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If you have an online business, you’re selling something. It might be a product of your own, a service you provide, an affiliate product (or most likely multiple affiliate products), etc. Whatever it is you’re selling, you need leads.
In fact, in most major industries the average cost of a single lead is $20 or more! They’re THAT valuable. But you won’t have to pay that kind of money, because you’re about to learn exactly how to position yourself so you can easily connect with an unlimited amount of high-quality leads without breaking the bank!
So, what exactly is a lead?
A lead is a potential buyer. And more importantly, a qualified prospect that has been proven to be interested in your products or services. potential customer or client. A lead isn’t guaranteed to buy, but they are far more likely to because they’ve shown interest in your niche market.
How does one go about generating qualified leads?
You need to entice them to offer their contact information in exchange for something of value. It might be a free report, a training video, a discount or coupon, or something else—but it should be something they would be interested in only if they would also likely be interested in whatever you’re selling.
In other words, offering a discount coupon for a coffee shop is NOT going to get you qualified leads if you’re selling model cars. A guide on how to lose weight is NOT going to get you qualified leads if you’re offering a graphics design service.
Sure, a few of those people might be interested in what you’re selling, but you want people who have clearly demonstrated some level of interest in the types of products or services you are offering.
Here is a simple example:
If you’re offering dog walking services, you might offer a free report on training your dog, or how to get bargains on pet supplies, or even a coupon for 50% off the customer’s first walking session.
To begin, there are four main elements to generating leads:
- The automation system
- The lead magnet (offer)
- The squeeze page/entry funnel
- Traffic
We are going to devote a post to each of these four elements, so you will learn more about how to start generating leads as you move through this series. By the end of this mini series, you’ll be ready to start connecting with red-hot prospects in your niche market so you can instantly maximize your income and expand your outreach.
So, let’s get started!
Step One: The Automation System
The first thing you absolutely must do if you want to generate leads is to sign up for a service that will allow you to build a database of leads through a web form.
Most people simply use an autoresponder service such as Aweber, GetResponse, but there are also services that will let you collect, store, manage, and search many different types of information if you need more details from your leads.
If all you need to collect is name and email, which is fine for most online marketing purposes, you can just use a simple autoresponder system.
Here is a list of some of the most popular autoresponder services. Each of these services is widely respected and most have similar features and pricing.
If you’re just getting started Aweber has a free version you can use for a while. My personal favourite is Active Campaign because it has many features associated with much more expensive CRM (customer relationship management) solutions but for a fraction of the price.
AWeber: warr.us/Aweber
GetResponse: warr.us/GetResponse
Active Campaign: warr.us/ActiveCampaign
If you’re looking to collect more in-depth information, you might want to go with a full CRM solution. This type of software has in-depth information collection and management, allowing you to build a database of customer information that you can use for marketing purposes.
Agile CRM: warr.us/AgileCRM
Agile CRM is one of the most popular and powerful CRM systems out there, and you can start with a FREE account to give it a try. You can have up to 10 users with the trial, and you don’t have to enter any credit card information to get started.
Agile will let you set up autoresponder campaigns, perform A/B split testing, segment your lists, and even predict customer behavior in the future!
Best of all, Agile CRM has some of the Brest pricing in the industry, with plans starting at just $8.99 per month after the trial.
Keap (formerly Infusionsoft): warr.us/Keap
Keap is one of the most well-known CRM systems out there. They have a hugely powerful suite of features, including syncing with over 200 other services from Gmail to BigCommerce, Shopify to Woocommerce.
Keap has extremely powerful analytics, a full-fledged sales pipeline built in, and much more.
The biggest drawback to Infusionsoft is pricing, which starts as $199 and scales upward. It’s a very powerful software, but the price may be a bit high if you’re just getting started.
Salesforce: warr.us/Salesforce
Salesforce is another very well-known CRM. They have a huge arsenal of tools available, including
They have plans starting at just $25 per month for lead generation alone, so they are affordable for smaller companies who won’t have a lot of users accessing the software. If you don’t need the advanced features, you can make do with the cheapest plan just for generating leads.
Their lead management system lets you keep track of all the stages of customer interaction and transactions.
FreeAgent: warr.us/FreeAgent
FreeAgent is a very affordable CRM system that has a wealth of features, including email tracking, outbound call tracking, sales activity tracking, real-time alerts and updates, mass email send, calendar syncing, and more.
Plans start at just $29 per month, making it a great option for new companies and those who aren’t doing enough business to support the price of one of the more expensive options.
Once you’ve decided which system you’re going to use and you’ve signed up for an account and familiarized yourself with how it works, it’s time to move on to the next step—the offer and we’ll look at that in the next post…
If you want to know more about building your list of leads, check out the featured resource below where you can get a free report about simple list building to expand your knowledge further. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
