internet marketing tips – Micro Business Specialist

Targeted Lead Generation

Listen to this post on Targeted Lead Generation on MP3

Many sales people lust after good targeted leads.

Like a fisherman who traps their own minnows or digs/farms their own worms, it’s possible to set up your own targeted lead generation system. The advantage, in addition to cost savings, is your own exclusive access to your targeted leads, and the ability to build a positive business relationship with them from the start.

Targeted lead generation is not too difficult to do on your own, if you are clear about what your potential targeted lead wants. Understanding your customer is key to any sales process.

The first step is to set up a simple web page or blog site. If you want your leads to be targeted, your site needs to be targeted as well.

Generate a list of the ten most frequently asked questions your customers raise during the sales process. Add to it the five things you wish they knew about your product before they made a buying decision. Then write out the three things that make your particular product unique. If you can come up with more than ten, five and three do so.

This list of questions, features and benefits will be the basis of your web page or blog. Examine your list through the eyes of the targeted lead you wish to generate. Of the topics on you list, which 3-5 would generate the most interest from a casual prospect not actively searching for your product at the moment?

What ever they are, design a 3-7 page report discussing them in reasonable detail. These you are going to make into a free report that you will give away to anyone who comes to your web site and requests it.

To make it even more appealing, it would be a good idea to come up with a sexy title, and a nice graphical image to catch your prospective targeted leads attention. But if the creative juices aren’t flowing you can go with something like the “The Top Three Things You Need To Know Before Buying an X”

The rest of the topics you have come up with should then be turned into individual articles. The best 6-10 should be used to create separate pages on your web site if you go the web site route, or if you go with the blog approach, all of them should be turned into blog posts.

The combination of multiple web pages on a narrowly defined topic that focuses on the key issues and questions a prospective buyer may have will attract just the people you are hoping to find.

By creating a free report, that answers their most burning remaining questions, you have a giveaway you can offer them in exchange for their email address.

By linking this system to an auto-responder you can follow-up with your new targeted lead automatically.

Your follow-up messages can repeat in a reworded manner the exact information you have already posted on your web page or in your blog. But with each message you make sure to indicate your willingness to personally answer any additional questions they may have and invite them to contact you when they are ready to make a buying decision.

The best part of this system, is that they will call you when they are ready to buy.

This method of targeted lead generation does take some effort to set up and to refine. But once it is set up, it can operate on auto-pilot and generate targeted leads for you for years to come.

It’s the equivalent of teaching someone to fish. But there’s nothing fishy about it.

Article Writing is the Key to Building Google Ranking

If you are in a competitive field, and are unable to use my geographical long tail keyword approach to gain top ranking on Google, you need to bring out the big guns. And the best way to do that is with Article marketing.

There is an art to article marketing. You need to focus on your keywords in your article title and in the body of your article. But as important, you need to write a worthwhile article that a blog or ezine editor will want to share with their readership.

You also need to pay attention to your resource box. This is particularly important to you, for this is where your payoff rests.

Finally, you need to get your article launched on as many article directories as you can with a special effort to get it to targeted directories that serve your niche.

I have just acquired rights to a new eBook called Winning the Article Marketing Game. In addition to the eBook, I have acquired master resale rights, which means that not only can I sell you a copy of the eBook, I can transfer to you the rights to sell it yourself.

If you decide to buy it, you will not only get the download, but also a sales page you can use to market the book as well.

This is a great way to get good information that you can profit from and the ability to profit from reselling the book.

To See the Sales Page, Click on the Image of the Book Below!

Which is Worse no Meta Tag Keywords or the Wrong Ones?

This afternoon I am giving my short version of my “trade show as web pages” talk to the board of a local business group. My goal is to find additional speaking opportunities where I can present to larger audiences of business people. Because as my report says, I think most small business web pages stink!

In preparation for the meeting, I checked the web site of the host location as well as the associations meta tags. I offer businesses a free worthwhile tip just for listening to my pitches and felt I should offer the same to these good people as well.

It turns out the association had no keywords or site description in their meta tags at all.

But perhaps even worse was the host locations web site. It is a private housing facility offering student housing. Its meta tag keywords were totally irrelevant to its web site and mission. It included keywords of voting, survey, course evaluations, census, segmentation, and others that clearly were intended for a totally different site.

Presumably someone copied a desirable format as a template and plunked the residence halls content on someone else’s framework.

I’m not sure which is worse to have no keywords or bad ones. What do you think. I’d appreciate any comments you might have as I will probably use it as a bad example in future presentations. I will of course keep the people involved secret so as not to embarrass anyone.

As I spend more and more time looking at local business web sites, I find such omissions and or errors are not uncommon. Usually, people just plain have ineffective keywords.

Some will argue that meta tags don’t matter, but they would be wrong. While Google may spend less attention to them than in the past, a good 40% of all computer searches still use other search engines that do.

Outside the internet marketing niche’s internal wars, most main street businesses are too busy getting product out the door and struggling to meet payroll to worry about meta tags. Their web pages are built by their son’s or nephews of techies who may know how to put a page together but are clueless about how to market.

No wonder most small businesses are disappointed with their web pages. They don’t get the traffic they should, and then when they do get traffic, most people don’t seem to do anything.

In the resources section of this blog, I offer a report for sale called HTML in Simple Terms. It’s only $9.97 and well worth the price if only to get the information on pages 16-18 on Using Meta Tags.

My guess is that over 80% of all small business web sites need work in this area alone.

Keywords: Missing in Most Small Business Web Sites

So far, I haven’t found a single home staging web site with good keywords in the meta tags of their web site. In my search of web sites in South Minneapolis, I have found fewer than 1 in 20 that was even close to having effective keywords. In general, that’s true of most small businesses.

This is a big mistake, as the keyword placed in your web pages meta tags are what almost all the search engines other than Google uses to find web sites to display. And while Google may have the largest chunk of web search, they certainly don’t have it all.

That’s because most people are likely to use the search tool that comes with their computer. My wife for example has Yahoo on hers. While she may say she is going to “Google” something, she actually uses Yahoo. Yahoo uses meta tags. So does MSN, ASK and virtually everybody but Google.

I have been focusing on the Home Staging Industry for the last half year or so. As part of that effort I am trying to help these small businesses improve their web sites to first draw more traffic, and then get more of those people who do visit to do something.

I have created a base list of some ten dozen key words people often use to search for home stagers in their market. I add or subtract a few depending on the scope of service of the individual home stager, and then incorporate geographical elements to come up with a comprehensive set of what I call, “geographical long tail keywords.” These are the phrases people actually use to search for to find a business in their neighborhood. For a recent client in Virginia, I ended up with 599 keyword phrases. In time this should more than double the amount of traffic her web site receives.

Every locally based business should have a comprehensive set of geographically relevant keywords in their meta tags. This is the hidden code that the search engine “bots” see, but no one else does. Unfortunately most web site developers are techies, and not marketers, and they often don’t have a clue as to what they should put in there.

Depending on the industry sector, I can create a set of geographically tied keywords for as little as $75. I will review your web site for free, in advance to determine whether or not it’s needed in the first place. email me at enetwal@gmail.com with any questions.