7 Surefire Tips for Generating New Website Leads

7 Surefire Tips for Generating New Website Leads written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

photo credit Pixabay

Generate a little business buzz with a few simple methods.

A staple of your marketing strategy, lead generation can help stir up additional interest in your products and services. Companies of all sizes can and do benefit from implementing multi-channel efforts to boost website leads, from an email newsletter to social media and more. But website lead generation doesn’t need to rely exclusively on online channels to be effective. With a balance of both web and in-person strategies, you will gain leads in places you may not have thought to look.

1. Take your pitch on tour

Find some events where you can come in as a speaker to talk about your areas of expertise.  Conferences are great venues for this, as the attendees tend to be on the wealthier side and are open to new ideas. And while you probably won’t be pitching your products and services directly, you can negotiate terms with the event organizers. For example, ask them if you can get your business listed as a sponsor rather than receive a personal speaking fee. Of course, you may need to speak for free, to begin with, as you build up your speaking reputation.

2. Give your audience a voice

Make your social media followers more excited about your business by asking them to contribute to the conversation. Asking a question is one of the best ways to facilitate this kind of engagement. For example, you could ask your followers if there are retailers where they’d like to see your products made available. This kind of question would inspire your followers to go to your website to first see what products you carry before they make suggestions. It also does wonders to build personal relationships with your followers, as you ask for their ideas, respond to them (in a timely way!), and follow through on getting your products into more retail establishments.

3. Reach out to brand influencers

Brand influencers typically gather their subscribers through social media outlets like blogging or video blogging. While viewers are aware that some product promotions are sponsored, they also tend to feel a bond of trust with the influencer. They trust that they would not be pitched an item if the blogger didn’t truly think it was worth it, which is often true. But before you begin cold-emailing every blogger under the sun, take the time to learn about their niche market and determine if your brands and values align with theirs. Then develop a strategy to reach out to them.

4. Spruce up your email signature

This technique will take you a few minutes upfront, but from then on won’t cost you a second. Simply set up your default email signature to direct them to your site. Here’s an easy example (without images, but feel free to add one!):

Best,

Sally Sanders

CEO & Founder, <Company name here>

<Company website URL here>

5. Broaden your networking

If you’ve been networking within the same circles over and over again, you may not be reaching as many new leads as you could be. Consider joining some national groups, larger online communities, or hit up a networking event the next time you travel. Don’t forget to add some variety to your contributions as well. It’s okay to tell people about your company, but your peers will also appreciate the advice, resources, and a genuine interest in their businesses from a fellow small business owner.

6. Go looking for questions to answer

Check out some of the more heavily trafficked general question forums like Quora. Look for questions that you and your company can help to answer. Some forums will allow you to link back to resources, which will give you an opportunity to plug your website. But be careful to make it genuine, helpful, and relevant to the question. Otherwise, such a blatant advertising plug may deter leads.

7. Offer incentives

Incentives are an effective draw to any website. Promoting elements like sales, scarcity, or limited time deals can spur some immediate leads. Use your email newsletter and social media to draw leads in, but also remember to add a welcome message (some use pop-up messages) to your website when the visitor initially arrives. This will make the sale obvious and/or provide them with the necessary code to access it at checkout.

As a small business owner, I recognize that you’ve probably got a lot on your plate already. So if taking on a full-scale digital marketing plan doesn’t fit into your schedule, it may be worth it to hire an assistant to help get it started. The help will pay for itself as you generate new leads and therefore new purchases. Of course, you can also wait until a few techniques have given your company more growth before bringing in a marketing assistant or full team. Either way, by incorporating the above tips into practice, you’re surely set for success.

Sophia Mest is a Content Manager at BizDb, where she aspires to put her writing passion into practice and spread her words across the world. She spends her free time traveling and exploring the wonders of nature. Follow her on Twitter @MestSophia

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5 Keys to Adopting Marketing Automation

5 Keys to Adopting Marketing Automation written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

photo credit fotolia

When it comes to online marketing, there’s a lot to keep up with. What messages should you send via email? Who is interacting with your social media pages? What are prospects looking for when they visit your website?

One way to keep up with all of your marketing channels and messaging is to use marketing automation. But that takes a little more than simply buying the right software and blasting your list with messages.

Done correctly, successful marketing automation will increase your number of leads and conversions. In a VentureBeat survey of over 700 marketers, 80 percent of marketing automation users saw their number of leads increase, and 77 percent saw their number of conversions increase. If you’re looking for that kind of success, keep these tips in mind.

1. Get your lists in order.

List management is crucial to marketing automation success. You’ll need a big list, but that doesn’t mean you should go out and buy a bunch of contacts wholesale. Reaching out to a cold list can come across as awkward and misdirected, especially at the beginning of a sales cycle.

Take the time to build your list organically through your website, social media pages and other marketing efforts. If you do buy leads, make sure they’re qualified. Here are some other list management best practices:

• Clean up. Remove non-deliverables and spam addresses. Validate all the email addresses on your list.
• Once your list is clean, start segmenting. MailChimp found that segmentation can lead to a 15 percent higher open rate 59 percent higher click rate. The way you segment your list will depend on your industry and buying personas. You might want to consider a position in the sales cycle, geography, interests, age, gender, industry, etc.
• Make sure people aren’t being duplicated on multiple lists and, thus, receiving too many messages.

2. Get your content right.

Invest in good content that engages your target prospects and calls for action at the right moment. Remember there’s a difference between well-written content and content that performs well. A few things that can help you succeed:

• Know your audience and tailor your content appropriately.
• Understand the value your product or service offers.
• Create a messaging strategy for your different lead segments at every stage of the sales funnel (this would include welcome emails, follow-up messages, thank-yous, special offers, and more)
• Take full advantage of marketing automation (for SEO, lead capture forms, landing pages, reporting) to develop a content strategy that speaks to your leads.

Aligning content strategy with marketing automation is no easy task, so it might be worth the time and money to hire a content strategy professional who can help you improve your messaging.

3. Have a lead generation strategy.

If you already have a lead gen strategy, prepare to automate it. If your process isn’t established yet, start by determining how you’ll drive traffic into your sales funnel. This is another area where content will come into play. Depending on your industry, you can offer various content assets (research reports, whitepapers, e-books) in exchange for contact information.

You can use all types of content to find out who people are and what they are looking for, then move them through your sales cycle. In-person events, online tools, webinars, and marketing partnerships can also be great ways to generate leads. All of these steps can be automated — to a degree — with the right software tools, which means you can scale up.

4. Establish goals and expectations.

Although your marketing team is probably singing the praises of marketing automation, it’s important to know that it won’t solve all your problems. When done correctly, automated marketing will expand your reach to more leads and convert more leads to customers, but you have to establish your goals and create a strategy in order to make that happen.

While you’re at it, make sure you get buy-in from your business leaders and executives and communicate clearly to them. One study indicates that only eight percent of companies see increased revenues within six months of adopting marketing automation. But after just one year, 32 percent see increased revenue, and after two years, that figure climbs to 40 percent.

It might take a while to see ROI from marketing automation, but the rewards are steep for those who endure. According to a 2014 report by Aberdeen, companies using marketing automation achieve 53 percent higher conversion rates than non-users, plus an annual revenue growth rate 3.1 percent higher than non-users.

5. Go all in.

Whether you’re brand new to marketing automation or you’ve been using some of these tactics for a while, it’s a good idea to think through your efforts and make changes, where necessary.

Buying marketing automation software won’t solve all your problems. You have to put people, content, and processes in place to make the whole strategy work. Set goals, create a plan, and shore up your lists before you purchase any software. Otherwise, you might not get what you pay for.

Megan Pacella is a contributor for TechnologyAdvice.com, with specializations in B2B marketing and sales. She has also written for USA Today, Bearings Guide, 10Best Nashville, and other publications.

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Everything You Need to Know About Podcasting

Everything You Need to Know About Podcasting written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with John Lee Dumas

Ok, so maybe the title of this post is a little bold, but in this episode, I talk mostly about podcasting with one of the most prolific podcasters on the planet.

If you’re a longtime reader you know that I think podcasting is an amazing tool for lead generation as well as audience building.

My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is John Lee Dumas. John is is the founder and host of the award-winning podcast EOFire, where he interviews successful entrepreneurs seven days a week. He is also the author of The Freedom Journal, a hard-cover journal that helps guides you to accomplishing your #1 goal in 100 days. As you may have guessed from the title and this introduction, John and I talk about podcasting.

John wasn’t always a podcasting phenomenon. The day he graduated from college, John joined the Army and served our country for 7 years before attending law school. After deciding law school wasn’t the right fit, he ventured into the corporate world and lived in Boston, New York and San Diego – where he discovered podcasting. Fast-forward to today, John has over 1 million monthly listeners.

Questions I ask John Lee Dumas:

• Is there anything new in the world of podcasting that people should be paying attention to?
• What does your process look like once you’ve finished recording an episode?
• What are your thoughts on the hype around live video?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

• Why choosing a niche is critical for a successful podcast
• What tools are recommended for podcast production and post-production
• The importance of goal setting and how to accomplish these goals

Learn more about John Lee Dumas and Entrepreneur on Fire here. To buy The Freedom Journal, click here.

This week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing podcast is brought to you by magicJack for BUSINESS, trusted by a quarter million small businesses. Reliable phone service at an incredible price: plans from just $14.99/month per line – flat. Get two months FREE service when you sign up at http://magicjackforbusiness.com/ducttape. The first 100 listeners will receive a FREE IP phone for every line (each an $85 value)!

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Why Building Community Is Harder Than It Looks

Why Building Community Is Harder Than It Looks written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

This past month I was able to experience community in its most potent sense on two separate occasions, and I came away with an important insight about building community.

Marketers today realize that a vibrant, engaged, loyal community is perhaps the greatest asset a brand can possess and often leads to an extremely profitable enterprise – whether that’s the intent of the organization or not.

The challenge is that the kind of community described above doesn’t appear through some magic marketing trick – building a strong community around your brand is difficult, elusive, and fragile.

In fact, most people that achieve this goal can’t tell you how they do it, but I think I may have unlocked a starting point.

I belong to many strong communities, but there are three I would like to share to illustrate what I’ve witnessed as the key element of successful community building.

Warning: This is also a bit of an open love letter to some very dear friends.

World Domination Summit

The first is the World Domination Summit community started and nurtured by Chris Guillebeau.

I had the great honor of presenting to this group during its annual conference of 3000+ attendees, and it’s as unique a speaking experience as I’ve ever had. The principles of the community are Community, Adventure, and Service and its members are some of the most engaged, truth-seeking, entrepreneurs I’ve ever met.

The conference sells out every year well in advance, and while plenty goes on during the main stage presentations, hundreds of mini-conferences happen in coffee shops and parks all week long. People want to be a part of this community to see what they can contribute; it’s a pretty remarkable thing.

Pamely

This one isn’t so much a community as it is a force. Pam Slim has one of the most committed communities of friends and family I’ve ever encountered and yet the only real formal element of this structure is that you be an open, caring, loving, giving person – these are not her rules, these are who she is, and it attracts like a beacon.

Friends kiddingly suggest that as soon as you get to know her, you become a member of the “Pamely.”

Pam recently contributed to the conference of my network of Duct Tape Marketing Consultants by hosting a pre-conference day at her new entrepreneurial space in Mesa called K’é and introducing us to and arranging for several other amazing presenters such as Susan Baier, Skip Miller, and Park Howell.

She is the ultimate connector, and people know that if she connects you with someone, they will honor that connection completely.

Pam wants to meet you, wants to know your story, wants to hang out with you as long as you care to, and she wants to welcome you into her family.

Heroic Public Speaking

The final example I’ll point to is Michael and Amy Port’s Heroic Public Speaking. Heroic Public Speaking a brand of speaking and performance training that Michael and Amy offer to seasoned and fledgling speakers around the world.

I have known Michael for many years and been exposed to their training sessions on six or seven occasions. Watching them work with speakers is both inspirational and somewhat mesmerizing. It is a rare leadership gift to be able to honestly tell someone what they are doing wrong and at the same time make them feel so cared for.

Members of the HPS family support and help each other on their journey to become better speakers and some of the biggest names in the speaking industry fall all over themselves to contribute to this community in any way possible.

If you are not a part of one or more of these communities, set a goal for 2017 – go to WDS, visit Pam at K’é, and join the HPS community in some fashion.

So what makes each of these tick?

The obvious thread is this – These are online communities that allow people to connect more deeply through offline human interaction. Members cheer for each other and embrace each other with every chance they get.

In all three examples, the leaders are the fire starters, but community members advance the flame.

But, I would like to suggest that the magic in these communities comes from something that goes unnoticed and most members can’t articulate.

The magic is not in what Chris, Pam, and Amy and Michael do – the magic lies in what happens to people when they do it.

The magic is not in what Chris, Pam, and Amy and Michael do – the magic lies in what happens to people when they do it.

I can’t tell you how to bottle this, but I do know that all strong communities have this in common – Transformation, over information and inspiration, is the ultimate focus.

We all love good information, we are drawn to those who inspire, but we thirst for transformative experiences with ever fiber of our being and every dollar in our wallet.

So, let’s apply that to you – The magic in building your community lies not in what you do, but in what happens to people when you do it.

Work with that idea.

Focus your efforts on transforming people’s lives rather than spreading your knowledge and your community will flourish.

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Weekend Favs November 5

Weekend Favs November 5 written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you to check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from an online source or one that I took out there on the road.

Opentest – This Chrome extension allows you to communicate faster, clearer, and friendlier for free! With one-click recording capabilities, you’ll discover how easy video recording and sharing really is.

Highbrow – Learn something new every day! This email based learning platform sends bite-sized courses to your inbox every morning.

VYPER – Convert 5x more email opt-ins by combining content upgrades with viral sharing.

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