A small business guide to online lead generation
When I started my website management business a little over 2 months ago, I expected my clients would want me to spend most of my time handling website updates. I was wrong. To date I’ve landed 3 clients, and they all want the same thing: more sales leads and more phones ringing. Of course I still need to update their websites and add content to make all this happen, but lead generation has become the primary goal.
So I thought I’d go out on a limb and write a short series of articles on how I’m approaching online lead generation.
Not surprisingly, none of my clients are too keen on me publishing what I’ve done for them. So I thought I’d use myself as a case study. I’ve been trying to find the time to do some decent marketing since kicking off the service, and I can think of 4 good reasons why using my own business as an example is a good idea:
- I don’t have to ask anyone for permission to publish data. If I give away too much information about my own business, nobody suffers except me.
- I only started offering a website management plan 2 months ago, so there’s still a lot of growth needed.
- My lead generation budget is ridiculously small. Sound familiar?
- I don’t have an in-house customer database to work from. We’re starting from scratch here.
As with the 3 companies I’m already working with, I’ll be trying to answer the following questions:
- What are my lead generation goals, my target market and my budget?
- What’s the best way to get you to visit my website?
- How am going to get your permission to let me market my services to you?
- What am I going to do when you decide you’re interested in what I have to offer?
- How am I going to check that we’re compatible?
- How am I going to move you to the next level if you’re not ready to buy yet?
- What metrics should I put in place to measure my performance and my expenses?
Every business owner needs a source of sales leads, even when they’ve got enough work. Putting a well planned, automated (as far as possible) online lead generation plan in place helps keep the phones ringing even when you’re not thinking about marketing.
Article 1 will be published on Monday. Why don’t you play along?
