Online Marketing Essentials – How To Generate Leads That Turn Into Customers

This is the last in a series of five articles taking you through the basic steps you need to complete to successfully market anything on the internet. This article looks at how we get leads into our funnel so that we can turn them into customers.

Getting Customers To You

This is the 'pointy end' of the marketing plan. This is of course the most important piece of the jigsaw. No web site or product will sell if no-one knows it's there. Of course all the pieces in this jigsaw need to fit and work for the whole thing to be successful. Like car gearbox all the cogs must be functional and the wheels (sales) must be connected but most importantly the engine needs to be in tip top condition. If it is everything will purr along and the wheels will keep turning (sales keep coming). So let's assume that your gearbox is functional. How do get the engine running. Actually an engine is a good analogy as your marketing advertising will need to be a combination of things that all work in perfect harmony to produce a continual flow of leads to yours sales pages wherever they are.

There are a number standard of techniques – and thousands of non-standard ones. I'll stick with the standard ones for now.

1. Google Adwords, Yahoo marketing. MSN etc.
Google is up front here as the biggest with Yahoo and MSN following. There are others but at this time no-one is big enough to give you any reasonable levels of traffic to start. Of course the others are also significantly cheaper so I am sure we will come up with ways of utilizing them in the future but for now stick with the top 3.

Warning: DON'T spend any money on Adwords until you are completely clear on how they work and the fine art of buying keywords AND testing. It is very easy to waste a lot of cash for little return here.

The rise of Google Adwords (and in this context I also refer to Yahoo and MSN) has been impressive to say the least. The downside of this is that everyone on-line is using it as key part of their ad strategy. This means that the cost of advertising via this medium has shot up.

Unlike other more traditional ads (I.e. newspaper and TV) they use a system called PPC or pay per click. Basically you bid on certain keywords or expressions (known as long tail keywords). The value of which varies depending on their popularity. You then pay that money each time someone clicks on your advert. The bidding system means that the higher the bid the higher (in the search results) and more likely your add is going to appear.

In an earlier article I discussed 'selecting your niche' you can now begin see how this works. For instance (back to the cars) bidding on the keyword FORD might cost you (guess) £5 per click as the likes of FORD and any number of thousands of Ford car showrooms and repair garages etc. will be wanting their ads to show up before yours. However if you bid on the expression 'second hand Ford cars in Bristol' I'm pretty sure you would get top billing for about £0.10 per click.

When you do run an ad campaign (that's what it's called!) it is imperative that you start low and test often. I.e. look at your results, are you getting clicks, how many convert, edit your ad, review results. Keep going until you are in profit.

2. Articles
Writing articles is a great way to get traffic to your site. There are loads of article directories that you can post your articles to and they are all free. So how does that work?. Well the article directories allow other websites to republish the articles . This gives the web sites free content. The article directory itself becomes a place to go to research any subject on the planet. So it has traffic going to the articles. You benefit because each article has a bio or authors section in which you can post you own website address and it must remain at the foot of your article if anyone republishes it. This gives you two things (1) potential traffic to your site from every reader and (2) one or more 'back links' (URL links to your sites from other web sites). This is important as Google uses the amount of back links as a major part of their decision on your websites search ranking.

3. Videos
Another great way to get site traffic is to produce short videos selling your product. Use product reviews or how to's or come up with new ideas on how to present a product or introduce a product in the video. You can include your web site URL in the video and in the description on the hosting site.
Post your videos to YouTube, Google, Yahoo and dozens of other sites who will take your videos for free.

3. Blogs
The latest tool in the marketers arsenal. A blog is an online diary that can attract significant numbers of readers if you keep it current and interesting. You use your blog to review products and then direct potential customers to your website. A blog can be updated regularly and you can use a more relaxed style of writing, even make it funny and entertaining. There are countless ideas to use in your blog but all should be used to attract readers and direct traffic to your ultimate goal.

3. Social Networking Sites
Yes marketing has even reached here. Facebook and other networking sites are fantastic areas for marketing. Simply creating a site around your product. Create group related to your product or it's use. You then invite members to join then group (you can check for members with similar interests in their profiles). Once established you can use the messaging to get your message across. Not as a blatant sales plug but in a creative and subtle manner. i.e. I've seen this 'product' advertised at 'your website' looks fascinating. Has anyone tried it? Does it work?

OK, there are loads more ways of attracting customers, news papers and magazines (yes outside of the web). Ebay and other auction sites can have some value if used properly, Text messaging (viral), Joint ventures, email list rental, banner exchange the list goes on.

Finally, ensure your website is valued by Google and Yahoo etc. so that your site comes up high in the natural searches. This is called Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).


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