How to Automate Your Lead Generation
How to Automate Your Lead Generation by Debbie LaChusa of 10stepmarketing.
As a small business owner or solo-professional you are undoubtedly very busy. After all, in addition to managing your business and servicing your clients you also are responsible for lead generation and marketing. That’s a lot of hats for one person, or even a small team of people, to wear.
One of the keys to building a successful small business is to automate and systematize as much of your business as possible. This frees up your time and allows you to focus on revenue-producing activities such as marketing, product creation, and client service. A task that is easy to automate is lead generation. There are a few things you’ll need to automate your lead generation, such as:
1) Website
2) Autoresponder & List Management Program
If you follow a few simple steps, you can easily create an automated marketing system that will feed prospects into your business 24/7. This ensures you will always have a ripe audience to market to, and it eliminates the need for cold-calling. Plus, it’s more effective to boot!
Step 1: Make lead generation a primary objective of your website
Place an opt-in box in a prominent place on every page of your website. The upper right hand side of the page has been shown to be the most effective position. Don’t ask for too much information; first name and email address should suffice. And, always include a privacy statement in or near your opt-in box.
Step 2: Offer an incentive to generate opt-in’s
Free newsletters are a dime a dozen these days. To maximize your opt-in’s, offer your website visitors an additional incentive to join your mailing list. This might be a special report, a top 10 list or an e-course. Consider what your prospects would find most valuable. Let them know they’ll receive this bonus in addition to a subscription to your newsletter or ezine when they join your list.
Step 3: Set up your incentive in your auto-responder program
Create your special incentive product and set it up in your autoresponder program. This way, when someone joins your list, they will automatically receive your bonus. Whether it’s a one-time special report, or a 5-week e-course, you can easily set it up to run automatically.
Step 4: Stay in touch with your list
Plan to send your newsletter or tips to your list at least monthly, and ideally more frequently if possible. You might want to send out a quick tip every week, or a brief newsletter every other week. By maintaining regular contact with your list members, you begin to build a relationship with them.
This builds the “know, like and trust factor” that is essential to turning your prospects into paying clients.
Remember to include promotion for your products and services in your regular email communications so your prospects become educated about what you have available to help them. Just be careful to always maintain at least a 50% promotion, 50% content ratio. If you include all promotion and not enough valuable content, your subscribers won’t stay on your list very long.
By following the motto, “Give to Get” and automating your lead generation process, you can easily build a loyal list of prospects that will sustain your business for the long haul.
Debbie LaChusa created The 10stepmarketing System to make marketing your own business as simple as answering 10 questions. Register for your free chapter from this award-winning system when you subscribe to the weekly 10stepmarketing Ezine at http://www.10stepmarketing.com
© Copyright 2007 Debbie LaChusa
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