Internet Marketing Series: Building Lead Lists

Building leads on your business is an important part of Internet Marketing, and a key for the success of your business. By leads, we mean prospected visitors who will accept your marketing message, and join you in some way. For example subscribing to your RSS / newsletter / updates, buying your products (hopefully) etc. Hence those people who not only visit your site, but also do something about it. Leads are what eventually bring in sales. Hence it is extremely important that you build a list of all your prospected leads, whether they come through your website or merely through your business card etc.

In this post, we continue our Internet Marketing Series, Earlier, we discussed how to generate traffic to your business website / blog. This post will focus how you can build and organize your list of leads.

Organization…

…is the first step you need to take. You need a way to organize your leads, no matter how you are generating them. It is the key to effective marketing. You can do your lead organization in a variety of ways. You can use a good organizational tool, such as Microsoft’s Outlook, or Google’s Gmail Contact Manager. For simplicity, you can even use a spreadsheet program, like MS Excel. All you need is a way to organize your leads and include some important pieces of information.

Create a Webform

Once you have an organizational system in place, it is time to actually capture some leads. The best way to do this is by using webforms. A webform is usually an HTML form that asks user for his name, email and other necessary information. This is how you will start getting some leads.

You either consult a webmaster to create a form for you, or you can use a free webform service. EmailMeForm is a great website that I have used as well. You can also use Wufoo.

Keep in mind that your form should be clearly accessible. Creating a Contact Us page and putting a form on it is a good idea. But be sure hat visitors can easily see the contact button. And your form should be ‘above the fold’ as well, meaning it should be clearly visible and at the top.

Try to keep a minimal number of fields in your form. Usually, Name, Email and Message fields are sufficient. Do NOT push for unnecessary details like phone number, home address etc. They usually are discouraging to the reader.

Webforms can be used for event registration, newsletter sign-ups, surveys / polls, comments / suggestions etc. Information from webforms can be imported into your database. You can put forms in different places, like your Facebook fan page, blog etc.

Offer a reward!

Before filling out a form, a visitor usually asks himself this: “Why Though“? And you must answer this question beforehand. You need to offer incentives to those who fill out your form. These incentives can be anything from a free e-book, an exclusive video or a free consultation. But it must be of value to your target audience.

Filling out a very simple form in exchange for a reward is quite appealing. Not only will it encourage the ones already interested in your business, it will also motivate new visitors to your sites, hence increasing your leads.

Set up a promotional program

Promotional programs are a great way of increasing your leads. Getting others to promote your business gives you a greater exposure. And when others promote your business, you gain credibility as well.

Your referral program must make referring worthwhile for the user. Offer incentives as we discussed above. A lot of companies offer a commission based on each referral a visitor makes. You can dish out a little money as well. You could also offer other special offers. It’s all up to you.

These promotional programs will motivate users to promote and spread your business far out of your own reach! You will marvel at how quick your lists are growing!

These few steps should hopefully get your business going. There are a couple more posts to come in this series discussing Contact Management and Email Marketing. Until then, stay tuned! And good day 🙂