Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Effective Strategies for Business Lead Generation

By David B. Ascot


Let's discuss some of the most effective website traffic strategies for business lead generation. Website traffic generation is about much more than just getting visitors to your website. You need qualified visitors who can potentially either influence or make buying decisions, and for this reason, traffic strategies for business lead generation differ considerably from other types of traffic generation.

Using social networking sites can bring in hundreds, even thousands of visitors to your site each month. However, if you're trying to sell high-end products to corporations, it's not so likely that this method is going to get you the traffic that you really want. There is also the difficulty presented by the fact that the Internet is a place which is in a constant state of flux.

Traffic generation methods change almost as often as do the algorithms used by search engines. When Google and other important companies make changes to the way they do things, effective traffic generation strategies can change at a moment's notice. For this reason, we're going to look at traffic generation methods which will keep being effective for the long run. Now, let's have a brief look at the strategies we'll be going into more deeply another time.

Local Search - advertising in a local market on the internet

Pay Per Click Advertising - paying for every visitor who comes to your site through your ads

Search Engine Optimisation, SEO, this is getting your site ranked well in the search engines for free traffic terms

Blogging - publishing an online journal

Social Networking and Web 2.0 - using social networks like Myspace, Facebook and others to reach out to different communities and induce people to visit your website

Offline Traffic Generation - using traditional media like print, radio, TV and others to drive traffic to your website

Name Capture and Follow-up - getting the contact information of your visitors and following up regularly to encourage them to visit again

I'll tell you about some of the ways of using these methods which can make the difference between lackluster and amazing performance. Local Search is where we'll begin.

Local search is basically targeted internet advertising but just in your local area. If you have a business that works well or used to work well in the Yellow Pages, then local search could be a highly effective method for you and there are a number of services that deliver local search services.

Google Local is one of the best of these services; a part of the Google AdWords program, this service allows you to advertise with local keywords - "pest control Melbourne", for example. When a web user does a search using these terms, a map showing the location of your business will be displayed, along with a link to your site.

In Google, local search is very prominent. This will show up better than will the regular search results; which is why I recommend this program highly.

There are of course other local search services. Among these are City Search, True Local and Yellow Pages Online. Make sure to look into the conversion rates and traffic generation made possible by these service to make sure you are making good use of your advertising budget.

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