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Tuesday, 02 September 2014 17:00

Got a website, now what? How to generate leads online to make money

Already have a professional business website?

If your business already has a website, then you’re on the right path to generating more money through the amazing benefits of promoting your company online. On the other hand, if your company still doesn’t have a professional website, then many could argue it doesn’t exist. Well, it might physically exist, but if it’s not a click away on the Internet in today’s digital era then it basically doesn’t exist in the eyes of most people. Agree?

Having a professionally designed business website is the first step in ensuring that your company can succeed in today’s online world. Want to learn more? Read about the Top 5 must-have digital tools to take your business online.

From this point forward, let’s just assume you already have a business website. Great! “Now what?” you may ask yourself, “How can I make money from my website and generate leads?” That’s exactly what I’d like to help you with, so let’s get to it.

Intro To Website And Email Marketing Lead Generation

The five basic steps for generating leads are as follows:

1) Create landing pages on your website, 2) Drive traffic to your website, 3) Attract your online visitors by offering them valuable information & tips to help them solve their problems, 4) Capture their information (convert them into leads), and 5) Follow-up with them via automated e-mails. 

Your Main Digital Tools

Business Website:
The goals of your website should be to 1) provide useful information to your potential and existing users, and 2) to capture online visitors information (such as their email) and convert them into “leads” with whom you can follow-up later.

E-mail Marketing:
An E-mail marketing campaign then allows you to send mass, yet personalized, e-mails to the leads you captured through your website. These e-mail campaigns are created through the use of a hosted E-mail marketing software provider such as MailChimp, Aweber or ConstantContact.

The 5 Lead Generation Steps

1) Create Landing Pages On Your Website

A landing page, also known as a squeeze page, is simply a special web page created for the purpose of capturing visitors information. It’s usually a page that doesn’t show the rest of the normal company’s website (to limit where people click) and the only button that’s clickable is usually one that says “Submit to receive FREE XYZ”, “Download” or “Sign up”.

Setting up landing pages can take some time, but there are awesome online tools that can help you get started quickly.

2) Drive Traffic To Your Website

There are multiple ways to send visitors to your website. One of the most cost-effective and fastest ways to do so is through paid advertising.

A few of today’s popular advertising options:

  • Facebook ADs - What everyone in online marketing is talking about lately!
  • Google AdWords - Keywords based ADs, usually pricier than Facebook ADs.
  • LinkedIn / Twitter / Pinterest ADs - A third option if your company is fit for these types of social media networks (not for everyone).
  • Display ADs - The old-school graphics banners that can be shown all over the web (via Google’s AD network), or on specific websites you choose.
  • Re-targeting ADs - Facebook ADs or display banners that show up only after a user has visited your website.
  • Other ways to send traffic to your website is through your blog, guest articles on other websites, forum links, Q&A websites like Quora, press releases, trade shows, networking events and many others.

3) Attract Online Visitors

The most successful way to get someone’s attention is to offer online visitors something valuable - for free or very cheap - to help them solve their problems or pain points. This is how most successful lead generation campaigns are set up and generate thousands of new leads.

Ideas of valuable digital information products to develop and offer your visitors:

  • Top 10 tips on “How to solve XYZ faster”, or “Build a better XYZ solution”.
  • White paper on a specific solution offered by your company.
  • Webinar on solutions for “How to help your visitors do XYZ better”.
  • E-Course on “Doing XYZ the right way” delivered by E-mail (1 email per week).
  • Free guides or booklets on whatever topic you’re an expert on.
  • Special report on “how to / best ways to / better ideas for XYZ”.

4) Convert Visitors Into Leads

This step is pretty straight forward if you’ve followed steps 1 through 3. Remember, your goal is to capture your anonymous visitors’ information.

The most important piece of information you need is your visitor’s E-mail address because once you have it you’ll be able to get back in touch with them. By capturing someone’s e-mail through a “sign up”, “download” or “Request more info” online form you’ve successfully converted a visitor into a lead.

Capturing, or squeezing the e-mail, out of an online visitor is done successfully when your user is very interested in the information you’re offering (see step 3). The more eager they are to read and discover the content of the valuable expertise and know-how you offer, the faster and easier it will be to get them to give up their e-mail addresses.

5) Follow-up with them via automated e-mails.

Last, but probably one of the most important steps is following up with your leads. What’s a lead worth if you can’t get them to become customers? Worth nothing! Thus, now your goal is to encourage them to buy something from you. But be very careful about how you do that!

There are whole courses, books, and seminars devoted to the best ways to effectively do e-mail marketing so I won’t have time to go into detail as to what you must do, but here are a few tips:

E-mail Marketing Tips:

  • Don’t sell, don’t sell and don’t sell!
  • First and foremost offer MORE valuable information to your users. Everyone is mostly interested in how YOU can help THEM, no one cares what you’re selling (and they hate spam).
  • The more value you offer, the more your users will trust you.
  • As a general rule: Offer value, offer more value, then offer even more value and then and only then try to offer your products or services for sale (don’t be too obvious). Then repeat this last step.
  • If people believe you’re genuinely interested in helping them and are an expert in your field, then they’ll trust you and may eventually buy from you.

marketing lead generation

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Jaime Nacach

Marketing Strategist

I love helping small businesses with their digital marketing and business strategy. I'm a young man with a passion in entrepreneurship and international experience in business development, marketing, sales, and web/graphic design. 

Find me on: Team Page | LinkedIn | Google+Personal Website

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