Are you a business owner with an online web presence? If so, even if you’re a beginner, you probably know all about the importance of exploring online marketing to your benefit. Put simply, it’s not enough anymore to just have a website where you can sell your goods and services – you need to actually take steps to reach out and find customers. Otherwise, your website might as well be invisible. This is where lead generation comes into play.

Marketing Talk

Lead generation is “marketing talk” that describes the act of taking steps to generate consumer interest and building up a list of customer contacts so you can market to them. There are a handful of ways that you can generate leads, some far more effective than others. If you’re thinking about paying money to acquire someone else’s list of contacts, forget it. The response you’ll see from these “junk lists” is hardly worth the money and won’t yield you the kind of results you need. The best way to ensure actual, solid leads is to generate them yourself. But don’t worry, we wouldn’t dream of sending you out into that vast wilderness alone. Here’s a roadmap to help you find your way.

SEO You Say?

Use SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and is something that every website owner who wants to be a success has to be fully on board with. SEO is all about creating content that your customers want to read. We’re talking everything from blog posts to feature articles to news stories, even the static content that sits on your website. When you optimize your web content with relevant keywords, you gain increased visibility on the search engines, thereby bringing your website to the attention of prospective customers. The main trick is to constantly update your site with fresh, well written, keyword optimized (but never keyword stuffed) content.

SMART Advertising

Make smart use of paid advertising. Although the main point here is to stress the importance of paid advertising as an effective way to drive traffic to your site, the key word in that sentence is “smart.” A lot of capable business owners just like you end up spending far too much money on ineffective paid ad campaigns simply because they don’t have any managing or tracking software to tell them what’s being effective and what’s not. If you go about it the right way and with the right tools, you can tweak your efforts to only focus on advertisements that bring results, saving loads of money.

Use a CRM Product

Put in place an effective method of capturing leads and delivering them to the people in your company responsible for the follow-through. Whether you’re a one-person operation or have a full scale sales staff doesn’t matter – you need to do this. Many businesses use online HTML forms to capture the contact information of interested customers, but these days you have to use something that’ll filter out the “real people” from the “online bots.” Once you do that, you can’t just let the information sit. You have to channel it through to the next phase, which is establishing contact by reaching out via email. Your best bet in accomplishing all of this without going crazy from the complications is to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, which automates the process. A good CRM solution helps you implement a lead nurturing program that complements your lead generation efforts.

Help Is Out There

Interested in all of the above but want some professional help to make sure you’re doing everything right? Simple enough. There are a wealth of internet marketing companies that’ll guide you through the process. If you want a company with plenty of experience in handling every aspect of internet marketing, from running your paid ad campaigns to coming up with your web content, contact us at Active Internet Marketing.