There's a lot of info around about Internet marketing and how to earn a million dollars in your pajamas through affiliate income etc. etc. I'm not trying to compete with that. Seeing as I only make a few hundred a month in affiliate income, I don't feel that I'm sufficiently qualified to talk about that.
But what I can tell you about is how I built my marketing consulting practice up from zero to over 5 figures in monthly income using Internet marketing strategies only (apart from one $500 space ad that I ran about a year ago).
My marketing costs are around 2% of sales, and I spend zero time directly prospecting or looking for new clients. (OK, there are some activitites such as writing newsletters that play a part in getting new clients, but I see these as distinct from traditional "cold calling" or prospecting activities).
Of course, there are plenty of people who have gotten results better and faster. There are also a good number of people who are still struggling to set up a good lead generating website and would be glad to get tips that work from someone like me.
So here are some of the strategies that I've successfully used to build up my consulting business. Your business may well be different, but if generating high-quality sales leads is a challenge for you, you may find many of the same tactics directly applicable.
I need to make it clear that it took a lot of trial and error before I arrived at these successful tactics. To get lasting results, you have to stay with these tactics to get over the plateaus.
1. Differentiate yourself
The attractiveness of your offers to the audience you are targeting will be determined by how you have positioned yourself.
The majority of web designers are competent in the technical aspects of web design. The sites they produce are great looking. However, they see these websites as the end product.
Our pitch has always been Results. In other words, "we don't just build websites, we provide you with an automated revenue-generating tool".
We stand by our claims by providing a lot of information on online marketing and show plenty of case studies to back up what we say.
This pitch seems to attract a good number of business owners. It has a greater effect than making the claim of being expert at XHTML, PHP, Java Script and all sorts of other terms that have no meaning to you. You want to know whether we can make you site pay for itself.
2. Teach. Teach. Teach.
In a business such as marketing consulting, sales are based on trust. Clients have to understand that they are getting good value and can benefit greatly from the products and services you offer them.
Prospect need to learn about the expertise we have in our field and what solutions we can offer to resolve the problems they might face. To this end, I publish an online marketing guide and newsletter that are available free. If a newsletter subscriber's goals and our methods are a good match, he or she will approach us to establish a business relationship.
Educating prospect before selling to them works far better than the usual sales pitch does. Making use of evaluations, case studies, white papers, and newsletters that have solid value relevant to your market can give you good targeted leads.
Getting a foothold can be difficult because of all the free information available online. Your topic must be of high quality and/or very unique in order for this tactic to work. I make an effort to deliver advice, information, and strategies that prospects could not get anywhere else without paying for it.
3. Everything must be tested
A good number of the marketing techniques we have attempted, such as PPC search engines like Overture, banner ad services and paid link exchanges have brought less than satisfactory results. Once we knew that they were not feasible, we stopped them before they became too costly.
Some things, such as Google Adwords, did work very well. To keep the success going, we worked to further optimize and expand on those tactics that were proving to produce the results we wanted.
You will find it rather difficult to fail if you expand on the strategies that are getting the best results.
4. Be proactive in your own education
There are new developments on the internet all the time and it is vital to stay on top of them. Reading blogs is one way to do this. Another way is to take courses, buy software and ebooks as part of investing in your own education. You have to sort through a lot of garbage but there are plenty of great tools for profit building available. You will make the best use of your time to pay someone $50 to $100 who has already learned what works best rather than put yourself through the frustration of trial and error.
My monthly expenditure on self-education resources and info products is approximately $300 to $500.
5. Online success elements must be understood
These four things are necessary to keep current on if you are to build a successful lead generating system:
1. Strategy - the manner in which your sales process is set up. If your service or product is fairly complicated or expensive, this is especially important.
2. Design - the layout should be simple and easy to understand and navigate for users rather than contain the flash and dash of animated graphics.
3. Sales copy - motivating users to take action in contacting you for more information requires good sales copy. Your lead generation will be significantly impacted by the quality of your sales copy.
4. Targeted traffic - You will have higher sales conversion rates if your traffic is targeted.
I regularly exam all of these things so I can make necessary improvements when and where they are needed.
Ongoing improvement
Being impatient and getting discouraged is easy if things seem to be moving too slow and the results of your lead generating are sparse. Making consistent efforts over the course of time is key to seeing improvement in your online results. You can short cut the learning curve by hiring an expert to help you achieve this. This is a wise move if your business is not primarily internet marketing.
But what I can tell you about is how I built my marketing consulting practice up from zero to over 5 figures in monthly income using Internet marketing strategies only (apart from one $500 space ad that I ran about a year ago).
My marketing costs are around 2% of sales, and I spend zero time directly prospecting or looking for new clients. (OK, there are some activitites such as writing newsletters that play a part in getting new clients, but I see these as distinct from traditional "cold calling" or prospecting activities).
Of course, there are plenty of people who have gotten results better and faster. There are also a good number of people who are still struggling to set up a good lead generating website and would be glad to get tips that work from someone like me.
So here are some of the strategies that I've successfully used to build up my consulting business. Your business may well be different, but if generating high-quality sales leads is a challenge for you, you may find many of the same tactics directly applicable.
I need to make it clear that it took a lot of trial and error before I arrived at these successful tactics. To get lasting results, you have to stay with these tactics to get over the plateaus.
1. Differentiate yourself
The attractiveness of your offers to the audience you are targeting will be determined by how you have positioned yourself.
The majority of web designers are competent in the technical aspects of web design. The sites they produce are great looking. However, they see these websites as the end product.
Our pitch has always been Results. In other words, "we don't just build websites, we provide you with an automated revenue-generating tool".
We stand by our claims by providing a lot of information on online marketing and show plenty of case studies to back up what we say.
This pitch seems to attract a good number of business owners. It has a greater effect than making the claim of being expert at XHTML, PHP, Java Script and all sorts of other terms that have no meaning to you. You want to know whether we can make you site pay for itself.
2. Teach. Teach. Teach.
In a business such as marketing consulting, sales are based on trust. Clients have to understand that they are getting good value and can benefit greatly from the products and services you offer them.
Prospect need to learn about the expertise we have in our field and what solutions we can offer to resolve the problems they might face. To this end, I publish an online marketing guide and newsletter that are available free. If a newsletter subscriber's goals and our methods are a good match, he or she will approach us to establish a business relationship.
Educating prospect before selling to them works far better than the usual sales pitch does. Making use of evaluations, case studies, white papers, and newsletters that have solid value relevant to your market can give you good targeted leads.
Getting a foothold can be difficult because of all the free information available online. Your topic must be of high quality and/or very unique in order for this tactic to work. I make an effort to deliver advice, information, and strategies that prospects could not get anywhere else without paying for it.
3. Everything must be tested
A good number of the marketing techniques we have attempted, such as PPC search engines like Overture, banner ad services and paid link exchanges have brought less than satisfactory results. Once we knew that they were not feasible, we stopped them before they became too costly.
Some things, such as Google Adwords, did work very well. To keep the success going, we worked to further optimize and expand on those tactics that were proving to produce the results we wanted.
You will find it rather difficult to fail if you expand on the strategies that are getting the best results.
4. Be proactive in your own education
There are new developments on the internet all the time and it is vital to stay on top of them. Reading blogs is one way to do this. Another way is to take courses, buy software and ebooks as part of investing in your own education. You have to sort through a lot of garbage but there are plenty of great tools for profit building available. You will make the best use of your time to pay someone $50 to $100 who has already learned what works best rather than put yourself through the frustration of trial and error.
My monthly expenditure on self-education resources and info products is approximately $300 to $500.
5. Online success elements must be understood
These four things are necessary to keep current on if you are to build a successful lead generating system:
1. Strategy - the manner in which your sales process is set up. If your service or product is fairly complicated or expensive, this is especially important.
2. Design - the layout should be simple and easy to understand and navigate for users rather than contain the flash and dash of animated graphics.
3. Sales copy - motivating users to take action in contacting you for more information requires good sales copy. Your lead generation will be significantly impacted by the quality of your sales copy.
4. Targeted traffic - You will have higher sales conversion rates if your traffic is targeted.
I regularly exam all of these things so I can make necessary improvements when and where they are needed.
Ongoing improvement
Being impatient and getting discouraged is easy if things seem to be moving too slow and the results of your lead generating are sparse. Making consistent efforts over the course of time is key to seeing improvement in your online results. You can short cut the learning curve by hiring an expert to help you achieve this. This is a wise move if your business is not primarily internet marketing.
About the Author:
About the author: David B. Ascot's expertise is in improving sales lead generation results and your business can benefit from his winning strategies of online lead generation.
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