Lead Generation System
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Author Archive for Derrick Markotter

Effective Landing Pages Deliver More Sales Leads

By Derrick Markotter on November 3, 2011 No Comments

Acquiring sales leads, qualifying them and converting them into customers is a challenge for most businesses. With the skyrocketing cost of print and other traditional advertising channels, it’s not surprising that more and more small and medium businesses are turning to the Internet to find new prospects. One of the keys to developing an effective online marketing strategy is the effective use of optimized landing pages.

How Do Landing Pages Generate Sales Leads?

First of all, what is a landing page? Seth Godin defines it as “the first page a visitor to your site sees.”

Get More Sales LeadsMost people seem to think that the first page their website visitors will see is going to be their home page. But visitors could be arriving at your website via any page which is indexed by the search engines. So if hundreds of pages on your website are indexed, any one of them could be the first page a visitor sees.

I prefer to think of a landing page as a page your visitors arrive at when they click on a link which you control.

In other words, when you place an ad or write an article, whatever page you link to will be your landing page for that ad or article.

Landing Pages Need To Be Targeted

The landing page for your ad or article could be your home page, and in my experience, the majority of Adwords ads appear to link to the business’ home page.

The big problem here is that most home pages offer too many choices. When you link your ad to your home page, all you’re doing is increasing the number of visitors to your website. Although you know exactly what they’re looking for, because they clicked on a specific ad, you are not making use of that information.

Because they have landed on your home page, you can’t easily track what action they take, and if they don’t find what they’re looking for within a few seconds, they may simply click away.  That means you’re paying to increase your bounce rate, which is one of the factors Google uses to determine the quality score – and hence the cost – of your Adwords ads.

The landing page needs to continue the conversation which is going on in the visitor’s head. In other words, if they click on an ad which promises information about “green garden widgets”, they should land on a page about “green garden widgets”, not about “Our Massive Range of Widget Styles and Colours.”

This really means that you should ideally have a different landing page for every ad you place. In your business, this might mean a different landing page for every product or service you offer.

In a recent survey of their customers, HubSpot found that those with 31-40 landing pages acquired 7 times more leads than those with 1 to 5 landing pages.

There’s also a strong case to be made for creating landing pages on their own domains, where they don’t interfere with your existing website at all.

Landing Pages Need To Have A Clear Objective

It’s always better to direct traffic to a landing page which is optimized for the action you want the visitor to take. This is particularly important when you are paying for the visitor to be there.

What action do you want them to take?

Here are some options (adapted from Seth Godin’s list):

  • Get them to click on a link
  • Get them to give you permission to contact them
  • Get them to learn something about you, your business or your product
  • Get them to buy something
  • Get them to leave a comment, share, ‘like’ or ‘+1′ your page

You can generally get someone to take one action, maybe two. So you could get them to watch a video or read an article, and then perhaps share your page with their friends. But if you’ve paid for them to be there, you really want them to do one of two things – either buy something, or give you permission to follow up with them by phone or email.

How Do You Get Them To Take Action?

Every landing page should have a clear ‘Call To Action.’ This is simply a few words which urge the visitor to take a specific action, for example, “Click Here” or “Download our Free Report.”

If you want to find out more about sales lead generation strategies for local businesses, I’d like to give you a free report called “The 7 REASONS Why Internet Lead Generation For Small Businesses FAILS (and how to fix them).”  Just fill in the form on the right hand side of this page, and click “Download Now.”

Categories : Landing Pages

Successful Network Marketing: Multitasking

By Derrick Markotter on April 4, 2009 No Comments

Do you find that you don’t have enough time to accomplish everything you set out to do?

In todays world, multitasking has become more and more important. Multitasking means handling several activities at the same time. Every business needs the ability to multitask, and network marketing businesses are no exception.

Network marketing can take a long time to show results as it is. If you spend all of your time building a network, you will be hard-pressed to find time to implement all the other things you should be doing when your network starts producing results.

For example, you could build your network online as well as offline. One of the most effective ways to use your time is to make a presentation to many people simultaneously. You could organise a workshop or seminar, rather than presenting to one person at a time.

Another example would be building a network while simultaneously selling your product to people who are not interested in the business opportunity. Many network marketers concentrate on the business opportunity exclusively, neglecting the retail sales side.

If your company allows this, you could build a number of websites and blogs to promote your network marketing opportunity, and promote all of them.

Of course, there are limits to what one person can do. You need to find a balance between focusing on the task at hand and multitasking. Ideally, you would outsource the more trivial tasks, such as website promotion, so that you can manage many activities effortlessly.

Categories : Network Marketing
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Network Marketing Exclusively Through Online Methods

By Derrick Markotter on March 27, 2009 No Comments

Most people seem to think that with the online methods of building networks, they can do away with offline client prospecting forever.

With the advent of social media networks, many people think that they no longer need to meet their prospects in person. Every network marketer seems to be asking on question – “which methods, online or offline, are the most effective in building networks?”

There are, of course, pros and cons to both methods.

The biggest limitation of offline prospecting is that the number of people you can meet is relatively small. You also need to put in a lot of effort to actually go and meet them.

The fact that you are not meeting a large number of people obviously reduces your number of prospects. And meeting people is expensive – you need to travel to a meeting place and perhaps entertain them as well. Most network marketers feel that they need to make a good impression, so they end up picking up the tab.

Of course, online methods have pitfalls as well. Many experienced network marketers say that you can’t form personal relationships
online, and network marketing is all about personal relationships.

It’s also possible that you could fail to qualify prospects properly, because it’s hard to tell how motivated they are without meeting them in person. You might end up with a large network of people who don’t bring in new members, which leads to stagnation.

So the best solution is a mix of the two methods – bringing in new prospects through the Internet, and then arranging a physical meeting when they’re ready.

Of course, if the prospect is too far away for a physical meeting, you can use the phone or video conferencing to build your relationship with them.

Categories : Network Marketing
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The Secret To Building A Network Marketing Business

By Derrick Markotter on March 27, 2009 No Comments

Most people seem to think that Network Marketers need to take part in a whirlwind of activity, hopping from one seminar to another, promoting and selling products, writing books and attending training sessions.

In fact, many people are put off by this impression of Network Marketing as a hectic activity. They may not want to get involved because they fear that they will also need to put in a lot of work for limited results.

But this impression is a delusion. You’ll need to discard this idea if you are thinking about joining a network marketing venture. You need to understand and implement the core network marketing secret –

“Work Less, Network More!”

What does that mean? In simple terms, network marketing is about building a network. Network marketing companies pay you out in direct proportion to the number of people in your network.

Direct sales are important as well, but they are not as important as building your team.

A strong network is the key to building a residual income which comes in month after month.

Categories : Network Marketing
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