LEAD GENERATION

How To Generate Leads

Lead generation is often seen as the dirty work of building a profitable business. Although it is hard work, it is the life blood of your business and a skill you need to learn. If you didn't have leads that turned into prospects that turned into customers, where would your business be?

Lead generation can be expensive, but that depends on what route you choose to take. There are simple, effective ways to generate leads that cost an arm and a leg if you are willing to work to learn the techniques.

Lead generation is looking for clients and customers and you get those leads in different ways and different degrees of potential. For instance there are cold leads, people you have not had contact with. Warm leads are people who have responded to a request (whether it's to respond back to you, or people who have visited your website or blog). 

Responding to you is called opting in. Hot leads are people who have responded, joined your team or have become customers. You need to follow ALL your leads, but each one has a different way to follow through. That is a skill you need to learn.

The bottom line with lead generation is you will get out of it what you put into it. Lead generation is merely your starting point. From there you need to build relationships based on your lead generating efforts.

The Wanted Results

You will only get the results you want if you go at it with the right attitude. You really have to want it! If you don't, people will know that. You don't have to be desperate, you just need to be positive and confident. If you're new to networking and aren't sure what to do, then fake it. You will over time "get it!"

To be positive and confident you have to: be proactive in lead generation and take action daily, learn new skills that push you to your limits, be patient and persistent. You will also need to KNOW who your client is, and be willing to choose the right types of clients. 

Taking action means not waiting for them to make the first move. Be creative in your approaches to prospects and potential customers. And, above all else, listen to what your client/prospect/customers want and need. In a nutshell, if you want your team to produce, then you have to do that first and show them how.

E-Mail Marketing

One of the more important aspects of network marketing is the e-mail. But there is a draw back to that these days, as people often regard market messages as spam. Are you afraid your e-mails will get deleted? They might anyway no matter what you do, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do this

type of marketing. Targeted e-mail marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available when done correctly. Your e-mail strategy is the foundation for relationship marketing. You can achieve outstanding results with email marketing while investing only a small amount of time and an even smaller amount of money.

E- mail marketing is inexpensive. There’s no production, materials or postage costs, and, it’s 20 times more cost effective than direct mail. The major selling point about e-mail marketing is you are proactively talking to your prospects and existing team members. You’re waiting for them to come back to your web site or blog. It’s also IMMEDIATE communication.

Your call to action is clear: "Click here to take advantage of this offer", or "to learn more about this service". On average, responses to this type of email occur within 48 hours of being sent.

Types Of Emails And Examples

Opt-In direct e-mail is sending e-mail to recipients that have already approved of and are asking to receive commercial e-mail. They’ve agreed to receive (opted in) offers like yours. You can pay for a service like this, but why would you when you can write your own opt-in e-mail. If you do not know how to write one of these, or any of the other examples here, talk to your up-line. Any company you are acting as an affiliate for will have examples you can use for marketing your business.

Promotional Postcards are efficient, easy-to-create powerful marketing tools and are useful for customer up sells and cross sells, direct purchase, lead generation and brand awareness. An effective postcard email will normally do the trick, but AFTER you’ve done your relationship marketing.

In some cases, but not all, a postcard email promotes an event. Promotional Teasers are exactly what it says – teasers. A snappy line or two that promotes something in a unique manner, a manner that catches people's attention and makes them want to click.

Promotional Catalog email is one that literally contains a catalog of all your products. Sort of like everything, including the kitchen sink. Before you write this kind of email, you need to know how to match your competition or beat them. If you don't have any competition, that's a major selling point.

Ask yourself if your competition has something you think you cannot compete against. You need to know these things so you don’t step in it if you honestly can’t offer something the other guys are offering.

Relationship prospecting is pretty straight-forward and is based on you having already built a relationship with your prospect. Give them enough information to become informed about you and your offers. Enough so they can make an informed decision about joining. 

Keep it at about 400 words - but it must contain at least 3 calls to action and the same call to action. In other words, you will be asking them to DO something, the same something, three times. Aim for one postscript for sure, two to be thorough (a PSS) and that last PSS should be a call to action.

The Relationship informative arena is something usually used in newsletters and ezines. You’ve seen them – the large one page infomercials, that don’t ask anyone to buy anything, they just provide information. Don't come across as an aggressive marketer in these types of emails. Your goal is to merely provide information in an informational manner. Usually in about

1,500 words give or take.

Watch your step when you use this kind of email, and make sure it’s well written etc. as studies show e-newsletters that are informative, convenient, and timely are preferred. However, a new study shows only 11% of newsletters are read thoroughly. The lesson here is layout and content are critical. Readers are critical of newsletters that waste their time, and will ignore or delete them if they aren't regarded as useful. Since your whole reason for marketing is to retain customers, this is a skill you NEED to master.

How To Write An Email

Sure, you already know how to write emails, you do it every day, but you're writing to people you know and don't get stopped by a spam checker all that often. Writing business e-mails is a different can of worms and needs some finesse on your part to get them opened every time when they hit someone's e-mail inbox.

What's the first thing you do when you check your inbox? See who sent you e-mail, and check the heading to see what it says. If the heading doesn't interest you, what do you do? Right, you hit delete. Since you are an affiliate marketer, you want your mail opened and read.

How You Get Your Email Opened

You have 50 characters in the subject line including spaces you can use. Make them count, because what you say will make or break your next e-mail campaign. The subject line needs to be catchy and grab their attention. The best place for headline/subject line ideas is your local newspaper. 

Like newspaper headlines, your e-mail subject line need to tell the recipient what to expect in the e-mail. This might not always work. That's life. One campaign may take off like crazy, the next flop. With practice and a few hints and tips, you can be certain you'll have more hits than misses.

To cut down on the number of misses, follow the first rule of e-mail marketing which is TEST, TEST, TEST and then TEST some more. You are testing styles and trends that seem to work. Pick your subject line BEFORE you write your body content. It needs to be the first thing you do for any email campaign. Then test it on your team and perhaps a part of your email contact lists.

Let's say you have an e-mail list of about 300 people.Try testing two different subject lines and keep track of the results. How many responses did you get to each heading? Review the most successful one, then change one word and resend it to your list. You need to do this continually because each e-mail campaign will be different by choice and by necessity.

Keep track of the rate of conversions to opened e-mail. It's one thing to have your e-mail opened, but quite another to have someone either reply or sign up. So while you may have a successful subject line, and it gets opened, if it doesn't translate into conversions, it's a failure.

The second rule of e-mail marketing is personalize your subject lines, which means one of the words of the 50 you have to work with needs to be the name of the person you are writing to. At least it does if you are suiting the content and interests of the e-mail to your prospects interests. If, however, it's a bulk e-mailing, then this doesn't apply.

The third rule of e-mail marketing is tell the truth. Do not mislead your prospects and promise more than the e-mail can deliver. If your subject line doesn't reflect what's in the body of the message, your prospect will distrust you and the next email will go straight to the trash bin.

The fourth rule of e-mail marketing is create a conversation. Without a conversation and a relationship, you're cold e-mailing to someone you do not know. And that means you'll have a harder time trying to tell them about your business. If you have a series of e-mails you send prospects, and each one is a continuation of a conversation from a previous e-mail, that is

conversation.

The fifth rule of email marketing is make sure you tell the prospect who the e-mail is from. Remember you have 50 characters in the subject line, so, just make sure the from line has your name. The first thing people see is your subject line, so it must grab their attention.

What About Content?

Content must follow on from the subject line, and it better be interesting. Interesting enough to have your reader actually read the whole e-mail. The body of your email must have a call to action in it asking people to do something, like click on a link or fill in a form etc.

Don't stop sending emails. You keep sending them until your prospect signs up. Not everyone is ready to join something when first asked. If you have patience, they might sign up later. And the spam checker? You'll know the most common Spam filter words like Internet Marketing, or Business Opportunity, or Make Money From Home. But you're not going to know about other triggers because spam filters change their word criteria every month.

All you need to do is use Spam Check. It's FREE! All you have to do is cut and paste the following URL into your browser and follow directions: ht t p://spamch e ck. s ite s e l l .c o m/ . You're aiming to be a welcome guest. If you stick to the rules, you will have a successful e-mail campaign.

IM (Instant Messenger) Marketing

There are quite a few Instant messengers available on the Net, some good, some bad and one or two are really bad. You need to choose which one works best for you.

Here's some of the more common messengers:

AIM – 60 million current AIM users

YAHOO - 250 million people online

SMS – 50M –70M

MSN.com – 150 million people worldwide

ICQ – 150 million people worldwide

GoogleTalk – 7,126,000 and growing

Windows Live Messenger – 8M and growing

What Do I Do With IM?

The short answer is, meet people with IM. You do that by finding the best places to talk to them. You will be surfing for people who have like interests for example: internet marketing, networking, home business, making money at home etc. When approaching people on IM first start by being friends (relationship marketing) before you jump in and get enthusiastic about your business opportunity.

Once you start a conversation with them you can figure out within the first 10 seconds if they are going to be a valid prospect for your business. You just read the signals they give back to you and read between the lines. The longer you do this, the easier it gets. It's just chatting with friends, but it's called networking.

Chatting with someone who has similar interests is the best way to introduce yourself and your business or product. This is the most easily duplicate-able way of making friends, developing relationships positioning yourself to tell anyone about your business/product.

It's not hard to find people with common background and interests. What are YOU interested in? Chances are there are others who share your passions too. You just have to search for them and start talking. And, once you've started talking to them, you need to stay in touch as well. No sense in just having the odd conversation now and again and expecting them to

want to join your business, is there?

The World Is Your Oyster

When you are sitting three feet in front of the world (meaning your computer screen) you can reach out and touch anyone, anywhere in the world. The world is your oyster, the pearl your potential customer/recruit sitting within the shell of your computer.

When using IM, the first thing you need to have is buddy or contact lists of everyone you know. Keep track of them and make sure you have them in an organized fashion on your computer. You can track up to 5,000 people this way. You likely won't be doing that, but the point is the possibilities are unlimited. If you think you're not going to remember what you said to

whom, Yahoo records and saves all conversations.

Where To Find People?

Cruise the member directory. There's an amazing amount of personal information about people listed there. You can strike up a conversation with anyone, about anything in their personal profile. What if they say NO when they find out what you are marketing? Again, that's life. That's what happens when you talk to people you don't know. But, if you use their personal information, you already have an in. You don't spend one cent generating leads. Market like this when you have time – say three people a day – but stay in touch.

How Do You Get People To Talk To You?

Create a unique screen name, something that makes people curious about who you are and what you do and that means they will contact you. The name you choose will set the tone for all your future conversations.

Example: say your screen name is Life Style Designer and you happen to have a web site that promotes dynamic personal lifestyle changes to enrich your life. You can write to other lifestyle coaches and say you just love your work, don't they love theirs? If they do not like what they are doing, they will tell you. The door is now open for you to tell them what you do.

In most cases, you will be asking questions. That's the key to pre-qualifying people. Ask questions and you will be able to tell quickly within a few short conversations, if they have the potential to be a part of your business. You will know them by how they answer your questions.

When you're talking to people online via instant messenger, don't send them long notes about what you are doing. They don't care and don't want to hear it. Proceed slowly and parcel out bits of information based on their replies to your notes. Go slow, use your head, keep it short, and read between the lines. You WILL know when they have lost interest or are losing interest by the way they reply to you.

Community Networking

Community networking is all about promoting your business/product/service in a community setting in online communities like Ryze, Yahoo, Direct Match, My Space, Circle of Friends and other forums that have like minded people and marketers in them. You can do community networking in just about any online group.

Your goal, plain and simple, is to talk to people about what you have to offer. You can find people by doing searches and contacting them based on the information in their profiles. It sometimes takes a bit of work to find people's email addresses, but with Google and cross checking on the Net, the

people you would like to talk to can be found. If you know they are already online marketers (or not), and then gauge your approach accordingly. Community networking can accomplish business development, sales, general marketing, recruiting, job-hunting, knowledge exchange, strategic alliances, joint ventures etc. Business development and community networking are

closely related.

Community networking is about partnerships. You are striving for a coming together, or meeting of the minds. You want to explore the relationship to see if it can be mutually beneficial, and if the answer is yes, then you work together to make that happen. It is always easier and less threatening to talk about partnering rather than purchasing something.

The relationships you are working on developing are an end, not just a means to an end. However, despite the relationship aspects of your approach to your prospect, your ultimate goal is still a sale of some sort. The traditional point of view for the sales relationship you have with prospects is that the success of any sales person is measured in sales, not relationships. That's what's wrong with most traditional online marketing approaches. The relationship part is missing. People delete marketing messages from people they don't know, and don't have a relationship with.

If, on the other hand, you do have a relationship, chances are they will always open an email from you. That is why your focus needs to be on the relationship itself and not just the short-term objective of a sale. What other things can you be doing to establish a relationship while you are

community networking? Research your market, and listen more than you

talk. Marketing groups are usually really candid with their opinions about things. This is valuable information for you. Be viewed as an expert in your field and this will give you more social standing and greater access to your audience. Speak up and out in a forum, blog, mailing list, and reach untold numbers of people. 

Talk about what you know the best, and if you make it original or thought provoking, you'll be quoted and linked to. That is great exposure! By the way, while you are at it, include your business name/site/blog link in every signature in every email, every Web transaction you do and in every profile you create. Invaluable exposure.

Word-of-mouth spreads like wildfire through social networks. Make use of that fact when community networking and you will soon have the world beating a path to your door to find out what you have to offer.

Phone Marketing

Phone marketing scares many people, and with good reason. In a lot of cases, you're talking to someone you do not know and cannot read over the phone. The added disadvantage is you cannot see their face. However, with phone marketing, if you pay attention to how people respond to you, and listen to what they are saying and how they are saying it, you can become quite adept at reading a prospect / customer over the phone.

The biggest fear to overcome is the fear of the unknown on the other end of the line, fear of what they will say or do. Most people are willing to talk to you particularly if they opted in to get a phone call in the first place. So really all that you have to do is talk! This is easier than you might think. Try the following in a conversational manner, not in sales pitch mode. Substitute words that you think would work better for you and your style.

Hi (name). This is (your name) calling from (your city). (Name) this is just a short courtesy call, but you stopped by my web site and filled out a form asking for information about developing an income from home. Do you remember doing that? (Wait for the answer even if there is a moment of silence) Perfect!

I just wanted to give you a quick call to introduce myself. And to fill you in a bit on our (product/service/opportunity) and let you know why this opportunity would appeal to you – because it has no other competition in the network marketing industry – and that is VERY unique and unusual.

So how serious are you about developing an income from home? WAIT FOR THE ANSWER – it will tell you tons of things about the person you are talking to. If they ask if this an MLM scheme – right away you know you do not want to work with this person. If they say, well sort of, but how hard do I have to work, your reply would be something like this: "You know what, I don't think this opportunity is really suited for you. Thanks for your time." And then, you MOVE ON! You cannot force someone into being interested or

wanting to work, they either do or they don't.

IF however you get a response like – I'm very serious, really serious or words to that effect, you move into part two of your phone call and say: Perfect! Do you have about 5 minutes for me to give you some information about our (product/service/opportunity)? WAIT FOR ANSWER. If they say YES – move on to the following "I am a member of (your group/your business etc). And I have some interesting information for you about (group/business/product). Are you ready to hear what we are all about? WAIT FOR THE ANSWER!

If it's NO, fine move on. If YES, then here is where you present a brief version of your product/company/services etc. You need to have all this written out like a script or you will lose track of where you are. When you are done, ask: Pretty interesting concept right? WAIT FOR THE ANSWER!

If the answer is no, move on. If the answer is yes, invite them to join your eam/business/buy your product. Some areas of a call like this may go off the rails, but you're talking to a person who will have questions, and that's the good thing. So long as you know your products, your business plan and your team, you can talk to anyone about what you do.

Bottom line is this, talk to the person like you were talking to someone sitting across the table from you over lunch or coffee. If your prospect isn't interested or doesn't want what you are offering, then that is their choice. There is no sense in arguing with them otherwise. If you do, you will become another one of those annoying Internet marketers who don't understand

what the word NO means.

Accept a no with grace and dignity. In most cases it is not a personal rejection. Leave it be and accept their decision for what it is. You will gain far more points in the long run by respecting their desires. You can always re-visit the proposition again later. Sometimes no only means no, not right now.

Don't by any means try and bribe them into joining you with promises of unlimited income, or a promise that it is SO easy to earn money or build a business with you. Why not? Because the simple truth of the matter is that building a business is hard work. Be honest and up front. Yes, it takes hard work, but you will be there to help them succeed.

Bounce Backs

Bounce backs are used in response to someone sending you information on a business opportunity. You need to respond to them on a personal level with a short and to the point note, as they are obviously actively marketing and you could use them for your team/business. To get opportunities like this, add your business email to a FREE auto responder test site. Many of these sell the emails and you can get on hundreds of lists in no time flat.

An auto responder, is an mail utility that automatically sends a reply to an email message. They send back information on a topic without having the requester do anything more than provide an e-mail address. They are also used to send a confirmation that the message has been received. A lot of bounce back emails wind up in your bulk folder or in your spam filter box

depending on which email service you use and how aggressive their filters are.

Getting On Lists

Do a search for specific target markets you're familiar with, or general searches for business opportunities. Keep track of the URLs you have visited and signed up for so you don't subscribe twice to the same list. Don't just use one engine to search, because different engines will return different results. Try these engines:

ht t p://www.go o g l e .c o m

ht t p://www.yah o o .c o m

ht t p://www. l yc os .c o m

ht t p://www.ho t b ot .c o m

ht t p://www.a l t a v i s t a.c o m

ht t p://www.ove r t ure . c o m

Search Terms You Can Use

Try some of these, but you can get creative and do other searches as well. Some of the following search terms are classified as Spam by filters. If you bounce back on emails

from those who reply using these headings, be prepared to check your filtered e-mail and hope their email accepts your reply. 

Home Based Business

Business Opportunity

Working From Home

How To Make Money From Home

Network Marketing

Party Plan Companies

Direct Sales Companies

If the return email gives you a website to view but the email address they sent with the website link looks bogus, check the web site and see if you can find their real email address. You might find additional name information on their website. Once you have viewed their email, and their website, you'll have a feel for the people you are emailing.

Google their names and see what else they might be promoting online. How they lay their e-mail out and what they say will give you an idea of how much or how little marketing experience they have. This is another good thing for you to know when you draft your e-mail to them.

You have the basics on how to get going with bounce backs, and what to say when you start responding to them. The more you do this, the easier it gets. Happy affiliate marketing!

 

An affiliate can promote his or her products via various free and paid methods. There is software available that can automate multiple promotion processes which saves both time and money. I’m familiar with one software that specifically promotes Clickbank and Amazon products. This is not a new promotion method, but automation of the process maximizes the effectiveness of the method. Used properly to promote a sell-able product this  powerful traffic generator would drive 10s of thousands targeted visitors to your promotion and bring consistent profitable results. There's a 60 day money.back guarantee!

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