Lead Generation

Generate Qualified Leads From Your Website

What would you do if you had a sales rep that month after month took a salary from your company yet week after week after week… they did not generate one single sale? What if this had been going on for years? What if not only were they not generating any sales, they were not even generating any leads? What would you do?

Of course you would fire them! Without a doubt!

The primary purpose of a sales rep is to generate sales and at the very least to generate some leads!

Yet every month, we pay hosting fees, website maintenance fees, software fees, and much more, to maintain a website whose sole job is to generate sales… yet we do nothing when the website fails to perform.

Is it time to fire your website? When was the last time your website generated a sale? A lead?

Sales is all about numbers. If we know that our closing rate or conversion rate is 5% then we can know that we need a specific number of leads to generate a target revenue.

For example, if you have a product that sells for $100 and you want to generate a monthly revenue of $10,000 then you know that you need to sell 100 units to achieve your revenue goal. If you know that you can close 5% of the leads, then you know that you will need 2000 qualified leads to be able to close 100 new customers. This math helps you to determine where you need to focus your efforts to reach your target sales goals.

If you know you need a minimum of 2000 qualified leads per month and your website is only generating 100, that that is the first place to focus your efforts.

So how can you improve your website to capture more leads?

When I work with my coaching clients, one of the first things we do in our coaching calls is to take a look at the website and do a series of 5 minute checks on the basics. Here are some of the questions I usually ask:

Site Review

Is the site visually pleasing?
Is there a clear call to action?
Is there a web form to capture email addresses?
Are there credibility symbols above the fold?
Are there testimonials?
Does the site guide the user to the next step?
Can you easily answer this question: What action do you want them to take?
Does the site allow people to self select different areas of the site based on different market segments?
Is the site converting visitors to leads and leads to sales? Is the conversion rate at least 5%?
If I send more traffic to this page will I get more sales?

SEO Site Review

If your site passes the initial Site Review, the next step is to review your site for search engine optimization factors. If you want your site to rank high in the search engines, you will need to have an SEO friendly site.

Does the site have good SEO friendly title tags?
Does the site have well written description tags? (Benefits plus call to action)
Is the url structure of the site static and seo friendly?
Are all pages on the site easy to find and easy to navigate to?
Is there a blog?
Is it linked to Google+?
Are there social media share buttons on the site and the blog?
Is there duplicate content on the site? (Copyscape)
Has the site been penalized for bad links? (Google Analytics / Penguin Analysis)
Is the site using keywords correctly through the site?

Blogging Review

The next step is to review your blog! Ask yourself these questions:

When was the last time the blog was updated?
Are the blog posts written for the readers or are they articles posing as blog posts.
Are people commenting on the blog posts.
Is the blog the central hub for all content creation?
Are there share buttons on each blog post?
Is the time on site greater than 2 minutes?
Is the bounce rate lower than 55%?
Is the click through rate to other pages at least 2?
Has the site been verified in Google+?

Social Media Review

Social Media is an integral part of an online marketing strategy. To be able to promote the blog posts that are being written, you must establish an online presence with social media. In the past, you could get top ranking in the search engines with just “link building”. This is no longer the case. Here are some questions to ask yourself about your social media presence:

Does you have a Facebook Fan page, Twitter page, Google+ Page, and LinkedIn Page for their company?
Are your social media accounts well designed with graphics?
When was the last time you updated each of your social media accounts?
What is your Klout score or Kred score?
Are you engaging your market online or are you just talking to them?

Local SEO Review

Do you have a brick and mortar business? Do you have a physical location customers can make purchases at?

Are you on Google Local?
Are you on Yelp?
Do you have a Google Map on your website Contact Us page?
Are you optimizing for Google Local terms? (Geo-modified keywords)
Do you have a system for getting reviews?
Are your public citations SEO optimized and optimized for conversion?

We have actually created a guide called the 7 Step Gap Guide where not only do I map out the above questions, but also explain how you can work with my company, Start Ranking Now, Inc. to close the gaps!

Subscribe to our Newsletter and Download the 7 Step Gap Guide Now!

5 Ingenious Ways to Use Company Pages on LinkedIn

by Nicole Munoz

If you have a LinkedIn company page, have you paid attention to how other businesses are using LinkedIn? A lot of the larger companies are finding ingenious ways to use their LinkedIn company page.

A LinkedIn Company page can be added to showcase your business. These pages can increase your visibility and engage with your clients and prospects in new ways.

Here are 5 clever ways you can use LinkedIn:

1. Create a related status series

Creating a series is a great way to show a related set of status updates on your LinkedIn company page. Having related updated increases the engagement of your followers and keeps the conversation going. It also expands your company’s influence since the content is shared.

2. Use LinkedIn as a Lead Generation

Recommend and share information on your products or services using your LinkedIn company page. Create marketing offers like free reports, demonstrations or even a free consultation to generate leads from your followers. Ask your customers to write a recommendation through your company page.

3. Use the Products and Services Tab Creatively

Of course you can and should add products and services in the Products and Services tab. But why not take advantage of this valuable space to further your marketing efforts? Add your special offers, your webinars, any free trials you are offering, videos, ebooks you have for sale and any other content that brings in leads.

4. Cross-Promote Your Social Media communities

LinkedIn is valuable real estate online. Go ahead and use its power to cross-promote you other social channels. Under the Products/Services tab you can have up to 3 rotating banner images. Create banner images with your links embedded for your company’s Services tab talking about your other social communities. The viewer can click through to another web page or another one of your social profiles.

Your business can run targeted ads on LinkedIn. These ads can lead directly to the Products and Services tab. Just remember it is a paid feature.

5. Grab Your Viewers Interest

First create a captivating banner or image for the top of your company page that makes it visually appealing. An image captures the audience’s attention. Without the image at the top of your company page, the page looks unfinished.

Then generate a buzz by creating a series of contests relevant to your business. Share the status updates on LinkedIn. You’ll start building followers for your page.

A LinkedIn company page can be used in many ways to draw attention to your business. Think creatively for ways to use LinkedIn to network and connect with your potential clients. Look at other companies in your niche to garner ideas for drawing in customers.

Profitable Webinars Made Easy

by Nicole Munoz

Webinars are a profitable and popular way to disseminate information to a lot of people at one time. It’s just like an in person seminar except that it’s performed over the Internet. You give presentations just like you would in person with slides, handouts, and other companion information. It is essentially a web based seminar. You can teach a class, deliver a lecture, conduct a workshop, and host an interactive Q & A event via webinar.

The technology allows event hosts to deliver their information to multiple locations at the same time because the attendee simply needs to be able to sign on to a computer terminal with Internet access to participate in the event. Usually attendees can participate in a variety of ways from chatting in a chat room, to raising their hand electronically to speech, by using a microphone.

If you have a lot of information you want to disseminate to a number of individuals or groups but don’t want to spend a lot of money doing it, a webinar is your answer. Participants can join from anywhere, home, work, any country — as long as they have a computer and an Internet connection they can join.

They are economically feasible for small or large groups. What’s more, they are secure, in that unauthorized people cannot enter the webinar. In most cases the participants only have to download a small program to help them access the event, have ear phones with a microphone, the special link or password to join, and they are in.

Why Have a Webinar?

Many reasons for having webinars were mentioned above, but let’s get specific. Hosting a webinar can advance your business to the next level. It can jump start and excite affiliates, and customers alike. Face it, events are fun but they can be expensive and hard to plan. Webinars can be planned from the comfort of your home office, or from any location with computer access and an Internet connection.

Webinars are an effective way to generate more leads. But you’ll need to book speakers that excite your target audience. A targeted topic will also help draw both speakers and attendees. By providing targeted content through a webinar platform with planned speakers you will position yourself to become a thought leader who provides credible, valuable and usable information about your niche.

To generate leads with a webinar you’ll need to ask for information at registration. That information should be sent to an email marketing mailing list segmented for potential webinar attendees. In this way you will be collecting leads via your webinar sign up process. By marketing the webinar, you’re marketing your email list.

Earn More Money

Another great reason to host a webinar is to make more money. Even if your initial goal is to get more subscribers, with more targeted subscribers you’re going to generate more income in the long run. But, if you charge for your webinar you could make more money in an hour than you thought possible. Imagine if you sold the hour for just 10 dollars each. If just 100 people attend the webinar you will have earned 1000 dollars for the hour. Granted you have to spend time developing the event, but imagine if you perfect the event and create a series conducting weekly webinars. How will that add to your bottom line?

Advance Content Marketing

The other thing that webinars do is simply disseminate content in a new way. From one hour long webinar you can create a year’s worth of content all from one event if you set it up right. Just get four to six speakers, record the event, then repackage the event in multiple ways to generate almost unlimited content all year long.

Once a webinar is over you can break it down to shorts that you use in your email marketing blurbs or as an eCourse. You can also transcribe it and create an eReport out of the event. Some people are creating Kindle books out of webinar materials. The sky is the limit with the amount of and different forms the content can take from just one webinar event.

Customer Satisfaction

Sometimes your goal is simply to improve customer satisfaction over a product. You might invite only people who have bought your product or service to a webinar that is exclusive to them. Your goal in this case is perhaps to conduct a Q & A to help customers utilize a product or service more fully.

Your objectives for having the webinar can be more than one of the above, but it’s better if you focus on just one or two objectives in order to create marketing materials that work. Determining objectives and setting goals indicates what metrics to study when deciding whether your event was a success or a failure. Having metrics to look at will assist you in perfecting future webinar events by identifying what works and what doesn’t work. By doing so, you’ll be able to develop a best practices manual for webinars of your own that is fully targeted to your unique market.