
2. List the different ways your solution addresses the larger problem- Again, using us as an example, one thing that we do is help companies increase the volume of traffic to their website. Does this make the business grow? No, but it contributes to solving the online business growth problem by creating more opportunities for a company to find an interested prospect.
3. Create a phrase that relates your offering to solving the problem- Continuing with the Inbound Marketing Experts example, we would look to relate business growth with increasing website traffic, something like: "Grow your business by increasing your website traffic."
4. Re-work the phrase into a compelling offer that responds to your target visitors need and offers them value- "FREE GUIDE! How to increase your website traffic and GROW your business. Download Now"
5. Create the document, demo, trial, ebook, whitepaper etc. behind your offer- You're offer will invite an interested visitor to access some free information that will help them solve their problem or inform themselves further or evaluate a solution, you need to have your offer in place so they can access it. This is where you begin your relationship with your new prospect, so make the information or trial worthwhile from THEIR perspective...make a good first impression.
6. Create a "button"- A button is that 'click though' that you can place on your website in appropriate locations that will provide your website visitor with ample opportunity to avail themselves of your offer. You can create these yourself with a simple graphics package like "paint" or a more sophisticated version if you have an in-house web design and support team, or outsource it to a design outfit.
7. Create a landing page- This is a special page that is designed specifically for the conversion of a site visitor into a new lead. it includes further info telling the prospect what value they'll receive, and may have a form to fill out, a 'tweet pay' option, or both. We have previous posts about landing pages and if you need further help you should refer to those posts.
8. Hyperlink the button to the landing page- This is the final step, by linking the button to the landing page, every visitor that 'clicks' your button will have the opportunity to access your offer, and in return you will have begun your relationship with your new lead.

Once again, we hope you see that there are no difficult actions required to start your online lead generation program, that's inbound marketing...not difficult, but there is effort involved. The best lead generation websites will repeat this process for a number of different reasons, one very important reason is that your visitors will be at different points in their buy cycle (not your sell cycle) and ideally you should have offers in place that respond to these different stages. As well, you want to test the buttons and offers that work, so modifying them slightly and trying again will refine the results you achieve. 

Great online lead generation programs pay for themselves over and over, ultimately delivering high quality prospects through lead nurturing (our next topic) for your sales team to take over and turn into new business. The most powerful aspect of making this investment is that once it's done it will work for you 24/7, what other marketing activities do that for you? Let's get growing!

We're at the edge of the future!