Information on Internet marketing and how to become a millionaire while working from your kitchen table is easy to find. Of course, I can't really compete with that. My affiliate income is only a few hundred a month, so I can't talk much about getting rich at this point.
But let me talk about this: my marketing consulting practice monthly income. I built it up from zip to five figures and only used internet marketing strategies. Well, I did place one ad about a year ago for $500, but that was it.
The costs of my marketing is covered by approximately 2% of my sales. The time spent prospecting and hunting for new clients is nothing. I do have to admit that the newsletter I write and send out does help to draw in new clients but it is not at all like the traditional method of cold calling potential prospects.
Faster and better results have been accomplished by many people out there but there are just as many who haven't been able to build their websites into one that generates good leads yet. These people will most definitely want some tips on methods that work for others.
So here are some of the strategies that I've successfully used to build up my consulting business. Your business may well be different, but if generating high-quality sales leads is a challenge for you, you may find many of the same tactics directly applicable.
I should also point out that most of these tactics have achieved success only after much trial-and-error. You normally need to stick at each one to get over plateaus and achieve lasting results.
1. Differentiate yourself
How attractive your target audience views your offers will be affected by the manner in which you position yourself.
For web designers, a web site is the final product. They create wonderfully visual websites and most of them are competent in the technical aspects.
We have always focused on Results. Our pitch is "we don't just build websites, we provide you with an automated revenue-generating tool".
We prove what we say by having plenty of information and case studies on online marketing that back up our claims.
This pitch seems to attract a good number of business owners. It has a greater effect than making the claim of being expert at XHTML, PHP, Java Script and all sorts of other terms that have no meaning to you. You want to know whether we can make you site pay for itself.
2. Teach. Teach. Teach.
In a business such as marketing consulting, sales are based on trust. Clients have to understand that they are getting good value and can benefit greatly from the products and services you offer them.
Prospect need to learn about the expertise we have in our field and what solutions we can offer to resolve the problems they might face. To this end, I publish an online marketing guide and newsletter that are available free. If a newsletter subscriber's goals and our methods are a good match, he or she will approach us to establish a business relationship.
This policy of "education before selling" is a lot more effective than the traditional sales pitch alone. Use newsletters, white papers, evaluations, and case studies to offer value to your market. If your information is of high-quality, this will turn into sales leads.
Again, there's a great deal of free information available on the Internet. It can be hard to get traction. To make this strategy work, your subject matter either has to be truly unique or of very high quality. I try to give away information, strategies and advice that prospects would normally have to pay for elsewhere.
3. Test all things
Many of the marketing activities we've tried such as banner ad services, paid link exchange and PPC search engines such as Overture have produced sub-par results. But we've always known they weren't working and cut them off before they costed too much money.
Some things, such as Google Adwords, did work very well. To keep the success going, we worked to further optimize and expand on those tactics that were proving to produce the results we wanted.
You will find it rather difficult to fail if you expand on the strategies that are getting the best results.
4. Keep your education current
There are new developments on the internet all the time and it is vital to stay on top of them. Reading blogs is one way to do this. Another way is to take courses, buy software and ebooks as part of investing in your own education. You have to sort through a lot of garbage but there are plenty of great tools for profit building available. You will make the best use of your time to pay someone $50 to $100 who has already learned what works best rather than put yourself through the frustration of trial and error.
My monthly expenditure on self-education resources and info products is approximately $300 to $500.
5. Understand the elements of online success
These four things are necessary to keep current on if you are to build a successful lead generating system:
1. Strategy - the way your sales process is put together makes a difference. This is especially important if your product or service is expensive or complicated.
2. Design - not flashy graphics and animations, but design that is dead easy for users to understand
3. Sales copy - motivating users to take action in contacting you for more information requires good sales copy. Your lead generation will be significantly impacted by the quality of your sales copy.
4. Targeted traffic - You will have higher sales conversion rates if your traffic is targeted.
I track each of these areas regularly and make improvements on a consistent basis.
Improvement is ongoing
If the pace is not fast enough and your lead generating results are slim, you can easily get impatient and frustrated. It take consist effort over a period of time to improve the results you see online. Hiring someone with expertise in this area will help you cut the learning curve short. If your primary business is not internet marketing, you may want to do this.
But let me talk about this: my marketing consulting practice monthly income. I built it up from zip to five figures and only used internet marketing strategies. Well, I did place one ad about a year ago for $500, but that was it.
The costs of my marketing is covered by approximately 2% of my sales. The time spent prospecting and hunting for new clients is nothing. I do have to admit that the newsletter I write and send out does help to draw in new clients but it is not at all like the traditional method of cold calling potential prospects.
Faster and better results have been accomplished by many people out there but there are just as many who haven't been able to build their websites into one that generates good leads yet. These people will most definitely want some tips on methods that work for others.
So here are some of the strategies that I've successfully used to build up my consulting business. Your business may well be different, but if generating high-quality sales leads is a challenge for you, you may find many of the same tactics directly applicable.
I should also point out that most of these tactics have achieved success only after much trial-and-error. You normally need to stick at each one to get over plateaus and achieve lasting results.
1. Differentiate yourself
How attractive your target audience views your offers will be affected by the manner in which you position yourself.
For web designers, a web site is the final product. They create wonderfully visual websites and most of them are competent in the technical aspects.
We have always focused on Results. Our pitch is "we don't just build websites, we provide you with an automated revenue-generating tool".
We prove what we say by having plenty of information and case studies on online marketing that back up our claims.
This pitch seems to attract a good number of business owners. It has a greater effect than making the claim of being expert at XHTML, PHP, Java Script and all sorts of other terms that have no meaning to you. You want to know whether we can make you site pay for itself.
2. Teach. Teach. Teach.
In a business such as marketing consulting, sales are based on trust. Clients have to understand that they are getting good value and can benefit greatly from the products and services you offer them.
Prospect need to learn about the expertise we have in our field and what solutions we can offer to resolve the problems they might face. To this end, I publish an online marketing guide and newsletter that are available free. If a newsletter subscriber's goals and our methods are a good match, he or she will approach us to establish a business relationship.
This policy of "education before selling" is a lot more effective than the traditional sales pitch alone. Use newsletters, white papers, evaluations, and case studies to offer value to your market. If your information is of high-quality, this will turn into sales leads.
Again, there's a great deal of free information available on the Internet. It can be hard to get traction. To make this strategy work, your subject matter either has to be truly unique or of very high quality. I try to give away information, strategies and advice that prospects would normally have to pay for elsewhere.
3. Test all things
Many of the marketing activities we've tried such as banner ad services, paid link exchange and PPC search engines such as Overture have produced sub-par results. But we've always known they weren't working and cut them off before they costed too much money.
Some things, such as Google Adwords, did work very well. To keep the success going, we worked to further optimize and expand on those tactics that were proving to produce the results we wanted.
You will find it rather difficult to fail if you expand on the strategies that are getting the best results.
4. Keep your education current
There are new developments on the internet all the time and it is vital to stay on top of them. Reading blogs is one way to do this. Another way is to take courses, buy software and ebooks as part of investing in your own education. You have to sort through a lot of garbage but there are plenty of great tools for profit building available. You will make the best use of your time to pay someone $50 to $100 who has already learned what works best rather than put yourself through the frustration of trial and error.
My monthly expenditure on self-education resources and info products is approximately $300 to $500.
5. Understand the elements of online success
These four things are necessary to keep current on if you are to build a successful lead generating system:
1. Strategy - the way your sales process is put together makes a difference. This is especially important if your product or service is expensive or complicated.
2. Design - not flashy graphics and animations, but design that is dead easy for users to understand
3. Sales copy - motivating users to take action in contacting you for more information requires good sales copy. Your lead generation will be significantly impacted by the quality of your sales copy.
4. Targeted traffic - You will have higher sales conversion rates if your traffic is targeted.
I track each of these areas regularly and make improvements on a consistent basis.
Improvement is ongoing
If the pace is not fast enough and your lead generating results are slim, you can easily get impatient and frustrated. It take consist effort over a period of time to improve the results you see online. Hiring someone with expertise in this area will help you cut the learning curve short. If your primary business is not internet marketing, you may want to do this.
About the Author:
About the author: David B. Ascot's expertise is in increasing sales lead generation rewards and your company can utilise his profitable methods of online lead generation.
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