Lead Generation Strategies
Lead Generation is an important element for any type of business. Whether you’re selling digital or physical products, if you’re mainly an affiliate for other people’s products, or even if you have an offline business to promote, you need leads. Leads bring income!
Don’t have anything to sell? You can sell affiliate products to those leads or even just send them back to your site over and over to increase traffic for selling ads on your site or getting clicks to CPC or CPA offers.
This guide will cover everything from crafting a solid lead magnet (the free gift you offer to people for opting in to your list) and optimizing your lead page to driving organic traffic and paid ads.
Let’s get started.
The first thing you need to do is set up a lead magnet. No matter what business you’re in, there’s some kind of information you can offer in exchange for your visitor’s contact information.
For example, let’s say you have an offline business selling golf lessons. You could offer a free report or video with some basic tips for improving one’s golf swing. Then, inside your lead magnet, you can advertise your service and let people know how to get contact you to set up a lesson.
Or let’s say you are selling a complete guide on how to pick up women. Your lead magnet might be a free report on mistakes men make when trying to pick up women that just end up turning women off.
While your lead magnet doesn’t necessarily have to be your very best content, and probably shouldn’t, since people should pay for that, it does need to be valuable. The more valuable your lead magnet, the more people will be impressed by what you know and the more likely they will be to want to buy from you.
Don’t just grab some random PLR report and throw it up, hoping for the best. This content needs to be as unique as possible and really let people know what you’re about.
Once you have a lead magnet, it’s time to set up a squeeze page for it. There are many styles of squeeze pages you can use. Two of the most common are the standard squeeze page and the video squeeze page.
A standard squeeze page is basically a short form of a sales page like you’d see for the average product at Clickbank. It has a headline, some bullet points, a few graphics, and an opt-in box.
A video squeeze page is similar, but includes a video to entice people to subscribe to your list to get your lead magnet. The video will describe what is contained in the lead magnet and why it will benefit the user. Then it will instruct the user to enter their details to receive their free copy.
It’s a good idea to test multiple squeeze pages until you find the best one.
Just because one squeeze page works like gangbusters for one person or in one niche doesn’t mean it will work for every possible situation. Test several and track results.
Need help creating your squeeze page? Landing Page Monkey is an online app system that will allow you to create great lead capture pages quickly and easily:
Landing Page Monkey: http://landingpagemonkey.com/
If you view the Landing Page Monkey website, you’ll see how quick, easy and affordable squeeze pages can be!
They also have a free tutorial on their site that will allow you to see how easy the system is to use, and get an idea of whether or not you think you’ll like the system.
It’s fully integrated with all of the popular email services, so you can easily add your opt-in code to any squeeze page you create with it.
Increasing Squeeze Page Effectiveness
Before you start working on finding new sources of subscribers, it’s a good idea to first make sure your squeeze page is performing as effectively as possible. Why waste potential subscribers on an underperforming squeeze page? Those people could be gone forever!
One of the most effective ways to increase squeeze page conversions is to turn your squeeze pages into something out of the ordinary. This is easier said than done if you don’t know much about design or programming, right?
Not if you use a program like Landing Page Monkey!
>> http://www.LandingPageMonkey.com
Landing Page Monkey makes it incredibly easy to create highly effective squeeze pages that will convert like crazy, because they add all sorts of new features that grab attention and encourage user participation.
Best of all, the web-based interface allows you to dive in and create your own pages with absolutely no design or programming experience whatsoever. If you can use email and sites like Facebook, you can use this program!
What types of features can you add with Landing Page Monkey?
- Gorgeous high-resolution backgrounds
- Video backgrounds
- Attention grabbing animations
- Plus, you’ll get these benefits and more:
- Hosted pages (optionally)
- Works with all major autoresponders
- Works with all video hosts
- Works in any browser on any device
If you want to create squeeze pages that will convert like crazy, you can either hire a designer to do it for you and spend a ton of money (as well as time communicating back and forth to get exactly what you want), or you can use Landing Page Monkey and get exactly what you want every time!
Using social media is perfect for generating leads, because you can generally have people amped up to get whatever you’re offering before they even reach your site.
The good thing about social media is that it is very well targeted. If you’re in the internet marketing arena, you can seek out specific internet marketing related Facebook pages to post to, for example. You can build your own following on social media that is targeted to your niche.
You’ll want to tailor your social media lead acquisition strategy to your niche. For example, LinkedIn is much better for acquiring business and marketing related leads, while Pinterest is better for acquiring leads for businesses related to home, food, family, relationships, beauty and fashion.
There are four basic things you must do for social marketing:
- Listening – You must monitor your social pages well
- Influencing – Establishing yourself as an authority in your market
- Networking – Following and associating with other influential people in your market
- Selling – Linking directly to your squeeze pages and lead pages
You MUST do all four of these in order to be as successful as possible in social media. You cannot just sell, sell, sell. You need to communicate with your followers. You need to interact with other important people in your market. You need to share great content, including content that isn’t yours. THEN you can do a little selling.
Let’s take a look at some strategies you can use with the various major social media platforms.
Facebook is great for lead acquisition. First, you can start your own fan page or group in your market in order to build your own source of free traffic that you can access whenever you want.
Not only that, you can leverage the power of other people’s pages and groups by posting there frequently and adding to the discussion.
Did you know you can actually post on other people’s pages as your own page instead of using your personal profile?
Yep. Just go to your pages:
https://www.facebook.com/bookmarks/pages
The find the page you want to post as and click “Log in”. This will allow you to use Facebook with your page instead of your personal account!
Doing this will let you comment on other people’s fan pages without spamming, but you can still get some traffic. This works especially well if your fan page’s name is easily recognizable as related to your industry. For example, if it’s named something catchy or silly like Market Doodle or Money Bags, people might just pass right by. But if it’s called Internet Marketing Tips, people are likely to click your name to see what your page is about.
We’ll also talk about Facebook ads in the Media Buying chapter in a bit.
Twitter is a bit trickier than Facebook, because there are no actual collections of individuals in a specific market like groups. You’ll need to search for people using hash tags.
If you don’t know what a hash tag is, it’s a keyword (no spaces) with a # symbol in front. It looks like this:
• #marketing
• #internetmarketing
• #blogging
• #webtraffic
When you search Twitter for hash tags, you’ll find people talking about certain topics. You can follow those people, and many of them may follow you back. Again, having a username that is easily identifiable as being in your market is helpful. More people are likely to follow you back.
Pinterest is a good place to get traffic to a squeeze page in nearly any market, but some markets perform better than others there.
Because Pinterest’s market is mostly female, topics that appeal to women tend to fare better than those that tend to apply more commonly to men. That’s not to say you can’t market to men there. In fact, there are still millions of male users on the site. It just happens that the female market is larger on the site.
Topics that tend to do well on Pinterest include:
• Family and parenting
• Dating and relationships
• Weight loss and fitness
• Health and wellness
• Beauty
• Fashion
• Food and cooking
• Home décor
• Home remodeling
• Crafts
But you’ll find just about everything on the site.
In order to get good traffic from Pinterest, you need good images. This means you’ll need to find images related to your market to pin, and also create them.
It’s important to have clear, legible text on images that lets people know what the image is about.
Let’s say your squeeze page is a free guide to 15 foods that burn more calories during digestion than they contain.
Here’s an example image that would probably be effective:
You could also use photos in your image to grab even more attention. You can take a look at some of the most popular pins to get an idea for what is currently getting a lot of views and re-pins.
To get more followers, be sure to search for keywords related to your market and follow those pinners. Many will follow you back, and other people who view their list of followers will find you as well.
The most important thing you should remember when marketing on any social media website is the word SOCIAL. Social media does not mean spam city. It means connecting, networking, engaging. If you’re failing to engage your followers and reach them on a one-on-one basis, you are never going to be as successful as you could be.
Also, it’s a good idea to share OPC (other people’s content) on a regular basis, and not just your own. This is beneficial in several ways:
• It helps establish you as an authority in your market
• It shows you aren’t just there to sell
• Is builds goodwill in the community
• It gives you extra content to build your own following
• It increases engagement
• The people whose content you share may later reciprocate
Let’s say you’re running a fan page on Facebook. You want to build your followers, but you don’t have a massive amount of your own content you can share yet.
So share OPC!
Other people’s content, as long as it is proven to appeal to a lot of people, will help increase engagement on your page. It will also help build YOUR fans, because when your fans share it, their friends may see it and follow your page! It’s win-win.
To find great content to share, visit very popular fan pages in your niche and follow them. Look for recent posts that have a lot of engagement. (Lots of likes, comments, and shares.) Those are the posts you want to share, because they are already proven to be successful. You want to share their best, most popular content.
Click share, but instead of sharing to your friends, select “Share” and then choose “To a page you manage”. Select your fan page and share the content to your page. You can also get some additional benefit by mentioning them in the description of your share by using @Username.
Example:
“Check out this great post on LinkedIn marketing by @MarketGuru!”
Make sure the username is linked before you post. This will show your post to some of that page’s fans. It will show up with the text “@Username was mentioned in a post”.
Forums
Forums are often overlooked as a source of subscribers, because they seem to be “old fashioned” in today’s world. So many people think that everyone has moved onto Facebook and Pinterest, but this isn’t necessarily true. A lot of people still frequent forums, and they become tight-knit communities where a solid member can really make an impact.
One of the greatest things about forums is that you can find them in even the tightest niches. Almost any niche imaginable is likely to have a discussion forum available. If not, you could potentially start your own. Otherwise, you could find one in a similar niche.
If you’re going to use this tactic, it’s important to read the rules carefully and become an active member of the community. If you don’t, you’ll just be wasting your time. Moderators will generally just delete your posts quickly and potentially ban you if you’re not a regular poster.
And don’t just spam links to your squeeze pages. Include your link inconspicuously in your signature rather than calling attention to it. If you post helpful posts regularly, you’ll find your signature is enough.
WordPress Blog Enhancement
One really interesting trick you can use is to use a plugin on your WordPress blog to enhance your opt-in forms.
>> https://wordpress.org/plugins/newsletter-sign-up/
This plugin will allow you to:
Add a “sign up to our newsletter” checkbox to comment forms
Add the checkbox to your registration forms
Add a customizable opt-in widget
Embed signup forms in your posts with short code
Embed signup forms into your template
Works with most autoresponder services
This plugin will give you a large number of different ways to capture more subscribers on your blog, including getting your commenters to subscribe, which can be an extremely powerful tool.
Best of all, the plugin is free.
YouTube
YouTube is one of the highest traffic websites in the world, and audiences are captivated by the video format. It’s easy to use such a massive traffic source to gain more subscribers.
The best way to do this is to post interesting and informative videos in your niche and offer a link to your opt-in form within the video. This works best if you can send people directly to your main website instead of a sub-page, because people aren’t going to want to type in a long URL after seeing it in a video.
Be sure to include relevant tags in order to get the most possible traffic.
Craigslist
Craigslist is a source of traffic that a lot of people don’t think about, but if you use it correctly, it can be a goldmine of subscribers. You can either post in a niche-related area if there is one available, or post in the free stuff section to offer a copy of your free report.
Remember that the Craigslist community is notorious for reporting anything they see as a scam or that doesn’t fit into a category, so you may see your ads disappear sometimes. You can continue posting them, but be prepared to get banned if enough people keep reporting your ads.
The free section is really the most effective place to post ads, because you truly are offering something free. You’re less likely to get marked as spam if you’re offering a free report in the free section, however it definitely can still happen, so be prepared.
Contests & Giveaways
One fantastic way to get more subscribers is to offer contests. These can be for simple things like $10 gift cards, or even larger things that would be even more compelling.
Ideally, you want to offer prizes that work well for your niche. For example, if you’re in the knitting niche, offer free knitting patterns, or gift cards to craft stores. This will draw the right crowd.
Your contest is more likely to get a lot of subscribers if you can add a viral element, so consider using a system like PromoSimple to add a viral element that give people additional chances to win if they refer others or share your posts.
Another similar system is Rafflecopter:
>> http://www.rafflecopter.com
Sites like PromoSimple and Rafflecopter make it easy to create viral giveaways that can really grow your subscriber list quickly.
Buying ads is incredibly effective for generating leads, and may be the only way to get a good number of leads quickly if you don’t already have a good number of followers on social media.
Facebook ads are definitely one of the most profitable of the various types of ads available online. They can be targeted very narrowly, so they convert very well if you choose your targeting properly and have a good offer.
The secret to getting affordable clicks with Facebook ads is to have a very interesting ad that makes people want to click, and then getting that ad in front of the right people – people who will be interested in it and want to click.
If you’re offering something free and you have a good squeeze page, all you really have to do is make sure you’re targeting properly. This means targeting the right demographic and the right interests.
If you’re using Google Analytics (and you should be) you can check your site’s demographics to find out a little bit about your target audience. You’ll want to target the right gender and age range, as well as the right geo location. As far as interests, you may have to dig a little to find major players in your industry that you can target.
The trouble is that not everything you WANT to show up as an interest actually will. For example, if you want to target your competitors’ fan pages, you are probably out of luck unless they are a MAJOR industry player. But once you find a few interests that are tightly related to your industry, you’ll be golden.
You may see clicks as low as about 4 cents if you have a great offer, great ad, and target VERY well. Generally, you’ll see clicks of about 10-20 cents, though. And don’t panic if your first few clicks are very high! Most of the time clicks start out expensive and decrease over time as more and more people click. The better your CTR, the cheaper your clicks will be.
AdWords is all about getting a great Quality Score. Your Quality Score is based on a number of factors, including:
The ad’s relevance to your keywords
Your landing page’s relevance to your keywords
Tightly targeted ad groups
Other factors
The better your quality score, the lower your CPC (cost per click).
Here is a more in-depth explanation of Quality Score:
https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/2454010?hl=en
You can actually build your own list by buying dedicated email drops from other list owners. You’ll pay a certain fee, and they’ll send your message to their list on your behalf.
This is beneficial, because they get paid even if their list doesn’t convert to sales very well. (After all, getting email addresses in exchange for free stuff is typically easier than getting people to pay money for something.
If you’d like more information on email drops, here’s a great article:
http://www.digitalmarketer.com/dedicated-email-drops/
Conclusion
Building an email list has never been easier than it is right now. There is a seemingly endless supply of free traffic available for the taking if you know where to look, and turning it into subscribers is as simple as creating a compelling offer and a high converting squeeze page to present it.
Using the sources outlined in this guide, you can easily ramp up your subscriber base in no time. Just work a little each day implementing these methods, and before you know it, your email list will explode to a size you never even thought was possible.
Don’t forget that you can search for your own sources, as well. The more creative you get, the less competition you’ll have, because fewer people will be using your methods!
I wish you the best of luck growing your list. Check out the resources section for links that will help you even further.
