What exactly is lead generation?
Simply put lead generation is a method that allows you to capture prospects information and put them into your marketing system to ensure future relationship building and potential profits.
Lots has been written about lead generation and many of the expert marketers would lead you to believe it's a black art, but if learned and applied you can build your business to last. Just by using a simple website and an auto responder such as A weber you can easily start your very own lead generation.
What types of lead generation are there?
So, now we know what a simple definition of lead generation is now we can explore what types of lead generation there are.
The first type of lead generation is known as CPA (Cost Per Action). Simply put this is just a system that means the advertiser will pay an affiliate when a visitor takes a desired action. This action usually is to complete a form that will contain one or more fields of data that the advertiser has requested.
The length of this data can vary from one field (i.e. Zip code) to a number of fields(name. address, email, telephone number etc). Usually the more data requested the more the advertiser will pay the affiliate. Currently, for example on Max Bounty you can get paid $1,00 for a visitor entering just a zip code. Compare this to a refinance application which may contain up to 20 fields that could pay up to $150-$200.
You can easily fund CPA networks, as they are known by searching in Google.com.
LCPA - Local Cost Per Action
Whilst the massive growth of CPA networks over the last twelve months they are still only a very small percentage of the lead generation that takes place on the internet.There is a new, yet highly profitable method that is currently expanding across the internet. This new method of lead generation is known as LCPA (Local Cost Per Action). LCPA is like CPA where the affiliate will get paid based on a visitors defined action except there is no CPA network.
Instead, the affiliate can sell the lead to local/national/international business that is seeking leads on the internet for their business. The true benefits of LCPA are that there are millions of businesses across the world desperate to get leads for their business. The biggest benefit to the affiliate is that they can charge whatever they feel like for the 'lead' that they have generated. This method is fast growing in popularity.
Why should you use lead generation?
Here is a better question: 'What what happen if you couldn't email your list tomorrow?'Well, if you answered, 'I don't know' or felt a sudden sinking feeling then you NEED to start doing lead generation right now. If you answered 'well that's fine, I would just send them a letter or call them up' then you can still benefit from the information in this report.
The other major benefit of effective lead generation for your internet (or bricks and mortar) business is 'lifetime value'. By using lead generation effectively you can increase your lifetime value of your list. With this method, you can easily have a highly targeted lists that has a lifetime value in excess of $1,000 per name!
You see, the more information you gather and use about your visitors the better. No longer is just having their name and email address enough, Just imagine being able to send them targeted offers for the birthday and being able to rake in $$$$'s just by sending an email with an offer in it. There are a number of top internet marketers that does just that and makes an extra $10,000 - $20,000 extra a year all because he used lead generation and captured their birthday and then sent them a birthday card with a happy birthday discount coupon present! Now can you see the power of lead generation?
Step One - Getting Started
We all know in real estate its location, location ,location. In lead generation its all about Research, Research, Research. Without research your lead generation campaign is dead in the water before it's already began. So many people lose tons of $$$ just by not doing effective research.
You need to get your info FIRST then build a site. So many people do this the wrong way round, they build the site then do the research! You need to spend more time here than anywhere else, if you get this right, you can own the market.
Ok, so what research do we need? We need to know what offers are out there in the CPA networks. After all there is no point in building a site without being able to monetize it!
So we go off to the main CPA affiliate networks and sign up for a new account. Some of these networks will want to review your site to authorise your application. Once you have your application approved you will be able to view all the offers of that network.
Here is the list of the main CPA networks:
Max Bounty, Azoogle, CPA Empire, Link Share, Share A Sale, Primary Ads, CPA Storm
Your Goal -Get 10-15 niche market ideas. This part should take you know more than 10-15 minutes. It is important to point out that you don't go for the ones that pay the most. You will make more with the $1.00 - $2.00 CPA offers rather that the ones that pay $20-$100. This is due to a number of factors but the main one is that there are more people pushing these and that makes it more difficult to get sign up's at the right price.
Step Two - Shortlist Your Research & CPA Match
Ok so now we have 10-15 ideas of the niche markets that we would like to build a list in. The next thing you need to do is see how many people are 'active' in the market. To do this we are going to use Niche Bot Classic. You need to type put in the niche you want to market too and see how many searches there are a month.
You can see that from above if you are targeting the 'BMW market,' you'll see over 121 searches per day for terms ' Porsche Boxster vs BMW Z8 Road Test. 'Now this could be a great market for matching with a 'car survey' CPA offer that would pay $1.00 - $2.00 every time you get a form completed.
Also you'll want to look to see if there are any other 'mass traffic' opportunities. To see if there are any 'mass traffic' opportunities you go to Google and look for any associations that may exist that we could write an article for or send a press release too. So all you need to do is go to Google and type in " your keyword association" and look at the returns, make a note of this along with your existing research.
Once we have this data we will then go back to the CPA networks and look to 'MATCH' at least THREE relevant CPA offers too. Now a word of caution here, your offers MUST be relevant to the market your are targeting. For example, in this BMWexample I would find offers on the CPA networks about: auto surveys, insurance offers, satellite navigation offers, auto accessory offers, travel offers, auto bookoffers etc. Don't just select the home refinance offers as you think they will match,as they won't make you money!
Goal: To have ONE market that has over 20,000 searches a month in Overture, has at least THREE good, well matched CPA offers.
Step Three - Secrets to Lead Generation websites
Congratulations! You are already ahead of the masses, by doing targeted research and carefully matching your offers you stand to develop a highly targeted and profitable list.
Now comes a crucial factor in ensuring you succeed. Building an effective Lead Generation Website. So many people build websites that they think will ensure 'entry profits'. They believe that if they put up a standard 'name squeeze' or 'name capture' page they will make profits on entry of the niche. The sad fact is that they don't.Typically they build a site, drive traffic and build a list. However, they send email after email to the list and make little or now income.
With an effective Lead Generation Website, you can dramatically reduce this by capturing more data and 'training' your subscribers to complete forms to ensure you make money AND ensure that you can ALWAYS communicate with them.
The 'Triple C' Lead Generation Marketing System
Having generated 1,000's of leads through my network of websites I have devised a simple yet effective 'marketing system' for lead generation regardless if you intend to either generate leads for yourself or sell the data on.
My simple 'Triple C' Lead Generation Marketing System consists of three simple, yet highly profitable steps:
Capture - Offer Report
Credit - Give them thanks and offer
Communicate - Use auto responder to develop relationship and make offers
Step Four - Driving Traffic without Losing Your Shirt
Now we have a quality lead generation website we need the traffic! As a site without traffic is like a business without footfall.
Now there are literally tons of ways to drive traffic to a website, if you are already confident of driving traffic using your method of choice then use it as this system works like a dream regardless.
I tend to use Pay Per Click traffic to test to see if a niche is worth spending time on.So I will drive traffic to my lead generation site in a few hours and then test and measure to see if it is worth spending more time on to increase profits.
Secrets to Google AdWords
If you are not aware of Google AdWords then you must have been living under a rock for the last 4 years or so! I am not going to cover AdWords set up here as Google and the numerous articles, courses and ezines cover the subject much better than I ever could. In my personal view, I would recommend anyone interested in setting up Google AdWords to get their hands on Perry Marshall's excellent AdWords Course to learn the basics and the more advanced techniques to ensure your success.
Test Test Test
Speak to any successful internet marketer and they will tell you tracking and testing are the KEY to be successful online. None is truer than when you are doing lead generation. If you are looking to sell on your leads then it's vital that you know exactly how much it costs you to convert a lead, so you can sell it on at a profit. This I cover in detail in my Lead generation videos. However, even if you are going to generate your own leads you need to track and test! I cannot make this point clear enough, testing headlines, fonts, sub headlines, call to actions etc can literally make or break your internet business.
Step Five - Backend Profit Building
As I have said already the money is not in the list, but what you do with it. So what we want to do is to continue to keep in touch with our subscriber and continue to offer them high value by being on our list. At this point the crucial question to ask yourself when you are sending offers is 'would I respond to this offer?' if the answer is no, I would look to tweak your offer to ensure that you get the best possible response.
The key here with ANY of the offer is to ensure you don't just point them to your affiliate page. As we want to 'train' our subscribers to use our website and remember that we offer them value every time they read our follow up emails. To do this we need to make sure we that they keep coming back to our website.
To do this we use our old friend the IFRAME again. Instead of just sending them to your affiliate link, send them to a separate page on your website with an IFRAME on it with your affiliate offer in the IFRAME. This increases subscriber stickiness and ensures that they stay on your page and your e zine for longer.
Now if you don't have your own products to offer you can get them from the great resource that is ClickBank. ClickBank is a great way to find niche products. You can also use public domain, search on eBay to buy reprint rights or even create your own.
In addition you can search the CPA networks and affiliate networks to find good matching offers. Here are a few of my favourite affiliate networks that I use to find matching offers to add value to my list:
ClickBank, Commission Junction, Clix Galore, Affiliate Fuel, Link Share
Create Your Own Profits For Life
There is without a doubt the best way to ensure lifetime profits is to create your own products. You can do this by asking your list what they would like answered using online surveys. I like using Ask Database to ask my list what help they need. By asking your list what they would like to see from you means that when you do release the product you stand a much better chance of selling it as they asked you for it. Ed Dale and Frank Kern used this method fantastically well to create e books based on visitor's answers to their questions in their Underachiever method.
So, once you have build a relationship with your list and made some income to create a profit from your AdWords traffic you should then create your own products to lock in your future profits.
Learn the art of lead generation by picking up your Free 5 Day Boot Camp.
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