Copyright © 2011 Robert Dempsey
If you want to increase the number of leads your website produces by 50%-100% or more there are 5 lessons you can use from…fishing. Those 5 lessons are:
1. Go where the fish are
2. Use the right bait
3. Have a tackle box full of lures
4. Patience required
5. Keep fishing until you catch them
Let's look at each and how they apply to online lead generation.
Lesson #1: Go Where The Fish Are
If you want to catch a fish you need to go where the fish are, preferably where they are in abundance. There is a growing list of where you customers live online, with the major ones being:
All of the sites mentioned above have varying demographics and different numbers of users. Before choosing which sites to spend time on, use Quantcast.com to see if the demographics of the site matches with your ideal customers.
Smaller blogs are an exception here. You can find highly specific niche blogs perfect for fishing, however the demographics will remain unknown until you do a little research. The easiest way is to subscribe to the blog using email or an RSS reader. This will deliver blog post to you as they're published. In a short week or two you'll be able to tell if the content on the site is attracting your next customers or not.
Blog tip: the content might not be a perfect fit for your customers however the owner of the blog might be a great partner for your business.
Lesson #2: Use The Right Bait
What are the problems that keep your ideal customers up at night? What business or personal challenges are they seeking solutions to? To catch a fish you need the right bait, the online translation of which is free opt-in content.
Opt-in content comes in many formats:
The more formats you can provide opt-in content for, the further you can spread that content. As an example, you could write a short guide and post it on your blog as an opt-in offer. You could then have that guide turned into a video and posted on YouTube, and extract the audio and post it to iTunes. One piece of content then becomes 3 and attracts customers on 3 different networks. It's also in a format they prefer.
But formatting aside, if your content doesn't inform, entertain or help solve a problem it's a complete waste of time.
Lesson #3: Have A Tackle Box Full Of Lures
If having one magnet that attracts customers is good then 10's or 100's of magnets must be better right? Yes!
As you already know, people have different problems at different points in their business. And I'm sure that your products and services solve more than one problem. If not, create another product or service â€" your customers are sure to have more than one problem.
The point is to create opt-in offers that each solve a single problem or address a single issue. This way, you can create a mountain of opt-in content and capture more leads. The more lures you have in your tackle box the greater the likelihood you'll catch even more fish. The more rods you have out at one time, the more fish you can catch.
Lesson #4: Patience Required
When talking about online lead generation what we're talking about is inbound marketing â€" the process of turning your website and blog into a lead magnet. The simple version of inbound marketing is:
1. Creating a lot of free content, typically on your blog, that attracts the types of customers you want
2. Syndicating that free content as far and wide as possible using social media and other online sharing
3. Converting website visitors into leads through the use of free opt-in content
4. Nurturing leads to becoming customers using additional high-value content with sales messages
It can take some time to turn your first leads into customers. According to the inbound marketing certification program from HubSpot that I passed, it can take between 3 and 6 months. Patience is required to keep going. This brings us to lesson #5…
Lesson #5: Keep Fishing Until You Catch Them
During those initial 3-6 months you may want to give up, and many companies do. You can use this to your advantage.
Measure everything. Here's an example.
Let's say you publish a blog post that announces a free whitepaper that you wrote. On the blog post you have a graphic that the reader can click which takes them to a landing page with an opt-in form. To get the whitepaper they have to opt-in. In this situation â€" very typical of online lead generation - a few of the most important metrics are:
Using these metrics can tell you how interested your readers are in the content you're publishing. Test different opt-in offers to gauge topic interest, and when you hit on a good one, start releasing more.
Recap
Let's review the 5 lessons:
1. Go where the fish are
2. Use the right bait
3. Have a tackle box full of lures
4. Patience required
5. Keep fishing until you catch them
By using these 5 lessons you can easily increase the number of leads your website generates by 50%-100% or more.
About the Author:
Robert Dempsey is the CEO of Dempsey Marketing which specializes in direct response social media â€" social media strategy with measurable results. Visit http://DempseyMarketing.com/ today to get more leads and sales using social media.
Read more Articles written by Robert Dempsey.
No comments:
Post a Comment