Running great media on the Internet or in more traditional methods of television, radio, print and mail is just the start. Once the creative and placement is completed and decided on you’re only 2/3 of the way there. That last third is making it easy for the consumer you’re targeting to respond – to find you. 

Many leads “fall through the cracks” because they aren’t being coupled with a proven method of giving the consumer an easy, fast and efficient manner to find you.

Just adding your web site is limiting your potential response. Believe it or not, not everyone likes or trusts online transactions. Research shows that the older demographic group doesn’t respond well to offers that only have a www response mechanism.  The simplest and most efficient way to allow your audience to respond back to you is by adding a toll free number.

Using a toll free number allows your potential customer to:

·       Call and speak with a real live person whenever they feel like it.

·       Questions that are keeping the consumer from buying can be answered, objections can be overcome and sales can be made.

·       Additional products and services can be “upsold” to your audience.

Sometimes your best bet to handle these incoming, return calls is to outsource this part of your marketing plan to a U.S. based professional inbound call center service provider.

Utilizing an inbound call center allows you to: 

• Be available anytime your potential customer wants to reach you. Using a 24/7 center allows you to run media any time, any day.
• Handle higher volumes of calls that may be higher than what your internal group can handle.
• Courteously and professionally answer questions and end any confusion that your potential customer may have.
• Generate additional revenues by selling additional products and services.

Good Luck and Continued Success in All of Your Marketing Ventures!

All companies need to generate leads for their business. Naturally more leads typically turn into more sales, more revenues, more profits, more more more - I think you get the idea.

There are a variety of ways to generate leads...

Just flip on the television and chances are within a few seconds you'll see a commercial promoting the best and newest drug or a spot promoting the lowest insurance prices both with toll free numbers to call for information.  Or, go to a web site and in order to surf that site you must register to have full access to every page. Even people handing out free samples at your local grocery store are in essence generating a leads for the products they're promoting.

The lead generation method decided on must fit into your marketing budget and draw the type of customer you're looking to attract. Not everyone can afford to run spots at half time of the Super Bowl.  Having the neighborhood kids going door to door stuffing flyers into mailboxes isn't always the best way to go either if your promoting your psychiatric practice - but it will work for the local pizza delivery or dry cleaners.

Do your homework. Calculate how much you can afford to spend and then do the research into the various lead generating venues out there. Look at your customer base and figure out what the best ways are to attract as many qualified leads as you can while staying within your budget.

Good Luck and Continued Success in All of Your Marketing Ventures! 

Today I would like to examine a question that many lead generators, lead buyers and marketers are asking themselves:

How many times should a lead be sold, what’s too many?

If you poll 100 people in the lead generating industries you’ll get a variety of answers with no clear cut answers. Most of the lead generators look at it from a revenue generating stand point.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to calculate out that if they can sell the same lead multiple times at the same rate they can triple and even quadruple their incoming revenues with no additional effort or spend on their side. So with this thinking, generators want to get the most bang for their generating efforts and sell that lead again and again and again.

 But how does this impact the lead buyer? The lead buyer knows that they have a much better chance of selling their products / services to an exclusive lead.  However, exclusive leads are more expensive than a shared lead and can be as much as 2-3 times the price of a shared lead. If you can afford exclusive leads go for it. These leads should perform much better than a lead being shared between you and 2, 3 or 4 of your competitors.

Here’s an important tip – If you buy shared leads you need to set up what’s ever necessary to get that lead from the lead generator near to real time as possible and follow up as soon as you get it. Believe me your competition is doing this exact thing!

Here’s another important tip - If you buy exclusive leads you need to set up what’s ever necessary to get that lead from the lead generator near to real time as possible and follow up as soon as you get it. Believe me your competition is doing this exact thing!

So what’s the correct answer? I don’t know and I don’t think anyone else really does either.  Poll enough people in the industry and you’ll get multiple answers.  Shared leads may work with ABC Widgets while only exclusive leads work for Acme Widgets. Don’t automatically accept the theory that paying twice as much for an exclusive lead won’t work simply because of the cost increase. That exclusive lead, while costing you more money initially, may increase your sales conversion substantially.

Test exclusive and shared leads and see what’s most cost effective, fits your budget and works best for you.

Yes, new lead flow will reflect what your current and past customers say about you.  Depending on the type of business you are running, you may or may not be "talking" to your customers every day. Some or even all of your contact may be through the internet or through a customer service department. That's okay but make sure you are paying attention to customer feedback.

The further you get away from your customers the greater the chance of unresolved complaints or conflict with your customers. Though I would have always highly recommended trying to resolve a customer complaint as quickly as possible, in today's online world you absolutely need to respond and resolve complaints right away or you risk negative feedback on the internet which in turn will affect your new business.

Between customer ratings popping up in a Google search to tons of blogs and boards with consumer comments your good reputation can disappear in the toilet quicker than you can flush. What might have seemed like a minor, 1-time problem to you can end up being the first thing a new prospect sees when they go to Google your business.

So make sure you take every complaint seriously and have a system in place so problems are resolved as quick as possible. I even recommend going online and commenting on how you've tried to resolved a problem, if appropriate.

On the plus side, positive customer feedback in the way of testimonials should be solicited and added to your website or Facebook page so new prospects are confident in your company and products. A survey or customer feedback form systematically asking new and ongoing customers their opinion of how they rated your service is a great way to hear the good and the bad. And though none of us want to hear bad stuff about our product, buying your head in the sand is not the answer. So be aggressive about soliciting feedback. Use the good comments as testimonials in your marketing and learn from the bad stuff to make your business even better.

More and more companies are turning to the Internet as a means to generate quality leads to market their products and services.  Set up and managed correctly generating raw leads can turn into a real revenue stream.

You want to design your lead follow up procedures to include these three simple but very important pieces of lead generation foundation.  Let’s call them the When, Who, and How blocks of granite… Before your lead generation machine is turned on you need to assure you have your follow up plans in place.

When: Your Internet media is launched and leads are starting to flow in. Maybe a trickle at first but soon after a nice consistent flow. Now what? You need to follow up on these leads as quickly as possible. If at all possible have staff available to follow up and contact these folks near real time as possible. At the very outside, leads should never sit more than 24 hours. Guess what, 9 times out 10 your competition just received that same exact inquiry you just received asking about their product / service.  Timing is key and the clock has already started to run… In our center we try to call back the lead in as quickly as 60 seconds – that’s right folks within a minute!

Who: Okay so we’ve decided that leads need to be followed up on as quickly as possible. It’s important that the person / people chosen to do so are trained, professional and can speak intelligently to the subject matter. Not being able to answer questions and converse with the contact will have a detrimental effect and turn your lead campaign into dust. You loose the contacts trust pretty quickly if the person following up can’t answer the most basic of questions.

How: Prior to launch of your lead generation campaign besides the When and Who you need to have a How in place – as in How will you follow up on these leads. The far best way is to call them on the phone. By speaking directly to the contact you can introduce your company. You can engage in meaningful dialog answering questions and promoting your product / service to the fullest. Depending on what the actual product / service is you can even try to secure the sale.

Once the conversation has taken place email follow up and additional calls can be made to provide more information and to answer more questions.

The call back is so important that you want to make sure that your lead generation campaigns all include a means of capturing the contacts phone number and permission to call them back.

I’m off to Las Vegas this week to attend the ERA Conference and Exhibit being held at the Wynn Hotel. The year’s the Show’s main focus is how to market your products and wares to directly to consumers… http://www.d2cshow.org

Believe it or not there are many who believe that traditional marketing streams such as television long and short form ads, radio, print and mail are a thing of the past. These same folks believe that everything is now on the Internet, email, SMS message or an app on your “smart-phone.” In the immortal words of Quick Draw McGraw, “Don’t You Believe It!”

The key is to combine the best of traditional with newer types of marketing to get the biggest bang for your marketing dollars. Smart marketers are including web site addresses in their radio, television and print ads. On the flip side of the coin, Internet marketers are including toll free numbers in their campaigns. The use of a live voice to answer any questions about a product or a service can dramatically increase generated revenues.

Many industries are starting to police themselves and put out some guidelines and parameters into how leads should be generated and how companies can follow them up.

For example, if you’re in the EDU lead generation arena much to do is being made right now over how leads are being generated and by whom. Just a few of the requirements are complete transparency, no incentives and voice files need to be provided with each lead generated.

If you’re a buyer of leads you want to ask your lead provider where the leads are coming from. Here are a few guidelines that should help make sure what you’re doing is legit and might also improve your lead quality.

1.      Ask for complete transparency of how your leads are being generated and what consumers are responding to. If its Internet media ask to see the banner or opt-in, ask how the media is being run. For example, are opt-ins being run as pop-ups or thru a co-reg path?

2.      Incentives. Are consumers being “incentivized” to give their contact information because they think they may win a lap top, trip or get a $50 gas card?  If so I don’t doubt there will be a quantity but the quality will be suspect at best.

3.      If you’re planning on telemarketing these interested consumers back you need to insure that there is specific expressed consent language that gives you permission to call them up.

4.      If you’re generating leads in the medical arena are there any HIPPA regulations you need to be aware of? Check to see if there are any guidelines you need to follow when working in the in Home Improvement and Senior Market lead generation arenas as well.

Lead generation, partnered with an effective lead management plan, can be a profitable business for both buyers and sellers but do your homework and know all the rules and regulations first.

If you’ve been reading our TTC Web Site Blog you’ve probably caught on by now that our topic is always related to lead generation. Today I would like to devote our Blog to Effective Lead Management Ideas…

How you manage your leads can be the difference between a successful lead generation campaign and one that just costs you a lot of time and money so you want to be as effective and efficient as possible.  In order to effectively manage your leads and properly follow up on them in an efficient manner you need to examine and determine how you will follow up these leads. Once you’ve made a determination on how you’ll follow up you can then determine what your lead capture will include.

Let’s say your plan is to run media via the Internet (opt-ins, profile pages, banners, pop-ups etc) to market your product or service. If your follow up to these leads generated is a simple good old fashioned mail piece you need only capture the consumer’s name, address, city, state and zip. Traditional mail piece response can be a slow and long process.

A more effective way to manage your leads and for a faster follow up is to follow up your inquiries with an email. In order to use this method you need to just capture the consumer’s name and email address. But also capturing the consumer’s physical address increases the value of the data depending on what you’ll be doing with it after you’ve reached out to them for your own opportunities.

Lastly and maybe the best and most effective way to manage your leads and follow up is to call the consumer up. This get’s a little more detailed in that you have to be very careful and precise with your wording and place of the data capture fields - you need to include express consent language that the consumer is giving you permission to call them at the telephone number they’re providing.

By speaking directly with the person who filled out the profile and hit submit you eliminate any chance that the person doesn’t fully understand what you’re selling.  Emails and mail pieces are nice and can tell your story but it’s not very interactive. In some cases they raise more questions than they answer.  A properly placed and well executed telemarketing call can introduce your product / service, generate interest, answer questions, overcome objections and misconceptions and ultimately get the sale.

After all isn’t making sales what effective lead generation is all about?

“Believe it or not, the average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day! From billboards to commercials, bus ads to print ads, online pop-ups to street flyers, we unconsciously see many, many more (whether you like it or not). But let’s stick to online advertisements: the average person spends anywhere from 1-4.5 hours on the Internet each day, so while you’re surfing the web or checking your e-mail, how many online ads do you see? Hundreds!

 Just think about the pop-ups that don’t get blocked, or the Facebook and MySpace ads stretched down either side of your profile page. Even on your favorite website, nothing is stopping that annoying, interactive, blinking and flashing banner on the top of the screen.

But they’re there because they work.”*

* Originally posted in BrandingBrand.com July 2, 2009

Here’s some more mind boggling ad figures, these concerning dollars spent, according to Business Insider.  In 2010:

GM and Ford together spent over 8 Billion Dollars on their 2010 overall ad campaigns, ATT and Verizon spent over 5 Billion Dollars, and Walmart and JP Morgan Chase each spent over 2.3 Billion Dollars… That’s a lot of moolah!

And what’s the point of spending all this hard cash on television, radio, Internet, Facebook and even good old fashioned highway billboards?

To generate leads.

If you talk to the “experts”, and there are many - many of them out there, you’ll get a surplus of information on how to generate leads. And if you follow their advice you will generate leads.  The problem with this is that you want to generate QUALIFIED LEADS... Quality trumps quantity every time!

Generating qualified leads isn’t an inexpensive procedure. The more niche and detailed you want to focus on the higher the cost will be. You can try to blanket the market and throw out a wide net hoping that you’ll net out a high enough percent of qualified leads that’ll generate some revenues but this usually doesn’t work.

When designing a lead generation campaign you first need to determine a few things:

1. What do I want to do with these leads?
2. How much can I afford to pay for each lead?
3. What information do I need to capture on each lead?

All three of the above go hand in hand.  Determining and knowing one of the items will automatically help you decide on the others. Make a plan and do your math, figure out how much you can afford to invest in a lead generation campaign. Rather than using middle of the road or high conversion numbers, use worse case scenario results. You would rather be pleasantly surprised than be planning on that trip around the world only to be disappointed because you’ve over estimated your projections.

You are the only one who can determine what will work and ultimately be profitable for you.