FREE Lead Generation for your home based business, UK or International

Would you agree that to succeed in Home based business you need a regular supply of leads? Would you also agree that the ‘Quality’ is also very important?

If you do not agree, then I wish you good luck with your business, this article is not for you!

Right, so you’re still here? Good, we are in agreement.

Basically in most MLM or Home based business, UK or worldwide you have 3 main sources of leads:

1) Your friends and family (warm list)

2) Pay for leads

3) Generate your own?

Option 1 and 2 are well known. But have you considered generating your own targeted leads?

How about generating them for no cost? Well I will like to explain how you can do this.

A) Psychology and Mind set – To grasp this concept you need to change your current mindset. Our objective is to turn the tables on our prospects and get the Home Business Lead to come to us.

The quickest way to achieve this is to position yourself as a leader/expert, rather than a seller.

The best person to explain this in fine detail is Mike Dillard. But in general terms you need to put yourself out there via web content and those that believe you are attractive will have a compelling urge to contact you about your Home based business, UK or worldwide.

B) Plan – I am sure you’ve heard of the saying “fail to prepare, then prepare to fail”, well that is so true.

You need to create a daily plan of action to create content that will attract your prospects.

For example create short 2 minute videos that help the Home Business Lead/prospect in your business target market, or write some articles giving good valuable information. If people like your content they will become very interested in YOU.

C) Persistence – One of the biggest misconceptions in marketing in this way is believing this will be easy, and the Home Business Lead will come over night.

Unfortunately it will take a lot of hard work to begin with, with few results. But if you work hard, persistently the effort will pay off for years to come.

D) System – Before you start marketing for your leads you need to have a fine tuned sales funnel in place. This will maximise the value of each lead that is generated by your business.

What I am suggesting is a sales funnel to send your leads down to generate as much value for your prospect, and cash flow for your business.

Using this system will mean even if the prospect does not join or buy from your Home based business, UK or worldwide you will still make money!

I hope this has helped you to look at lead generation for your business in a new efficient and cost effective way.

To your success!

Lead Generation And How It Works

For those of us who have been surfing a while the words lead generation is not a surprise. We have been hearing it floating around the internet over the past several years; but what is lead generation exactly? For those of you who are new to the internet or maybe just to promoting your services or products to the masses; lead generation is the gathering of potential customers interested in your particular product or service.

Lead generations are a hard thing to gather if you don’t use the right channels. Learning how to play the game is only the start of creating your lists. You must get to know your customer. Lead generations provide the site owner with loads of information. They can see which of their products are most liked. They can see how many of the people surfing are really interested. There are many strategies in which internet businesses use lead generation as a way to expand and keep their business running below is a list to help you.

Generating leads:

Direct mail: Sending out information via snail mail, brochures, etc. not used as much anymore.

Seminars and training: This tactic has been very recognized as the new lead generation revolution. The video and conferencing have become the new age to IT internet technologies.

Web marketing: this form of lead generation offers many choices of marketing strategies such as pay-per-click, or pay-per-leads.

There are many other ways to generate your leads online however finding the one that is for your business is the key. There are several benefits to using lead generation. Lead generation helps you to find out what targets on your list are interested in your products and what products they are looking at this allows you to see what products are selling and what may need additional promotions. Finding accurate information on the sales of your products or services can get very difficult there are plenty of programs that will keep track for you, as well as send out emails to your customers and potential customers on a follow-up basis. You can customize the letters to make them more personal as well as determine when they are sent out.

Building a successful business online is not and easy task at all these days. However with the proper tools and lead generation you can promote and attract many customers to your business and products each day. Looking into the different forms of Lead generation and improvements they provide what could be easier?

Your page must focus on capturing the email address of your visitor so you can follow up over and over. The best way for this is to have the person subscribe to your newsletter via autoresponder. The two best services I know for this are Aweber and Getresponse. You can also purchase your own autoresponder software and have it put on your own UNIX server. The best one I have found is Autoresponderplus. You then should ask your prospect to confirm their email address. Your autoresponder software will have a setting to permit this. Now that your lead has confirmed he is a very valuable targeted prospect that you have permission to follow up with over and over. Only send him offers about what your lead specifically opted in for. If your lead is interested in health insurance do not send him info on pet products.

The Economics of Vertical Lead Generation Sites

 

An oft-cited criticism of vertical lead generation sites (“VLGS”)  is that end-users have the ability to request information on multiple concepts.  This, so the argument runs, dilutes the attention making it more difficult for any given lead-desiring concept (“Concept”) to convince the end-user to pick its product over the others for which information was requested.  It is hard to argue that such is not the case.  For if choice is limited then limited choices will obviously be made.  The problem with the argument is not in its probity, it is in its mistaken simplicity and its lack of grounding in reality.  A VLGS is nothing more than online information directory.  Since the scope and reach of a directory is a function of the amount of revenue the directory can generate, it is unrealistic to expect that a directory limit the interest in, and therefore the information provided by, any one Concept. 

A VLGS, like a directory, cannot operate efficiently if the number of Concepts for which information can be requested is limited.  Both VLGS and directories are dependant upon generating a deep interest across a broad swath of Concepts.  Limiting the number of inquiries that can be made by one end-user degrades the efficiency of the VLGS business model, and will eventually limit the efficacy of the model.  No VLGS, nor any business for that matter, can limit its operational efficiency without some form of commensurate revenue increase as a counter-weight and expect to stay in business.  To understand why this is the case one must first understand the economic and operational principles behind a VLGS. 

A VLGS aggregates traffic for the use and benefit of the paying Concepts which have paid to be listed on the site and/or are paying for leads that are generated by the site.  This is primarily accomplished by directing keyword search results toward a single website.  One of the advantages of a VLGS is its directory style business model, to wit: it can offset the relatively high cost of purchasing a unit of advertising by diffusing the interest in the site across many paying Concepts.  It is this operational efficiency that is degraded when a VLGS limits the interest in paying Concepts. 

But the vertical lead generation model is equally as beneficial to the paying Concept as it is to the VLGS because of the time and cost associated with trying to drive traffic in increasingly very competitive marketplaces.  The available SERPs on the major search engines is not growing, and in fact can be said to have achieved a certain amount of stasis in many categories.  Few are the times when a new website can achieve top level organic placement, let alone top level placement on enough keywords to drive a high volume of traffic. Additionally, the cost of paid traffic continues to increase. 

Moreover, one of the realities of online marketing is that there has been too much hype made of the “long-tail.”  For consumer driven purchases the majority of traffic is not on branded keywords or obscure keywords but rather a reactively small sub-set of keywords that drive the majority of the traffic.  For example, whereas there may be many searches on the word McDonald’s Franchise, a much smaller number of searches will be entered for MacD’s Franchise – even if MacD’s happens to be a subsidiary of McDonald’s and/or viable competitor.  Similarly, while there may be quite a few searches on the term “food franchise” there are many fewer searches on the term “hamburger franchise.”  While there are still people searching for “hamburger franchises” the opportunity cost of spending money in the relatively slight hope that a sale will result from their search is often times outweighed by the cost of not being included in a directory.

This is where the VLGS true value add proposition is realized.  VLGS are adept at sifting through a large amount of traffic in order to provide only the most qualified of leads.  It does so, by pooling its resources to get traffic on all relevant terms, as well as terms that are not in the specific industry but are within the general theme of the action being requested.   Some of this traffic will not of a sufficient quality to warrant purchasing again i.e., the money will have been wasted.   But the purchase of the “wasted” traffic will not destroy the model precisely because the model is built on scaling a great amount of traffic purchases into leads.  Whereas an individual Concept may spend through its yearly advertising budget in a month or less were it to attempt to do this on its own and run into similar traffic difficulties, a VLGS can weather the storm and continue to produce quality leads.  Moreover, some of the traffic that would need to be purchased to produce the leads would be cost prohibitive to many Concepts in the first instance.

To understand more clearly why it is in the interest of both the Concept and the VLGA to allow for the end-user to inquire about as many Concepts as possible, it may be helpful to view the VLGA as a retail shopping mall.  The VLGS owner purchases and develops a website where it plans to advertise other company’s products in order to generate interest in said companies.  Similar to stores that choose to rent space in a mall, Concepts rent space on the VLGS.  In both instances, both Concept and storeowner are free to choose not to enter into a contract with either the VLGS or the mall owner.  People go to a mall exactly because there are many stores to choose from and that is exactly what is attractive to the consumer – the ability to go to one destination and investigate the quality, type and price of many different products with the opportunity to ultimately purchase one or more items.  Each shop owner could find its own retail space and hope that its location is sufficient to garner enough traffic to stay in business.  Similarly, Concepts can advertise only their product on the Internet through either SEO and/or SEM efforts.  But by doing so the Concept forgoes the chance to be found by consumers who might not have been interested or been able to find its product initially. 

To analogize back to the mall example, people may not have known that they were going to buy a shirt from Store A when they decided to go shopping; in fact, they may have set-out to buy a pair of shoes at Store B.  But upon seeing the shirt at Store A realized that they would rather have the shoes instead.  This transaction likely would not have occurred had it not been for the dynamics of the retail mall.    Of course, the owner of Store A will complain that it lost a sale precisely because of the retail mall – or more precisely because Store B and by extension, the owner of the mall and his decision to rent to Store B.  What this analysis fails to understand is that but for the mall, Store A might never have had the opportunity for the sale in the first instance.  This would be the case if Store A was a less well capitalized company and/or one that sold products that were not as well known such that being in the mall was the only way Store A could have remained either profitable or the way that it maintained its greatest profitability.  Whereas both Store A and Store B would like to have the event of the sale without any competition from the other, the only reason for the sale was competition that resulted from the dynamics of the retail mall.  Neither the mall owner or Store A or Store B could remain in business if Store A got an “exclusive” right to sell its wares in the retail mall environment. 

Similarly, a VLGS must allow for further the options available for the end-user as that is the way that the most amount of traffic is driven to the site.  This in turn drives the most interest to the individual Concepts advertised on the sites.  Whether an individual Concept can affect a sale is dependent on its sales efforts and the attractiveness of the product.  That an individual Concept may ultimately lose a sale to another Concept is simply the “cost” of doing business.   If a Concept can purchase a significant amount of traffic to supply sales leads needs, and get a ROI that is greater than the VLGS then it should do so.  But for most that is simply not the case.  As in the case of the storeowner who is more profitable being a tenant of the retail mall as opposed to a stand-alone retail location, the ROI on leads purchased through a VLGS is greater for the vast majority of Concepts because of the time, cost, and complexity of generating leads on the Internet. 

Lead Generation And Buying Leads

Let’s start with a short definition of what lead generation really is.

Lead generation is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospecting consumer interest or inquiry into a business’ products or services.

So this means that every conceivable business would participate in some form of lead generation. After all, businesses must make sales to stay in business so they are always looking for leads/customers.

Since lead generation is such a broad subject, we will concentrate on the various forms of web marketing lead generation that are:

1. Email marketing, e-zines, newsletters

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

3. Pay-per-click (PPC), pay-per-lead (PPL), pay-per- action (PPA), pay-per-impression (PPI) and pay-per-sale (PPS)

4. Free classifieds and Free For All (FFA’s)

5. Hire a lead generation company.

6. Buy leads from a Co-Registration lead broker

Let’s discuss each of the above forms of lead generation.

Advertising in e-zines or newsletters are good avenues for acquiring targeted leads. You should subscribe to various e-zines to verify that the readers would be interested in your offer. Then select those e-zines you feel are targeted to your niche and place a solo ad, as sponsor ad or a classified ad.

Usually the solo ad is more expensive as this type of ad gets a full page or a separate mailing, whereas the sponsor’s ad is about a quarter page and the classified ad is only a few lines. Your best bet is with the solo ad.

Costs vary greatly among e-zines. Obviously the total circulation of the e-zine guides the price of these e-zine ads, the larger the e-zine circulation, the higher the price per ad.

Search engine optimization (SEO), is the practice of designing your website to score well with the search engines and thereby get listed in the top ten of a designated search by viewers, is a daunting task. Competition is fierce for those spots unless you have a very narrow niche with a long tail keyword phrase.

The terms pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-click (CPC) are sometimes used interchangeably, sometimes as distinct terms. When used as distinct terms, PPC shows payment based on click-through, while CPC shows measurement of cost on a per-click basis for contracts not based on click-through.

In a PPC agreement, the advertiser only pays for qualifying clicks to the destination website based on a pre-arranged per-click rate. Popular PPC advertising options include per-click advertising networks, Google’s AdWords or Yahoo’s Search Marketing, and affiliate programs.

PPC is the process of writing a short, three or four-line ad to be displayed by the search engine, that contains the keywords on which you have bid money. Each time that ad is “clicked on” by a viewer; you must pay your bid amount to the search engine.

If you manage to convert enough of your visitors into sales, your PPC campaign will be profitable.

Pay-per-action is the action defined in a cost-per-action agreement that relates directly to some type of conversion, a sale being made or a registration of some sort is the most common.

In a pay-per-lead agreement, the advertiser only pays for leads generated at their destination website. No payment is made for visitors who do not sign up.

Pay-per-impression is a typical referral link/banner ad arrangement where the website wanting to purchase advertising space pays the host’s website for each time it displays the ad.

Typically, prices are set per 1000 exposures and software is added to the hosting web server to track the number of impressions displayed.

Free Classified and Free For All advertising is not really recommended. These ads are not targeted ads and you are very lucky to receive one lead out of a 1000. Search engines have started to ignore links from Free Classified and especially the ones from FFA pages. You have better ways to spend your time than fooling with these unproductive methods.

Buying leads can be very costly. You have probably seen the ads claiming to “blast your ads to a zillion leads for only $29.95.” You might just as well give that $29.95 to your favorite charity because you will not be getting anything back from the so-called blaster.

However, there is one type of lead purchase that has recently seen some success and that would be Co-Registration leads.

What is a Co-Registration lead?

Co-Registration occurs when someone registers for one thing (for instance, a membership or a magazine subscription) and then is offered more information on a related topic (such as making money from home). In another case, they might be visiting a website targeted to entrepreneurs and a pop-up asks if they would like related free information by email. Those who sign on are very good targeted leads as they have opted in to receive more information.

Once you have your leads opt-in to your own list, now you can pamper them, shower them with gifts and take extra good care of them because they are now your future.

You must gain their trust and once you have that, you have to live up to that trust by being honest and above board with them at all time. They will then buy from you again and again.

This is what it’s all about.

Tired of Paying for Leads That Get You No Where?

You love the product or service you represent, but you have not found the success you had hoped for. It may have crossed your mind, but do not quit just yet. Most Internet business owners are under the impression they must invest 50% of their sales into lead generation. That is a good chunk of change. Who wants to give up 50% of their income in order to attract more visitors to their website?

So if you are tired of buying leads that waste your time and paying for pay-per-click advertising, which can cost you a lot and you can still end up with no leads, before you give up on the business and move consider using automated software, which can be used to generate a steady stream of leads for you with no additional cost.

As an Internet business owner, your website is the best tool you have for marketing your business and generating new leads. With an undetermined number of people surfing the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you need to get their attention and draw them into your website.

You need a Website system, which is designed to automatically generate a steady stream of leads, give you all the training you need, creates the leads into a contact management system, and will create an auto-responder sequence to send those leads. You will have time to manage your back office. This innovative new automated software will have your business up and running at its full potential in a short amount of time. With the right automated software you will be astounded by the number of leads generated for free.

By using this automated software you can turn your website into an automated collecting machine. The software will make your website more attractive to people who are surfing the Internet, and can utilize video along with other tools to attract people to your site. The web browsers will want to know more about your business. The best part is the website system will do all the hard work for you.

If you think about it the software is a much easier and cost effective way to go when you compare it to the cost of a new website design. The website design can be costly on its own, but when you add video or other tools, which require additional programming and design then it will really get costly. Rather than pay the expensive of a new website get the right automated system, buy it, set it up and start automatically generating leads. Nothing could be simpler.