Dear Business Owner or Manager,

What kind of business do you have?  Do you provide a professional service?  Do you sell stuff online?  Do you make widgets?

If you are in a business where your prospective customers must engage or ‘talk’ to you first before they buy, then online lead generation could be a perfect fit for you.

I imagine that you are probably getting enquiries (leads) coming by email from your website right now.  Or at least you should be.

But are you getting enough?  And did you know, that with a bit of time and by doing the right things, you could literally flood your email inbox with lots more genuine and qualified enquiries? It’s true.  We’ve performed lead generation  and achieved it for other companies and it can be done for you.

Read on and I’ll explain how and what’s involved:

Why Does Online Lead Generation Work?

It is simple. Online lead generation works because every month more and more of your potential customers are searching online for what you promote or sell.  Recent NZ and AUS research shows that 50% shoppers will research a purchase online before purchasing a product or service [1].

But there’s more. A staggering 52% of shoppers researching online only consider 1 – 2 websites when they search [2].  And to top it off, the majority of searchers click on the top 3 results (60 – 80%) [3].

Plus, more and more Kiwis are connecting the web, and broadband internet connectivity now dominates over dial-up.

Here are some facts concerning broadband internet useage from the Dept of Statistcs.

At 30 June 2009:

• The total number of broadband subscribers exceeded 1 million.
• Broadband users made up nearly three-quarters of all Internet subscribers.
• There were 126,000 subscribers with a data cap of at least 20GB, three times as many as 15 months ago.
• The number of subscribers with an Internet connection using mobile data cards, cable, or satellite technology grew by 53 percent to 220,000.

So what does this actually mean?

This highlights the incredible (low-priced) opportunity that smart NZ businesses can take advantage of.  The research also underlines the importance of search engine optimisation and the importance of other ‘conversion’ factors.

Putting Together An Online Lead Generation Campaign

Significant opportunity exists by using organic SEO and the main way to drive traffic, as opposed to paid search using Google Adwords.

The first step in putting together a killer lead-generation campaign using organic or natural SEO is first to answer some basic questions.  They include:

• Is there a requirement for prospective clients to ‘talk’ to you before they buy something from you?  If the answer is yes, then online lead generation will work for you! Note: ‘talk’ could be a phone call, an email, a Skype call or a face-to-face meeting.

• Do you have a website? And if you do, to you have web statistics that tell you important information about your current site visitors and traffic? (If you don’t or don’t know, we can help).

• Do you have a good sales process in place so that enquiries can be handled effectively?  This includes systems to track conversion and other factors.

Research

The next step is to extensively reasearch your market online.  There are lots of things involved here, which I’ll save for other posts.  But the basics involve using tools to identify the keywords and keyphrases that your potential market actually use when searching online, as well as an analysis of what your competitors are doing.  It sounds simple enough, but there often traps and counter-intuitive elements to consider.

Conversion

The ratio of website visitors who actually take an action that you desire is called the conversion ratio.  Creating a conversion plan to maximise the visitor/action ratio is important.  Things to consider are:

• Setting up the architecture of the website so that it works properly
• Considering the aesthetics and design of the site or landing page
• Having clear objectives and priorities relating to the desired action you want visitors to take
• Formatting and laying out the elements on the site based on proven principles
• Writing effective & compelling copy for your audience that is free from platitudes and hype

And more…

Search Engine Optimisation

There’s tons more about SEO on this site (and others) if you want to learn specific techniques, but this is not the  goal of this article.  Having said that, the principles of SEO apply now more than ever.

Our overall objective when working with clients is to create a site that contains quality content that is relevant.  Next,  we use different methodologies to ensure the search engines can ‘understand’ and pick up on the website ‘theme’.  This themeing plays an important part of the relevance of your website compared to your competitor.

Other factors include using the right keywords in the right parts of the website (siloing) as well as building quality backlinks through submissions and article management.

Lead Generation Summary

For the next few years at least, consumer behaviour with online search engines will more and more dominate the way that business gets gone in New Zealand. It’s true.

For some it’s scary and they’ll choose to ignore it.  For some, they’ll embrace it as a new opportunity to gain real competitive advantage before their competitors do.

There’s a lot involved in online lead generation.  Factors involve research, website stucture and design, conversion and SEO…and a whole lot more.

Smart companies do not take a DIY approach to lead generation because they realise the opportunity cost is just too high.  The rate of change occurring online means that as soon as a beginner masters a certain element, other factors will have come in to play that can obviate any gains made.

Fortunately Internet New Zealand Ltd can help!  We work with ambitious, entrepreneurial and growing companies to navigate through the mire of hype, myths and unscrupulous operators…And help them to dominate their industry or niche online.  Really.

If you would like to find out more about how we can help you, (and to provide proof of how we’ve done it for others) please click the button below.  We’ll provide a free online marketing review and provide insight and ideas irrespective of whether we end up working together.

Thank you for reading this.

Rhys Coffin
Lead Generation Specialist
Internet New Zealand Ltd

E: rhys@internetnewzealand.com

[1] Source: Google Monash University AUS, 2009
[2]Source: Google Monash University AUS, 2009
[3] SEO-scientist.com

But there are lead generation principles, concepts and tactics that are continually evolving.  This stuff needs to be tested, tweaked and tried.

And that’s what we’ve been doing for over five years now.

Stick around and read this article if your business is based on a requirement to ‘talk’ to your customers or clients before they buy from you. An example of this might be a real estate agent, a trades-person or a lawyer.

After reading this, you just might pick up some lead generation ideas or have an epiphany that could spark you to take action.  Who knows, you may even contact us for help that could lead to a flood of new enquiries to your email inbox.

Wouldn’t that be lovely?

Lead Generation Concepts

Let’s strip this down this whole subject of lead generation and focus on the fundamentals.  When you understand the basics it makes a lot of sense.

Fundamental #1:

Online Lead Generation needs to form part of an overall maketing strategy.  For example the strategy to attract leads for a nationwide mortgage broking company will be different from a reseller of an online CRM product.  If you need help to get your head around a strategy for your business, or industry, just drop me a line, I give strategy ideas free of charge.

Fundamental #1:

You need to work out what’s happening online with your market.  Forget about building pretty websites! I reckon research this is where 80% of the hard work and time should be spent.  It includes researching your online competitors (including their rankings in Google), keyword research to ascertain whay your prospective searches are actually looking for online, and spotting trends in the market.

But here’s the kicker…many times companies THINK they know the answers to these questions.  A lot of the time they don’t.  Why?  Because most businesses don’t think like their customers.  Familiarity cements certain attitudes including arrogance and denial.  Usually a third party specialist like us helps businesses to gain clarity.

Fundamental #3:

There’s a saying that I love, “Don’t fish where the fish are, fish where the hungry fish are feeding!” This means you should target or theme your website structure around this principle.  Often, this might mean developing a network of websites (following ethical guidelines), that target different ‘world views’ of your different markets.

An example of this, if you were a plumber,  might be setting up a ’splash page’ (landing page) specifically for people who want to upgrade their hot water cylinder to solar as well as a separate splash plage for those wanting a heat pump installed.  Make sense?

Fundamental #4:

Use search engine optimisation (SEO) to drive ‘free traffic’.  Did you know that there are still tons of massive opportunity in New Zealand for SEO and lead generation?  The fact is, it’s not really that competitive.  I feel sorry for so-called lead generation companies who don’t know squat about SEO.  Their clients have to work really hard to get traffic…and most of the time it costs them (think adwords and advertising).

Fundamental #5:

Set up your site or landing pages to take into account certain known principles of conversion.  These include working out your site’s objective/s.  Is it to get the visitor to give us their email address, buy something or sign up to something (RSS, blog or newsletter).

Making sure the features of your site follow certain principles relating to how the eye travels  and reads a website is also a basic rule…and there are a few others.

Fundamental #6:

Permission marketing is the ongoing relationship (your database) that you have with your customers or subscribers.  There are effective tools and email marketing methods that are now proven and low-cost.  Setting up these systems and getting the right advice about content, copy and tactics to increase sales from this very important aspect is critical.

Get it right, and it will be a goldmine that keeps producing.

Fundamental #7:

The right copy is critical.  What we’re actually doing is ’selling’ our visitors the idea of giving us their permission to communicate with us.  That’s all lead generation is , after all. Words evoke emotion, and emotion causes action.  The right things include a catchy headline, a focus on benefits (forget the platitudes) a great offer or reason to act and other factors.  You can find other tips and information about sales copywriting on this site.

Fundamental #8:

You can’t improve what you can’t measure, so having the right web analytics or statistics is so important.  Today there are some great free tools from Google as well as other products that do a similar thing.

But it’s the basic stuff that you want to know, like:

• How many site visitors?
• How many took action (conversion)?
• Length of time on different pages (measures effectiveness of copy and content)
• Entry page/exit pages
• What sources (search engine traffic, referring sites)

And a few more…

Lead Generation: Getting Started

If you’re looking to start lead generation and it’s a relatively new thing to you, you have a few options.  Let’s look at them now.

DIY

If you have a small or no budget, then you can try to do it yourself.  I don’t discourage anyone from learning new skills…but a warning: Are you really prepared to commit hundreds or thousands of hours learning about this stuff, or do you just like the idea of it?  If you want to get into the DIY, I say go for it!  But you’ll need an absolute passion and interest.

If you decide to do it, there are tons of sites available to help you learn this craft.

If you’re a business with no budget and you see lead generation as a way to grow, but you have no passionate interest in the subject, then I say go find the money and talk to a professional.  The money and time you save will be beyond belief.

Get Your Web Designer to Do It

What is the main work that your web designer does?  If it’s web design, then as a rule stay away from getting them to help you with lead generation.  Sure, there are some exceptions, but generally web designers don’t usually make good marketers…most of them are crap at getting leads for themselves, imagine what they’ll do for you?

However, if your web designer is an SEO specialist, copywriter and performs lead generation as the MAIN thing they do (like you know who), then talk to them.

But ask to see proof.

Talk to a Lead Generation Specialist

There are a few of us around now.  I like the competition and the fact that the internet  marketing is now finally gaining some traction and credibility.

A lead generation specialist will cover off all of the fundamentals above.  But be careful.  Make sure you see some proof and make sure you speak to client references.

Not all lead generation companies are created equal.  Some are tired web designers who can’t sell.  Salesmanship is a vital part of lead generation.  Some can’t show you top Google SEO results either.  Sure, they might be able to rank high for “lawyers in Auckland City who specialise in getting drunk”, but when it comes to super-competitive keywords like “‘Family Trusts” (yes, GRA.co.nz is one of our clients), most can’t deliver.

Talk To Us

Let us help you with your business or project.  Right now, we’re offering a free strategy meeting by phone, in person or Skype – with no hard-sell.  You’ll get ideas, information and proof…at no obligation.

We can’t guarantee that we’re the right fit for you, but we can guarantee that you’ll get fantastic value simply out of taking up our risk-free offer.

If it sounds good, please click the button below.

Thank you for reading this

Rhys Coffin
CEO, Internet New Zealand Ltd
Lead Generation  Specialist

E: rhys@internetnewzealand.com

I reckon if business owners could really and truly understand the link between list building, email marketing and making money, I think every one of them would call me after reading this article.

OK, that’s probably a be a bit optimistic.  But if you’re reasonably new (or in the dark) when it comes to email marketing and you finish reading this article, and you don’t contact me or sign up to my tips and updates, I can only assume that you are beyond help or just like reading websites like this for fun!  Bless.

But websites (alone) won’t change the fortunes of any business or person.  read on and I’ll explain why.

How to Make Money in Business

This might seem a little simplistic, but really there are only four ways to make money in business.  These principles appy offline and online.  They are:

• Raise your prices
• Increase the people you talk to (activity, visitors and leads)
• Improve the ratio of how many people you talk to versus how many buy something (strike-rate or conversion)
• Improve the frequency of purchases that those customers make, so they buy more often and more than once.