The Internet has become one of the most essential tools for modern day businesses? Given the numerous benefits that the medium has to offer, various organizations and business owners are realizing that there is no way to avoid having a presence on the Internet for your business if you want to grow and be successful.
The same is true for lead generation. Among the many sources of lead generation available to business today, the Internet has been the most rewarding.
The low cost to acquire new leads via the Internet and the expanded access to new populations that the Web offers gives you unprecedented cost savings and a rapid return on investment. Business owners also reap benefits of not requiring the high investment costs involved in creating a physical presence (retail outlet, manufacturing plant or office); equivalent to what is possible with a Website or social media account.
In 2009, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation conducted a survey that established that the average estimated cost to start a new bricks and mortar business in the USA was $31,150. Getting a website built for the average small business costs a fraction of this amount.
An added advantage is you can be anywhere in the world and your Internet lead generation system/Website is still will working for you, without rest, 24 x 7.
For those who may still be pondering whether they need a Website for their business to generate leads, I think the safe answer here is Yes? and it?s time to start asking more important questions like ?
- Will people buy what my business sells online?
- How do I use a Website to generate revenue for my organisation?
- What does the Website need to do or provide to make it easier for customers to deal with us?
- How will we fit what happens on our Website into the systems and processes we already use in our company?
- What technical expertise does the business need so it can keep the Website and lead generation system working properly?
- How will I know if we are getting the best results possible from what we do online?
- ? and more.
How Marketing Budgets Impact Results with Offline Marketing Tactics
Most businesses with a modest marketing budget will utilise strategies such as word-of-mouth and referrals as a starting point for lead generation. Then move into areas such as direct mail, cold calling, sales presentations, networking and maybe SMS messaging.
Bigger marketing budgets usually mean that broadcast style advertising like television and radio feature, as does magazine, journal and newspaper advertising. Beyond this brand marketing and experiential marketing campaigns (things like what Red Bull does to get your attention) get utilised by the heavy hitters.
As you can see in the offline world, the size of your marketing budget has a pretty dramatic impact on what you can achieve to reach more potential customers and how much of their attention you can possibly capture.
Additionally, unless there is a person involved in the lead generation strategy/marketing tactic, your ability to measure the success of marketing activities is rather complex.
For example, pretend you spent a sizeable sum to get a radio ad produced and aired on a popular local radio station in a prime time slot ? let?s say 6 times within 3 hours for 3 consecutive days. With a follow up the next week when your radio ad runs 8 times within 3 hours for 2 consecutive days.
To work out which approach to radio advertising gets you the best return on investment you need to know how many calls you got as a result of each strategy (6 times within 3 hours for 3 days, or 8 times in 3 hours for 2 days).
The first rush of phone calls you get straight after the ads are aired in the first week you know are due to the radio ads played in the first week. The following week any calls you get right away after your ads have been aired you can pretty safely assume were from the second week?s ad slots. But how do you account for calls that you receive a week or more later (3 weeks or more, after your first radio ads were played)? Do you say they?re all because of the second weeks ad strategy, or half maybe even a third are from the week one ads? How about if some calls are from word-of-mouth and nothing to do with your radio ads?
If you have a person involved in the lead generation strategy you can get that person to note down or count every encounter with a prospect. When you don?t you have to make guesses or do incredibly complex calculations to figure it out.
Taking Lead Generation Online
Increasingly there are equivalent strategies online for all of the marketing activities you?d do offline.
| Offline | Online |
| Television Ads | YouTube/Ustream Video Ads |
| Radio Ads | Podcast Ads |
| Magazine, Journals & Newspaper Ads | Banner Ads |
| Classified Ads | Adwords & PPC Ads |
| Press Releases | Online Press Releases |
| Direct Mail | Email Campaigns |
| Networking | Social Media & Social Networks |
| Word of Mouth | Viral Content |
| Referrals | Affiliate Programs |
| Sales Presentations | Webinars |
| Cold Calling | Forums, Groups & Social Media Connection Requests |
The thing that is most strikingly different, though is that every single one of the online tactics can be tracked, measured & amp; monitored individually, which means you know without a shadow of a doubt the strategies that get great outcomes and those that don?t get a return on your investment.
Whether you decide that this is technically challenging for your company to undertake so you outsource or choose to do these activities yourself to have maximum control, there are four major things you?ll need to know about before you plunge into online lead generation.
The Four Things You Need to Know Before Moving to Online Lead Generation
1. KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE
You and your team know best who your target market and audience is. Ideally you know who your audience is by their demographics such as age, gender, level of education, disposable income, that sort of thing. Better still is if you can identify them by their attitudes, behaviours and motivations.
The Internet and Web is a big place, so the greater detail you have to describe your audience the more precisely you?ll be able to find where they are in large numbers online, what words and content you need to have to best attract them, how to communicate with them so that you aren?t annoying or interrupting them and when is the best time to ask for the sale.
2. HAVE A PROCESS
Just like you have forms and authorisation workflows within your business for different activities you already do, you need to have a process for how you will hand online leads you create.
From what happens when a Website visitor fills out the form on your Contact Us page (who the inquiry goes to and what they do with it next) to what happens after someone has downloaded a document from your Website (do they get sent an email, maybe someone phones them or they get added to a newsletter database).
In many ways when you receive a contact message via your Website or through email it?s very much like when a person has picked up the phone and rung your business. That person is interested in your business right then and there, so have a process that works as well as possible for these situations just like you already do when someone phones.
3. HAVE THE WEBSITE
As sexy as huge numbers of ?Friends? and ?Followers? sounds. Our perspective is that social media and social networking Websites are like closed kingdoms; these Websites want to keep you, your ?Friends? and all your communications in their domain which makes doing business pretty challenging.
When you have your own Website you can control, measure and optimise every aspect of how you do business online, including lead generation. Where ever possible you want to be forming connections with people directly and not through the filters and restrictions of some other organisation.
Get your own Website. Use social media to attract people to you and then encourage them to take the next step and engage with you via your Website.
Make sure that your Website is capable of capturing information provided by your leads and Website visitors so that you can put them into your process.
4. CHECK & MONITOR
The last area is to do with measuring ? something that tends to be bewildering to many.
In some ways the highly sophisticated software applications that are inexpensively (even freely) available for monitoring your Website are too fully featured. Which does cause some overwhelm especially when you?re just wanting to see a few simple numbers to tell you if things are good or not.
The best solution here is to focus on just one or two specific things that are important to you and your organisation to know about how your online lead generation is going. Then keep an eye on how these change over time and as you undertake different strategies and tactics.
If you choose to outsource online lead generation and the maintenance of your Website, then make sure that who you are working with is able to give you the analysis and reports you need to make business decisions.
Just knowing that you got more of something such as more Twitter Followers, doesn?t mean as much for your bottom-line as knowing that if a Website visitor watches all your videos in one day and then you send them an email offer, that 22% of them will buy from you when a sales person calls them.
So make sure you are getting information you can report to your board or executives on that has relevance to your business.
As challenging as this may all seem, if you haven?t yet taken the first step to moving your lead generation on to the Web, prepare in these four areas and your transition will be a lot smoother than you might imagine.
Source: http://live.conversionleadership.com/articles/online-business/moving-to-lead-generation-on-the-web/
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