lead generation – Micro Business Specialist

Offline Business Mistakes When Using The Net

Mike Paetzold back again for day 3 of my visit here as part of The Old Bald Guy’s Blog Tour. This week our topic is “Helping Offline Businesses Use The Net Effectively. Today we will discuss website mistakes.

Probably the very biggest mistake I see when talking to new clients is what I call the “ME” website. I am sure you have seen these sites. They will tell you all about the company, how long they have been in business, who owns them, yada yada yada.

Now in a nut shell my response and the response of most people finding that site is who cares. All of that can be important because I want to deal with reputable complanies and knowing they are not fly by night but if I am searching for something I have a problem.

I only want to know one thing – WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR ME?

That is really all I need to know and once I know that then you can make me comfortable by having all of the stuff about you where I can locate it but if I am looking to get rid of bugs I want to know can you do it?

Target your site to the visitor and what is in it for them. Even though you as the business owner are paying to have the site it will make money for you when you can get a visitor to take an action.

If you are the exterminator that action is to call you or email you to get your service. Make sure that you are telling me how you can help me and not who you are because I don’t care about the latter.

Second big thing I see is most offline businesses when they come online do not take advantage of lead generation. Give your visitors a reason to let you stay in contact with them.

Here is an example- I receintly met with an auctioneer to redo his site, The first thing we talked about is creating 2 audios. One on how to get the best bargains at an auction and the second on 5 ways to use an auction to get more value when you are selling.

Both of these are easy topics for the auctioneer as he has a ton of experience. Offer the two audios in exchange for an email address to all of his visitors. They get to hear him and understand auctions from both sides. He has started to become someone they now know.

Follow that up with a regular newsletter and let people know about his latest auction for buyers and send out a latest pricing update to potential sellers.

Now he can continue to build the relationship and get more people to each of his auctions and make sure that potential sellers at least give him a chance when they are ready to sell items.

So there are two big mistales to avoid.

No “ME” website
Generate leads

There are many more mistakes but those are two of the biggest and Earl has covered a lot of the technical ones previously and tomorrow we will talk more about them.

Talk to you then.

About the author

Mike Paetzold has been online since 2000 and runs numerous blogs and works with offline businesses through Coal Region Web Services. Currently you can find out what he is up to at Mike Paetzold Recommends.

You can also find out and keep current with WordPress at his blog WordPress Made Easy.

Follow Mike on Twitter

Leads Leap – A Free Traffic Source

In my last blog posting I discussed one of the Free Traffic resources I have been testing. Today I want to mention another. It’s called Leads Leap.

Leads Leap is a type of Viral Blog, that allows you to place free ads on it.

If you look in the bottom of the far right sidebar, you will see a widget that I have installed on this blog which lists recent blog posts from Leads Leap.

These are well written high quality posts, that are well worth reading. Every time someone clicks on one of the posts there I earn an advertising credit. Since I have multiple blogs, I have put this widget on a couple of them, and earn ad credits on auto pilot as a result.

In addition to using the widget, you can post links to individual blog posts that your like to your list.

For example:

http://www.leadsleap.com/blog/how-to-come-out-with-innovative-ideas-that-sell/?r=earlnetwal

Again, every time someone clicks on that link, I will get a credit. So in addition to getting credits, I can share useful information with my blog readers.

Leads Leap also rewards you for recruiting others.

Once you have recruited 20 other Leads Leap members, you get 500 Free Ad credits per month, and this number builds as you recruit more.

You get credits for the actions of the people you recruit and the people they recruit up to 10 levels deep. This is ultimately very significant, but as with all such programs it takes a while to get established. But once you have built the specific gravity, it grows rapidly.

How to use your free ads? I tend to focus on free offers that have strong appeal and a back end that pays off. Just like a paid Google Ad, you need to start with an attractive offer that gets people to click, leading to a landing page that inspires people to opt in, and then a follow-up that makes it all worth your while.

Another thing to understand about Leads Leap, is that it’s not a flaky newbie to the scene. It has an Alexa ranking of 23,212 last time I checked which puts it pretty high in the Alexa Universe and should help to give you a sense of how big a deal this is, and could be for you.

I recommend you check out Leads Leap yourself.

Targeted Lead Generation

Listen to this post on Targeted Lead Generation on MP3

Targeted Lead Generation

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.

Web Pages are like a Trade Show: Consider the Crowd

I had trouble sleeping last night.

My head was working on a speech, I will give to my Toastmaster Group Thursday morning. I’ve decide to talk about why I think most small business’s web pages stink.

I’ve been toying with the content of this speech for a couple of weeks now. I know why I think they stink, but have been having trouble coming up with a hook and a word picture I can use to convey my message.

The added difficulty is that I need to compress my comments into a 5-7 minute time frame.

Unfortunately, I just couldn’t find the right formula, and so I did a lot of tossing and turning despite my best efforts to just forget it and sleep.

Eventually, I did, and lo and behold as I woke in the morning, in those luxurious moments before I actually woke, the winning concept occurred to me.

It’s hard on my beauty to sleep this way, but I do come up with much of my speeches at night.

—

A web page is very much like a trade show.

But unlike a trade show, where most businesses would have a sales person up front to greet and engage passersby, most web pages use a deaf mute to do the same task.

This week I will work on this concept. Today let’s look at the crowd at the trade show and compare them to web browsers who may chance on your web sites.

Imagine a typical home improvement show or similar trade show. Think of the crowd. They are like web browsers. There are a lot of different reasons someone might be at a trade show. For some it is simply an outing, a form of entertainment or exercise. Some are there to get ideas, or maybe looking for comparison products, or alternative suppliers. Some want information on prices, or learn about features or other options they may want to consider. A few may even have come to the show to actually buy something. This last group is probably a minority.

So too, with web browsers. If you are a business on or off line, most of the people who walk past your booth or browse by your web page are not actively looking to buy.

If you are to meet the needs of those people actively looking to buy, you need to give them the information they need and and the means to actually do so.

If your web page does this, you may have met the needs of the active buyer, but what about the others, those not quite ready to make a purchase?

Has your web site met their needs to the point that they will come back to you when they are ready to buy?

When you think of the crowd at the trade show, they tend to be moving in some sort of circle, streaming through the displays, browsing as they go. Often overloaded in stimuli as each exhibitor tries to attract their attention. If they are like me, they pass most booths with scarcely a glance, unless something grabs them and then holds their attention.

Same to with a web site. I don’t know what the actual number is, but many people suggest you have but 2-3 seconds to catch the crowds attention with your web site. And even then, you have an uphill battle to keep them at the site. That’s why I like the web sites the folks at David Goes Online produce for small businesses. As part of their deal, they are offering a free video, that gives their site some stickiness.

But that is getting into the next discussion which is on the booth exhibitors set up. In future blog posts I will also discuss the ethical bribes they offer to convert traffic into leads and then the follow-up they do, once they have the lead. And most importantly I will discuss why they don’t hire the handicapped. Why they don’t use deaf and dumb sales people to meet and greet their visitors, and why I think most business web pages do.