Lead Generation Explained
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
