Lead Generation 101

The only way you don’t know that we’re in a recession right now is if you live under a rock, and even then you probably figured it out.  While the fait of the U.S. Economy has yet to be determined, it certainly has had an effect one almost everyone’s life.  The websites I run definitely aren’t an exception.

While traffic to 4 out of 5 sites has increased in the past month we just haven’t seen as many leads.  While a few new strategies that were incorporated this month take some time to take effect, in an ideal and normal world/economy we would have expected to see a steady increase in the amount of leads coming in.

If you haven’t noticed already a majority of the websites I run are home improvement based.  As both great information resources and contractor referral services these websites make money by generating leads for contractor clients of ours.  When we set monthly goals back in May, we didn’t and couldn’t have really taken the economy into account.  Now that I step back, look at numbers and think about exactly what could be causing our lack of growth in leads this month, I can’t help but think that spending habits play a part in it.  Homeowners are waiting to see what will happen with the election here in a few days along with a few other factors.  They simply aren’t going to spend money on unnecessary home improvement and remodeling projects when they don’t have to.  Sure there is still a market for repairs, which will always be around, but now the question is how do we better target that.

Looking at keywords and pages that are performing well and leading to actual leads will help you determine what you need to do to continue to grow and profit in the current market.  Make adjustements and additions to pages that continue to make you money and work with the market.  I’ll be making quite a few changes to my plan of attack in the next month or two to determine how to get our leads back on a continually growing pace.

Simply put, every business has to adjust and evolve to cater to it’s clients and their needs.

I’ve been neglecting this blog a bit recently, so I figured I’d post up what has kept me so busy; link-building.

As I’ve stated before, I’m constantly learning and evolving as my online advertising and search engine career moves on.  I have to admit I can accredit my a lot of new found knowledge to Jon Payne and Tim Staines.  Owner and star employee, respectively, of Ephricon Web Marketing these guys know what they are doing when it comes to building links for websites.

A Very Brief Background

Inbound links to your website help greatly in the eyes of search engines.  They want to know that others approve of and endorse the products an information your website has to offer.  While various links give differing amounts of “SEO juice” quite a few inbound links can really help your rankings.  A simple way to measure the importance and value of your inbound links is to look at that pages Google ranking.  This isn’t everything but a quick and easy method of determining which links are better.

So anyways, after meeting with Jon and Tim and quite a few follow up emails I’m looking to develop new means of link building for the LSM websites (BizziBid and Roofing-Directory) I’m currently working on.  It’s not just me looking to get as many links as possible, but I’m actually trying to make a name for myself in the online home improvement community which can help these sites quite a bit.  With my continually growing online social network I’m hoping to produce great links and partnerships to increase rankings across the board.

Well this post isn’t too lengthy, but I’d figure I’d at least get something up here.  I’ll continue to update as I come across new means of link building and new ideas for getting links on high ranking websites…

For some of you reading this you might be asking, is he really reviewing something so simple? The truth of the matter is a majority of people and even advertisers don’t really understand which is which. The terms SEO and SEM are simply tossed around when a true understanding of their key differences is not present. I’ll start this off at an even more basic level to make sure all my readers really know what’s going on. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, while SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Notice how both involve search engines, this is where a majority of their similarities end.

Search Engine Marketing can actually be compared in a broad way to all sorts of other traditional advertising. This is ad space that is paid for on search engines. Just as you would pay to have a 30 second television spot, you pay search engines like Google and Yahoo to have your page come up first for specific keywords. This is a quick and easy way to make your site accessible to web users looking for your companies products and services. SEM advertisers can bid on ranking positions by paying the highest amount for certain search terms. This ensures that you have the absolute highest paid spot if you can afford it. The problem here is ROI. At what point is it not worth paying for a top spot?

The answer is in Search Engine Optimization. The thing with SEO is that you don’t have to pay a dime for it. SEO optimizes your own website to allow search engines to understand that individual pages should rank highly for certain search words and phrases. The real question is how, and while there isn’t an exact answer there are a lot of things we know can help. Search engines like to see lots of unique content. To them this shows that you have information on your site which can be used by visitors which is relevant to their search terms. You also want to have as many inbound links from credible websites that you can. These act as referrals to a search engine. If a site they deem credible or sites within the same industry have links to your site you’re going to see an increase in your search rankings.

Basically you need to know that SEO is what you can do to your site to make it rank organically, or by itself, for many search terms. All you need to do is include them in the text of your site. SEM is paid advertising which will help to generate more traffic, but at a cost. Search engine users also know when a listing has been paid for rather than if the search engine has actually deemed it relevant to their desired search. Now you can be sure to know the difference between SEO and SEM!

This is a problem that has been going on since the beginning of modern commerce. Actually I’m sure it’s been going on since ancient times during the good old barter system. Here’s the problem; obviously consumers want as many leads as possible, period. The common misconception is that the more leads you have, inevitably the more business you will make (given you’re product is actually marketable). While logically this makes sense it is far from the truth.

This is where quality plays a key role in lead generation. Sure, a company like Home Depot can go out and buy a million leads but what are they getting out of that? Low quality leads means it will be harder for them to sell their product, disinterested contacts and bogus information. So yes the amount of leads was massive, but how many actual sales were converted? Hardly any, meaning ROI is way down. Now make quality of leads a factor in the situation and you can see that quantity really means nothing. That same company can use less money to purchase one thousand good, high quality leads and turn more of them into real sales because they are dealing with consumers who are actively interested in their product or services.

You can think of this as almost an equation.

Q = Quality (as a percentage)

A = Amount

S= Sales

A x Q = S ex. 1) 100,000 x 0.001 = 100 ex.2) 1000 x 0.99 = 999

If you’re quality percentage is extremely low (0.1% or .001) you’re not going to net very many sales, but if your quality is quite high (99% or .99) your sales will skyrocket.

Now the question is how do you determine if a lead is high quality or not? It all depends on how the lead was attained. Was a consumer forced to give their information in order to obtain something else (i.e. co-registration) or maybe some sort of gimmick was involved in order to create a lead which really isn’t there (e-mail blasts). Quality leads are obtained by gathering information from consumers who are actively looking for your services or products. When a potential customer is looking for you, you know they are definitely interested in what you have to offer. This is why search engine marketing and optimization are key to generating successful, quality leads.

Sure a massive amount of low quality leads will sell, but for how long? Once a client realizes that their ROI is horrible you can be sure they are going to look elsewhere for their leads. A successful lead generation business will invest heavily in search marketing to obtain high quality leads which keep clients happy.

I’ve working in advertising for just over three years now.  I know to most that probably doesn’t seem like a long time, but in these past three years I have worked with a quite a variety of forms of advertising and an even bigger variety of clients.  The one thing I have noticed throughout this broad spectrum is clients adversity to spending money to make money.  Yeah I know it’s a cliche statement, but it’s true.  All forms of advertising cost money, plain and simple.  What advertisers need to really be thinking about is their return on investment (ROI).  Since we’ve already determined that you’re going to have to spend money, why not get the best return on that money spent?

Each form of advertising has it’s pros and cons, obviously.  TV, radio, magazine, newspaper and  guerrilla advertising have been around for quite some time.  Only recently has online advertising entered the picture, and just as most evolution occurs, it’s for the better.  Online advertising is a great way to specifically target your exact audience and find potential customers who are actively looking for your services.

Still, online advertising costs money!  This seems to be the single handedly hardest thing for me to get across to many of my potential or current clients.  No matter what they think, I can’t just wave a magic wand and have customers banging on their door.  True, online advertising is the most cost effective means of lead generation, but it ain’t free.  With the right funds to invest into proper SEM and SEO strategies you can start your lead generation campaign off on the right foot.  Although results won’t be instant, you will certainly see a good increase in leads after your initial investment.  That’s why it’s called ROI; you have to invest first and THEN see your return.

So no matter what you’ve seen or heard, there are no secret get rich quick plans on the internet.  Just as you can’t put your phone number in the phone book and expect to have your phone ringing off the hook, you can’t only build a website and expect to see leads flooding in.  Take your time, do your research, implement proven successful online advertising techniques and you will see the fruits of your labor.