Top Reasons Why Internet Lead Generation Is a Lot Better Than Telemarketing

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Good news! Marketers these days have plenty of marketing approaches to choose from. 

They can settle for the very cheap, which include simple flyers and brochures, to the most expensive such as a spot in the Superbowl. They can also make use of new technology such the World Wide Web or even the telephone. 

But here is the bad news is not all of them will work. Some of them will generate the most number of leads for your business while the others will not even give you any. There are a number of them that will provide you with an ROI while the rest could just be plain advertising expenses. You may also realize that if all things are created equal, Internet lead generation is so much better than telemarketing. 

Here are the reasons why:

1. Internet is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Yes, we are talking about constant marketing. You may ask, though, how one will be able to do it. A good Internet marketer can always create an opt-in page. This is also a landing page, if he is using Google ads. It is basically just one page that talks about the benefits and features of his product or service. If a visitor is interested to know more about it he can sign up, and he becomes a prospect or a business Internet lead. 

Telemarketing on the other hand can always get cut off by a lot of things. You may have to stop when you need to run some errands, clean the house, fetch the kids, do your full-time work, or even when you sleep. 

2. The World Wide Web is a lot cheaper. Since there are more Internet providers available, the competition among them becomes tough. To attract more customers, they would usually bring down the price of their service. In fact, they can offer a bundle, where they can give away a phone and Internet line at a much cheaper price. Most of all, when it comes to online marketing, there are some strategies that are available for free. 

For example, you can attract more prospects by submitting articles to article directories and press release websites. Most of them do not cost anything. You just need to open your own personal account. You can also promote your business through social networking websites such as MySpace and Facebook. Again, they are completely free. You may also set up a blog account or participate in forums, where you can place links to your opt-in page in the Signature box. 

I really do not need to tell you about the costs of telephone services. Even if they appear to be affordable at the beginning, they will still be very expensive since you are going to place a lot of calls every month. 

3. The Internet has a much bigger reach. It’s easy for you to go global with the World Wide Web than with your telephone. Have you ever considered using your own phone line to call prospects living in Asia or in Europe? Perhaps you do, but you may be hesitant. This is because you know that it’s going to cost you a lot. It will also hurt your business if you won’t be able to convert a lot of your leads to customers. It only means that you’re spending without getting anything in return. 

The Internet, on the other hand, already provides you a venue to reach out to thousands of people who are scattered all over the world. There’s no need for you to think about long-distance or roaming charges. 

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Improve Lead Management and Generate Sales

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There are a lot of business owners who would put the blame of the failure of their lead generation to their software:

“I got the wrong one.”

“It was too difficult to manage than my good-old Excel sheet.”

“I cannot share it with my salespeople.”

“It doesn’t produce the kind of report I would like.”

“I thought it could run 24 hours, 7 days a week.”

Okay, stop it. The truth is that there’s nothing really wrong with the lead manager. It will be useful as long as you know how to use it to your advantage. Therefore, what you should strive is how you can effectively manage your leads. 

Here’s the Problem

Most businesses really don’t care about their leads—or their importance to their growth. Sometimes they already have their prospects, and yet they don’t track them. In fact, more than 60 percent of these sales leads remain untracked. This is also the same percentage of people who will look for other companies for their products ands services. A good portion of them could have been tracked, but the company has not devised a mechanism to nurture them. It would not be long before their interest would wane. By the moment you’re ready with your offer, they are no longer hearing it from you. And if these weren’t enough, around 80 percent of your marketing campaigns are useless, simply because you’re not doing anything with the results or the leads. 

Make It a Sustained Effort

Are you a businessperson who would send catalogs or e-mails only when you have something to offer? When there’s none, your prospects would not be hearing from you? Then, you have no one to blame for the failure of your marketing strategies than you. You may have forgotten that an effective lead management is a sustained effort. This means that you have to make it a point to not only track or nurture your leads today but regularly. They may not be your leads for this campaign, but you will surely make use of them very soon. By nurturing and tracking them, it will be very easy for you to convert them to sales-ready leads. 

Stick with the Pareto Principle

Do you know the Pareto principle? To put it simply, around 20 percent of the things that you do matters. When it comes to your lead management there’s no point in spending too much effort, money, and time on a lot of leads when only 10 percent of them are actually your real prospects. You would learn that you can earn more when you stick with the 10 percent since they easily bite to your offers, spread the news to their friends, and get more leads for you. They will also be the same ones who will hear you out first when you have a new product or service coming up. They can help you generate an excellent ROI at the least amount of time. 

How to Judge Your Lead Management

So how do you exactly know that you’re managing your leads very well? You will know it when you can immediately send the information that your leads need. It can pertain to your products or services, or to your business as a whole. You will also know it if you can easily enter all the information that you can derive from them into your lead manager. This way, when you’re ready to track, all the contact details are already in place and in order. 

With proper lead management, you are giving your business a chance to grow through a powerful group of people: your leads. 

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Some Things Most People Don’t Know about Lead Management

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Most marketers know what the definition of lead is. According to how your dictionary says it, in marketing lingo, a lead is someone who is interested in what you are offering or advertising. It’s called a “lead” simply because it leads you down a possible path where you can find a figurative pot of gold in the end--that is, a possible deal to be closed at the end of the journey. 

That is why a lot of people give a somewhat undeserved emphasis on lead generation; a lot of effort and money are spent just to get new leads and add them to the database. For what? A mere 1-out-of-100 chance of closing a lead with one of those new leads? All that time, old and neglected leads are sitting behind “closets,” the fields in the database where their information is placed in. These old leads are not afforded anyone’s attention since their minds are altogether bent on the new and fresh leads that come in every day. 

That and a few others are just some of the errors that even the most experienced marketer makes every once in a while during a marketing campaign. 

Error #1: Old Leads Are Unqualified

There is one likely reason why a lead would be dubbed as “old.” They are declassified because they have been pitched an offer, and they refused. As a result, marketers automatically discard these leads--actually they are just stored in a database--and move on to searching for new, better qualified leads. However, that is plainly wrong. 

Leads are just like animals. If you neglect your pets, chances are their loyalties will shift to someone else, and they won’t warm up to you. That is especially true when it comes to cats. Fail to feed a cat a lot of times, and you’ll be surprised that he won’t come home to you.

The same truth applies to leads. Just because they have refused the offer doesn’t have to mean that they are not interested; they simply weren’t ripe enough for the taking. Just like your feeding a cat so that he stays at your home, you have to continually prod and knock at the doors of a lead until he comes to the door and say, “Yes, you can come in.” For this reason, old leads should not be discarded right away. When you realize that, you’ll also find that you have a wealth of possible clients lying within your leads database.

Error #2: New Leads Are Hot

Most people consider new leads simply because they are yet untested and are potentially interested, unlike the leads that have earlier refused an offer. While this much is true, some new leads are not exactly hot. This much is true when you have bought leads from a third-party provider. Chances are these leads have already been processed, proved to be unqualified, and, as a result, are recycled for unsuspecting marketers to purchase and work through. A lot of money and time are then wasted both for buying and for processing these leads. 

The truth is that all leads are “hot.” All leads are interested in your product. However, it is a big mistake to say that, once a lead refuses after one or two levels of nurturing, he should be discarded and left to rot in a database. Of course, some leads are simply not interested in buying since they are only interested in information. However, some leads are interested. It’s only because they’re not ready yet to buy, or they have not yet realized their need that they refuse to buy. All you need to do is nurture them and grow their interest one level after another. 

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

How to Find Leads for Healthcare Products

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Family healthcare is one of the biggest companies and businesses in the world. Like all the biggest businesses, it is based on one of the greatest needs in a person’s life, which is the need to have access to the best medicine and healthcare services. Relying on income alone is not enough for most people. Sometimes an emergency arises just when someone doesn’t have enough money to meet the urgency. Healthcare products address that need by reimbursing people for what they spend on medicines, surgeries, and anything related to their recovery.

Everyone needs healthcare--that’s undeniable. That’s why some people become agents for healthcare companies. While it’s a big market, however, it’s not big enough if you don’t know how to find the people who really need the product enough to buy it. That’s what most marketers call lead generation. 

Leads are simply information that points you to a person that has enough interest for your products. That’s why it’s called a lead--because it leads you to your potential market. Leads are generated a lot of ways, and you, as a marketer, should know how to do that.

The best place to find leads, of course, the Internet. The Internet is where most people go to find information on everything, including healthcare. These are the people who you should target and who should be the recipient of your offers. However, it is not easy to find and capture information on these people, but there are ways that you can do that to your benefit. 

How to Take Advantage of the Internet

The best places to look for leads in the Internet are independent websites. These sites would include forums, as they do not subscribe or promote any company. As a result, people don’t hesitate to visit them because they don’t bombard people with information that will only serve the companies’ interests and not theirs. True, there are ads, but the majority of the information people look for can be found in a forum. As a marketer, you can try and act like a normal person inside the forums. 

Participate in discussions but don’t mention anything about your business, or else you’ll end up getting banned. You can, however, advertise your business on your signature. Anyone who is interested in your products will click the link on your signature or will even contact you. This will then result to a lead. It’s a safe and fool-proof way of getting leads. 

Another way to get leads through the Internet is to publish articles about healthcare. As mentioned earlier, people want information, not products or offers. They may need it, but most people get annoyed when they don’t find the information they need. If they were unable to do so because of your offers, then you can kiss that potential customer goodbye. Instead of being proactive, lure them in to your offer. The only way to do that is to give them the information they need. As long as you wrote your articles right, the reader will certainly be interested and will check out your website if you have placed a link in your resource box, found at the bottom of the article. 

You can also try publishing articles on your own non-branded website. Implement keyword density so that the websites are easily found and will rank high in the search engine results pages. You can then see traffic flowing to your website. Take advantage of this traffic to filter out interested individuals by introducing a form where they can subscribe to a newsletter that will be sent to their e-mail address. That will be all the information you’ll need to start your lead nurturing campaign. 

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Tips for Successful Online Lead Generation

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Lead generating is the first step in the marketing process. In this step, the marketing department comes up with a list of people who have the potential and the interest to buy the products that the company is offering. This can be done both automatically and manually. From the list, the company can come up with qualified leads, or those who are capable of buying products from them. They have prospects whom they can deal with.

No matter what your lead generating process may be, whether it’s automatic or manual, you still need to polish a few things before you can get an ongoing stream of leads coming into your company. Here are a few tips that you may find useful for your lead-generating efforts using the Internet:

Make Use of Your Existing Network

All of you have a network of friends and acquaintances. They can be close friends or simply people that you have met at work or at some function. These people qualify as leads already, as they also have their own network of friends and acquaintances. Out of this pool of people, you can be sure that there are one or two people who are interested in getting your products. You can also be sure that each person also holds a network of his own in which he could refer your products to any person who may be interested.

The word of mouth is a powerful tool. In fact, it is where viral marketing was developed from.

Leverage on Search Engines

Search engines are also effective tools to rely on while in an Internet lead-generation campaign. Search engines are the ones that can lead traffic to your website, since they are used by people to look for information that they are interested in. Provided that you do things right, search engines can work for you.

One way to leverage the power of search engines is to develop a good website. Employ effective search engine optimization tools like keyword density when coming up with the content for your website. You should also have your website designed professionally. There are two reasons for this. Keyword density makes it possible for search engine spiders to index you and assign a high place in the search engine result pages or SERP. Make sure not to abuse the keywords by repeating them excessively, as this may cause your website to be listed as spam thus putting all your efforts to waste.

No matter how keyword-dense your website is and how high it ranks in the SERP, people who visit your website will still be discouraged from learning further about your products if the website is designed in a cluttered manner. Make sure your contents are well-structured, and the overall design of the website should be pleasing. It doesn’t have to be flashy, just as long as it doesn’t make the user leave the website right away after entering.

Take Advantage of Social Networking Websites

Ever since Friendster, MySpace, Multiply, and other social networking websites made their introduction into the online world, social network has become an instant hit among Internet users. Thanks to these websites, it is now easy to reach out to people and hook up with those who share the same interests as you do. As a marketer, there is a free-for-all market from which you can find prospective clients and qualified leads as long as you pull the strings right.

You can take advantage of forums focusing on your niche market as well. Make sure to post quality replies and avoid spamming. The only promotion you should do in forums is to put your website link in your signature.


Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Two Important Elements in Lead Management

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Well, if you have been reading my blog posts, then you definitely know that there are a lot of elements that are related with lead management. Today, however, we would focus on two. These are the ones that are not talked about often, yet their role is integral for creating a more efficient lead management program for your business.

Tracking the Leads

Tracking is considered to be the first and the most important part of lead management. When you already have your prospects, the next thing that you should do is to make sure that the sales agents can place a call. Tracking also means that leads are followed up just in case they say no on the first offer, or they express apprehension on the initial call.

There are a lot of rules that are related to tracking your leads. We’ll focus on the more important ones. Okay, first, make sure that the leads are tracked within 48 hours. Otherwise, you can already consider them stale. When you’re going to communicate with them using different touch points—e-mail and phone—after 2 days, there’s a huge chance that the prospects are no longer interested.

During tracking, you must also be able to generate feedback from prospects. You can use their comments and suggestions to better the tracking process of your business and increase your conversion rate more quickly.

Introducing the Programs

Yes, we are talking about applications here. Even the smallest business should learn to adapt technology. Otherwise, it will be very hard for the owner to keep up with the performance of his competitors. There are a lot of them that you can choose from, but not all of them would be ideal and thus be adapted by the enterprise. After all, there are several things that you need to consider. These include the price, nature of business, and people who are going to use them.

For lead management, you have the lead management software. We basically tackled that for the longest time. By now, you already understood their main role in the organization. This is also highly important when you are tracking leads. You need to be able to centralize the lead management process, so you can minimize errors like duplicate entries of leads and lack of updates in the database.

But you definitely need more than that. I would suggest the use of mobile phones or laptops that are capable of connecting to the Internet. This way, your sales agents can also work even when they are on the road.

For example, if they happen to be in a trade show in another state, they don’t need to be bringing a lot of paper work, such as registration forms. You know how papers can get lost along the way. Rather, they can immediately key in the names and contact information of their leads directly into the system. This may also mean that the lead management program that you are going to use is web-based.

You should also pair your lead management software with a CRM application. A lot of people seem to think of these as similar, but they are not. The former is mainly used for building prospects, while the latter is for maintaining your customers. Keep in mind that your business ties with your leads end when sales agents can close some deals with them. In fact, it’s only a start. You have better chances of selling new products and services to existing clients. Your CRM software can make sure that you don’t miss out that point.

As long as these two aspects are incorporated into the lead management system properly, there’s no way that a business will struggle in coming up with an effective process.


Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com

Developing Your Own Lead Management

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There were a lot of discussions about the importance of lead management, but only a few really touched on how you can develop your own lead management. Though it will never be easy, as long as you have the right guidelines, it would not be long before you can have a dependable system in place.

Where should the responsibility lie?

The responsibility of developing a lead management process does not only rely on the manager. He should be able to encourage sales supervisors to help out too. They are the ones who are always dealing with customers and thus have already understood their behavior. Their sales agents are also the ones who will be managing the lead management software and databases.

What are the processes involved?

A lead management process should cover the following:

Creation of a Database. The very first thing that a lead manager should do is to come up with a database. It will basically hold all important information pertaining to your leads such as their contact numbers, addresses, and perhaps their interests. The list may be derived in different ways. If you have been marketing online, you can get your leads from your opt-in list. For those who go through the traditional methods, the potential clients may come from trade shows, walk-in inquiries, or telephone calls. Some companies may get their list from lead generation firms.

Lead Tracking. Once there are already available leads, a sales agent should then start tracking them. There are different aspects of lead tracking. It is done to invite a client for an appointment. A salesperson will have to talk to the client personally and demonstrate the benefits and features of the product. If the client expresses interests, he will be called again for confirmation. However, not all leads will say yes to an appointment for a variety of reasons. A sales agent may have to track them again just in case there is a new product that may match their interest.

Lead Routing. The leads should be assigned to the right sales agents. Now, to whom the leads should go to will depend on the criteria set up by the company. There are some who would assign them to the best sales agents. There are also others who would train sales agents to handle a specific product. They will then handle leads that would express interest over it. One of the most popular methods of lead assignment is round robin. This means that leads will go to sales agents who have already worked on with the others. It may take a while for companies to know the best strategy, but once you have it, you are assured that it does work.
Lead Scoring. Lead scoring refers to the process of determining the high-valued leads. As mentioned, not all leads will be interested to buy your products now. Others may look for better offers, while there are leads that should not have been part of the list in the first place. They may have been there because of misinterpretation of your opt-in list or advertising materials. Like lead routing, there are different ways on how to score your leads.

Lead Nurturing. It is easy for businesses to promote their new product lines to existing customers or leads. Thus, a lead manager should come up with strategies on how to nurture their leads and establish long-term relationships with them. One of the most popular strategies is drip marketing, including e-mail marketing. This means that businesses will be sending small marketing materials to those that belong to their opt-in list.

You may also want to include a lead management program that allows you to effectively implement the above-mentioned processes.

Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com