Sure Fire Way to Generate More Leads & Customers

Q. How do I you generate more leads.

A. Use ‘Lead Generation Direct Response’ Marketing and Advertising in Your Business

Direct Response simply means that your marketing and advertising must contain a compelling reason for people to contact you. If you are going to cut through all of the other advertising and marketing out there you really need to catch peoples attention.

But, to make your Direct Response marketing even more effective in this current economy you really need to take advantage of one of the biggest shifts in marketing this decade, which is…

“Lead Generation” Marketing & Advertising

This is HUGE… your marketing and advertising may never be the same again, read on…

The secret to very successful marketing today is:

Do not make selling your products or services the prime purpose of your marketing.

Does that sound strange?

Let me say it again…

Stop trying to SELL and start GIVING.

Because of this new economy, if you really want maximise every Marketing Pound you spend you need to reduce the risk for your potential customers wherever possible.

The best way to reduce the risk for your potential customers is to stop trying to SELL to them and instead GIVE them stuff for FREE at the first point of contact.

This generates LEADS initially, rather than CUSTOMERS initially.

Still sound strange?

The reason why this strategy is so successful is because you are giving people a no risk opportunity to begin a relationship with you.

Most people are not ready to buy from you at the first point of contact but they would be willing to begin a relationship with you if you give them a compelling reason.

Let’s just imagine all of your marketing and advertising over the last 12 months generated 1200 visitors to your website, which resulted in 100 new enquiries.

I bet for every person that made an enquiry there were approximately 5 people who were very interested but weren’t quite ready to take the next step, so they didn’t contact you (that’s 500 people in total who looked at your website and were interested, but didn’t take any action).

So, using the numbers above, here’s what business owners who understand ‘Lead Generation Marketing’ ask themselves:

Out of the 1200 people that visit my website, how can I get all of those that are truly interested in my services to stop and give me their contact details?

Answer: Give all of those interested people something of real value for free.

Don’t be put off by the simplicity of this strategy.

If you shift from SELLING to GIVING at the first point of contact, you will not put off the 100 people that were going to contact you anyway, but you will make it a lot easier for the other 500 people to begin a relationship with you.

Here’s a story about Emily.

Emily specialises in Semi Permanent Make Up and she is based in London.  She typically advertises in beauty magazines and she is also running a Google advertising campaign.

All of her marketing and advertising drives people to her website.

When people arrive at Emily’s website the message is very clear, in short, her message goes something like this:

“I’m Emily.  I specialise in Semi Permanent Make Up.  I have been highly trained and I have many years experience.  Give me a call if you would like to book”.

The wording on Emily’s website is pretty much the same as 99% of all business websites regardless of business type, the message is selling her services.

So, over the course of 12 months, 1200 people arrive at Emily’s website as a direct result of her magazine advertising and Google advertising campaign.

Most of those people have not arrived at Emily’s website by accident.  They are interested in what she offers, otherwise they would not be there.

Out of the 1200 website visitors looking for ‘Semi Perm’ info, 100 of them are ready to go to the next stage so they contact Emily and a proportion of them go on to become Emily’s customers.

The other 1100 people go on their way, they continue to surf the web looking for information, and some of them will obviously check out Emily’s competitors etc.

Emily is happy with the return on her advertising investment and she carries on with her advertising year in, year out.

Now, if Emily decides she wants 200 enquiries next year, she figures she needs twice as much advertising to drive twice as many people to her website, she is not alone, this is how business owners think.

However, this is not the only way to get more enquiries via your existing advertising.

Let’s analyse the other 1100 people that came to Emily’s website. Let’s say that 600 of them are just being nosy, but the remaining 500 of them are quite interested in having make up treatments in the near future, they are just not ready to take the next step today.

What Emily needs to do is to get those 500 interested people to STOP.

Emily needs to shift her focus, she needs to stop selling and start giving.

This will get a proportion of those 500 people to stop.

So, how does Emily get some of those 500 people to begin a relationship with her?

She gives them what they want.

These 500 people are all interested in the same thing: Semi Permanent Make Up.
(Because, as we know, they haven’t arrived at Emily’s website by accident).

Some of them want prices, some of them want to know about the risks, some of the want to see examples – they all want to find out more about semi permanent make up.

So, to get a proportion of the 500 people to stop, Emily needs to give them information of real value to them in exchange for their basic contact details.

Information, in the form of an ebook, report or video are great as they can be downloaded immediately once they give their name and email address.

(Please don’t think this is complicated – it’s not, I can help you with this)

Here are some example title ideas for a Free Ebook that Emily could give away:-

· Everything You Need to Know About Semi Permanent Make Up
· How to Choose the Right Semi Permanent Make Up Technician
· Create A Brand New You – The Complete Guide to Semi Permanent Make Up

You get the idea here, Emily is an expert in Semi Permanent Make Up so there is no reason why she can’t write the content for a Free Ebook that her website visitors will be interested in.

People who are hungry for information about Semi Permanent Make Up will be willing to give Emily their name and email address in exchange for Emily’s Free Ebook, which will contain useful information that they want.

Even if only 10% of those 500 people download Emily’s ebook that’s still 50 more people that have given her their contact details.

However, in my experience I believe that the figure would be more like 30% that means Emily would now have the contact details of an additional 150 people who are very interested in semi permanent make up.

So, by shifting her focus from selling at the first point of contact to giving free information, Emily could now have the contact details of 150 people on top of the original 100 people that would have contacted her anyway.

Emily can now market to these additional 150 people forever and if she does that in the right way many of them will go on to become her customers.

By shifting your focus from SELLING to GIVING you could quite easily double the amount of people that are currently contacting you as a result of all of your existing marketing and advertising.

One of the main reasons why business owners do not GIVE stuff away for free is that they believe people will take advantage of the situation, it’s true, some people will just take your free information and run, but they would never have become a customer anyway, don’t let that put you off.

Also, you have nothing to lose; you are only giving away information, not your time.