If you’re new to marketing online you’re probably wondering how you can generate leads online for your business. And if you don’t have a lot of money to spend, you definitely need to learn how to generate leads effectively online for free. There are no longer any excuses for not generating your own quality leads.
Here are 5 of the best ways to generate leads online for free. This is by no means a definitive guide, just an overview of some of my favourite methods.
1. Social Networking (Facebook, Twitter etc)
Facebook is the No. 3 ranked site and Twitter is the No. 14 ranked site in the world right now (Alexa.com as of 29/09/09). That’s a lot of potential traffic and you definitely want to take advantage of those numbers. Another thing I like about Social Networking is that it generally doesn’t take up too much time (unless you let it) and is really simple and easy to do.
Don’t just add friends and followers for the sake of it though. Make sure you are connecting with people and are offering value. It’s all about building relationships with this strategy. Just keep in mind that this is a longer term strategy and that you won’t get leads overnight. You need to allow time to build up your network.
I will be posting a Facebook guide soon.
2. Video Marketing
Video Marketing is something that if done properly, can produce more leads than any other strategy here. Once again I have to mention some numbers here. Youtube is the No. 4 ranked site in the world (Alexa.com as of 29/09/09). That’s a big audience to broadcast to.
Apart form the potential traffic, there are many reasons why video is something that you want to take advantage of. People seem to have short attention spans these days and often they’d rather watch a video than read something. Videos also give you another way to connect with your audience – they actually get to see and hear you, almost as if you were with them in person. Also, videos rank very well and quickly with search engines. Pick the right keyword, do a decent video for that keyword and you could be at the top of google listings for that particular keyword within a week. Create a description for that video and provide a link to a blog or landing page in that description and you’ve got yourself plenty of free traffic.
3. Article Marketing
Article Marketing is a great way of positioning yourself as an expert. If there is a topic that you are knowledgeable on, why not write about it? If you can’t think of something to write about, then learn about something and then write what you learned. You don’t need to be an expert, you just need to know more than the people who are reading you’re article. If they are searching for information on a particular topic, they probably don’t know much about it anyway.
So say someone is searching for information on a particular topic and they come across your article. They read your article and it gives them the information that they were looking for. Not only are they going to think that you are someone who can offer them value but they are going to be grateful that you were able to provide that information to them for free. This is where they come across your authors box
An authors box is a little box that’s below the article and provides a bit of information about the author. You want to use this properly otherwise you won’t get any leads from your articles. Write a few sentences about you and your offer complete with a link or two. You could have a link to your blog or somewhere else they could find more about you. You could also have another link to a landing page or similar for your opportunity. You should also put your articles main keyword in the anchor text (the text of the link).
4. Forum Marketing
Forums are a great way to find quality people to work with and can also be a great source of information and ideas. Forums are very much a community, of which the members can be protective. This is not the place to sell or promote. You have to offer value to the posts you make in the forum. You have to build up your reputation. If people within the forum smell a pitch, they are going to see you as someone of no value, and if you continuously pitch to them, you may get banned.
The way that you want to market here is to offer information and solutions so that you project yourself as an expert and of someone of value. This way you build up your reputation and relationships amongst the members of the forum. Do this and people may want to find more about you and what you have to offer, ie your business. Members may even start recommending you to other members.
5. Blog
I’ve included blog because having a personal blog is a great way to brand yourself and for people to find out all about you. I like to think of it as sort of a central hub for your marketing efforts. Link to your blog from your Social Networking sources, your Articles, your Videos and from your Forum profiles and you can create massive traffic for your blog.
Be sure you make your posts of value. If you want to do your blog properly, you should be making at least 2 posts a week. Have an about me page where you can tell people your story. Put a webform in the sidebar next to the main posts. This is where you convert your blog’s visitors into leads. Make your blog attractive and easy to navigate, if its too fussy, it will turn off your visitors. There are plenty of themes, either free or premium, that you can use to make this easier. There are also plugins that you can use to insert icons or buttons that link to your facebook, twitter, youtube etc profiles so that people can find even more about you.
Here is a scenario if you integrated all of your marketing in this way: A visitor reads an article you wrote and clicks on a link in the authors box. They read some of your posts and go to the about me page of your blog and read your story. Then they click on the link to your facebook profile. They see your friends and the beautiful pictures of you:). At this point they might decide that they like you and feel that you could benefit them in their life. So they go back to your blog which is when they see the webform you have set up next to the main posts. They fill out the form and submit it. That’s another lead, another prospect, another potential customer, friend or business partner. I love the idea of having all your social media and marketing integrated into one central source, and there’s no better place to do this than a blog.
I’ll just make one more recommendation. If you’re going to take your blogging seriously, you should use a self hosted Wordpress blog. The reason I say this is if you use a blogging service that hosts the blog for you, they can take down your site if they want to. One guy I heard of had a motoring blog. It was very popular and was generating a very handy income. Then one day the blog site decided to take it down. He not only lost all of his income that the blog generated but he also lost all of the content that was on the blog. You do not want this to happen to you.
Summary
Free lead generation methods generally take longer to start generating results than paid marketing (hey, there had to be some sort of downside to getting leads for free). So give it time for the leads to build. You should aim for 10 leads per day after 2-3 months of marketing. Over time you could generate 50-100 leads per day all for free! But you are only going to achieve these results if you are consistent with your marketing efforts. Don’t submit 5 articles in one week and then post nothing for the next 2 weeks for example. You have to be consistent and make sure you are doing something every day. So hop to it and start on your quest to generate massive leads.
