Lead Generation Techniques

First of all...what is a lead? You may already know the answer to this, but just in case, I guess I should define it for those who don't.

A lead is the identity of a person or business potentially interested in purchasing a product or service, and represents the first stage of the sales process.

Many people think that a lead is the same as a prospect. This is not the case, so let me define what a prospect is as well.

A prospect is a lead that has been contacted, interviewed and qualified. Genuine interest has been established, and the person is financially qualified to buy.

In summary, leads are simply "people to talk to" about your product, service or opportunity. They are leads because they have either expressed an interest in your product, service or opportunity by requesting further information, or they have a definite "need" for your product, service or opportunity due to the industry they work in, their gender, or any number of other observable clues that would indicate a need.

There are several things to keep in mind when you are generating leads online:

1. You only have about 10 to 15 seconds to attract interest
2. Your ONLY mission is to capture a lead...not to sell
3. Use an autoresponder
4. Use giveaways
5. Less is better

You will need a lead capture page connected to an autoresponder.

Most good autoresponders (like GetResponse) have a "form wizard" that will create the actual lead capture form for you. All you will need to do is copy and paste the code to your web page.

You need to keep your lead capture page short and to the point, otherwise people will just skip it and keep on surfing. What you want is a short little advertisement that will attract attention and get the person to respond. Don't try to sell your product or service with the lead capture form. Save that for later in the follow-up message and on your main website. The form, like a classified ads, has the ONLY purpose of "generating a lead".

If you set up an incentivised lead capture page (by incentive I mean a free give-a-way as incentive for providing their email address) that has a short little paragraph about your product or service combined with a 3-line form (name, phone, email) you have a simple but powerful marketing tool.

My company uses about 20 different lead capture pages, and we run them in a multitude of link exchanges, traffic exchanges, ezine ads, banner ads, email campaigns,...etc. The idea is to do anything you can to get those lead capture pages in front of people who might have an interest.

One technique that works is to use GetResponse's "Power Leads". It requires having an autoresponder account with them. What you do is set up your outbound email message campaign, then you simply pay for the number of leads you would like. These leads are very targeted and you are guaranteed to have the number of people opt in to your list that you paid for. It works like a charm. Each email that goes out should contain the link to your lead capture page.

Ok, so you have a person's email address, phone number, and name.

What now?

Let's talk about "autoresponders" before we go there...

An autoresponder is a very inexpensive service that manages your email list and sends out timed follow up messages to anyone in your list. If you connect the form on your lead capture page to your autoresponder you have a virtually unlimited opportunity to advertise to your now "opt in" subscribers.

The absolute best autoresponder service we've ever used is GetResponse. Their service is fast and has nearly 100% deliverability (unlike most other services where their mail gets filtered out by the Internet Service Providers before it ever hits the receiver's email box).

Once your lead capture page is set up and connected to your autoresponder, it requires little or no maintenance on your part. Now when a person sees your incentivised lead capture page after clicking through one of your ads, they can quickly scan the message and provide a minimum of information to get on your list.

Always offer some type of free gift on your lead capture page as an incentive to get people to fill out the form. There are arguments for and against this, however, I use giveaways and they work great. Some people argue that the "quality" of the list suffers because people will fill out the form who really aren't interested in your product or servcie just to get the free gift. That's ok because the rule in marketing is that "It is the size, not the quality of the list, and the number of emails you send to it that determine the amount of money you make".

Once a person fills out the form on your lead capture web page, you have to option to send them to a "landing page" of your choice. A landing page is any website of your choosing...probably the one that advertises the product or service you are trying to sell the person.

So the sequence is like this...

People are surfing the Internet. They come across one of your ads, banners,...etc. They click on it and are taken to your lead capture page They fill out the lead capture form on the page They are automatically added to your autoresponder's mailing list They start receiving follow-up messages from the autoresponder They are simultaneously forwarded to your main website (landing page) You now have a new "lead" on your mailing list

To take this a step further you can track your campaigns by replacing the URL for your "landing page" with an Ad tracking URL.

The service we use is HyperTracker. It is owned by the same company that owns GetResponse, so it works perfectly with their autoresponder service and it is extremely accurate and inexpensive.

Use of a service liike this will tell you every time someone clicks on a link within your email message or lead capture page allowing you to monitor the results of your ads. Make sure you set up a different ad tracking URL for each lead capture page or email message and you can see how well each of your campaigns are performing in real time.

The above information should help you to get started. If you need assistance, I can be reached at 1 (813) 579-5443.

Positively, Gary Danko - President Global Leadership University