This booklet reveals... (and how to fix it) By: Jason Livingston Jason@Local-Search-Pros.com http://local-search-pros.com
The 7 REASONS Why Internet Lead Generation For Small Businesses FAIL Brought to you by: www.local-search-pros.com An important note to all business owners... The internet is a powerful marketing tool. We're going to cover some of the most important aspects of marketing your business online in this report but you must keep in mind that there is no guarantee of your success in these pages. While this report will give you invaluable information regarding how you should be marketing your business, there are far too many factors at play to make any such guarantee. This document is copyrighted and protected by all applicable laws. Reproduction of this document is strictly forbidden unless permission is given by the author prior to reproduction. 2012 Jason Livingston
Lead Generation Failure: Reason #1 No Clear Lead Generation Strategy... Do you have a website? What is it doing for you right now? Is it a catalogue of your products and services or is it the silent salesman that brings customers to your door? Having a website doesn t mean customers will come knocking at your door. What is certain is that they are knocking on someone s door. Just look at these latest statistics: 97% of American internet users use the internet to shop of which 57% characterize their behavior as shop online, purchase offline (NPD Group) 90% of online commercial searches result in offline bricks and mortar purchases (proprietary research / comscore) 82% of local searchers follow up offline via an in-store visit, phone call or purchase (TMP / comscore) 80% of budgets are spent within 50 miles of the home (DMA / proprietary) 74% of internet users perform local searches (Kelsey Group) 73% of online activity is related to local content (Google) 66% of Americans use online local search, like Google local search 61% of local searches result in purchases (TMP / comscore) 54% of Americans have substituted the internet and local search for phone books (comscore networks) 35% of all searches are local (DM News) 25% of internet searches have a purely local, commercial focus (Kelsey-Bizrate) Do you know how many search queries Google handles in a month? October 2011 : 11,863,000,000 July 2010 : 10,461,000,000 August 2009 : 9,088,414,036 The statistics for local search is even more impressive. Google reports that 20% of searches are of a local nature. It grew by 58% from 2008 with more than 15.7 billion local searches in 2008. This will be the trend for the foreseeable future as people are turning to search engines to find local products and services. More and more people are using search engines like Google to find local services and products. When last did you look through the Yellow Pages for a commercial cleaning company, wedding venue, Lasik eye surgery clinic or hydroponic garden systems in your local area? Local search is the fastest growing element of Internet search as more and more people are turning to Google to find instant answers. How often do you hear I just Googled it and they use local search terms such as
Seattle driving schools, Sydney boat hire, Boston wedding venues and Manchester widget makers? Are getting your share of these leads in your market? Are you currently paying for advertising in local directories, Yellow Pages and Google Adwords? Do you know how many direct leads you got through this type of marketing? Do you know what your Return On Investment (ROI) is on this type of broad marketing? These are all strategic marketing questions you should be asking. Why do you have a website in the first place? I guess it is because you want more sales leads. Does your existing site do that and do you know what search phrases or keywords attract them to your site? Lead generation websites should laser focused with VERY CLEAR CALL TO ACTIONS. The following 6 reasons for Lead Generation Failure will provide some pointers on developing an effective online Lead Generation Strategy that will deliver customers waiting for you to phone them right to you email inbox.
Lead Generation Failure: Reason #2 Not Using Free Market Research To Find Long Tail Keywords Did you know that Google will tell you exactly what customers are looking for? It will tell you the exact long tail keyword phrases they type into Google search and how many times it is done per month. As you can see for Fitness Trainer New York it provides us with some pretty useful numbers. A potential 3560 prospects! Could you handle 70 new prospects per month if you just get 2% of those (which is quite achievable). What does this look like for YOUR business? (By the way, we used a phrase match rather than a broad match to get more accurate results, but more on that when we meet.) A longtail keyword is a key term that's more than three words long. Examples would be... Orlando plumbing specialists Family doctor in Chicago
Remodeling companies near Houston Since you're probably a localized business, focus on keywords that use your city name. This way you're guaranteed to find people who are in your area looking for your services. Use this tool to search for keywords that have a good number of searches every month. https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordtoolexternal If you spot anything with more than 400 searches per month, you'd better be bidding on that keyword and creating a lead generation campaign for it. You want them to send you their names and phone numbers and expecting your call. Tip: The reason to use these keywords is simple most businesses aren't. They still get a lot of traffic, but people just don't know any better. They are extremely easy to optimize for, and they are much cheaper than the shorter terms if you're using PPC.
Lead Generation Failure: Reason #3 Failing To Create Laser Focused Lead Generation Campaigns This reason is closely associated to the previous reason. You can t just use a shot gun approach to Internet based marketing. There are too many keywords and too many options. You need to make sure that you attract buyers and not browsers. You don t want people doing research on a specific topic. You want people with their credit cards or checks in hand, ready to buy. Which of the following people would you want to leave their name, email and phone number and waiting for you to call them? Would you rather have people searching for (as an example): Fitness Fitness Trainer New York or the difference between Wedding Wedding venues in Boston These are simple examples but you can see how that applies to YOUR business. In both instances it is the difference between someone looking for information and someone looking for help. It is important to understand why local keywords are different from normal keywords and how to apply it to your business. Stop wasting precious marketing dollars on broad marketing and advertising campaigns with no defined or measurable ROI. Invest in a targeted lead generation campaign that focus on customers that needs your product or service and are looking for the best place to source it from. Bonus Do you know what keywords your competitors are using? Do you want to find out? Our Lead Generation Assessment includes a review of all the competitors bidding in your niche, what they bid on and typically what they pay at no cost to you.
Lead Generation Failure: Reason #4 Using Your Own Website For Lead Generation Business websites are generally information sites with an overview of your products and services, your facilities, existing customers and details on where to get hold of you. It is in most instances an electronic brochure and it is designed to get people to navigate around it. It is probably more suited to the people in reason #3 above that are searching for general information. It is not optimized for lead generation. It doesn t ask the right questions. It doesn t get them to take action. It just gives them more reason to look around, even probably at your competitor s website. Specialist Lead Generation websites are highly targeted to the demographics of the buyers described in reason #3 above. We know from the Google Keyword Research Tool (in reason #2) exactly what they are searching for and you should give them exactly that and then get them to take action. We call it the Call To Action or the Single Sales Objective. That is the main reason why company websites are not ideal vehicles for lead generation for your business. There are too many options and it is easy to surf around. Tip: We use small but highly targeted lead generation websites to get the exact customer that we identified in reasons #2 and #3 to give us their phone numbers and email addresses. We are get them to agree to and expect your phone call. That s what we call a qualified lead or prospect. Don t you agree? Can we show you an example? Give me a call at 615-358-8678
Lead Generation Failure: Reason #5 Not Measuring and Optimizing Their Lead Generation You should be paying for marketing that works. That s obvious. But most small businesses have no idea if their marketing and advertising are living up to expectation. Small businesses don t have the large marketing budgets that the big corporations do and it is crucial that you get the best bang for your buck. Why is it then that small businesses generally have less marketing controls in place to ensure that they get a good Return On Marketing Investment. Small business can learn from large corporations. They test. More specifically they split test or A/B testing. That means they create 2 variations of all their advertising, test them against each other and then keep the best performing and discard the lower performing one. But is doesn t stop there. They create a new ad and test it against the winner to see if it becomes the new winner. And so they optimize their advertising. Once that have ads that drive the right customers to them, they scale. It means they spend more on those winning ads to get more customers. They know they don t risk money because they tested. The return from typical advertising is hard to track for small business. Do you have a tracking mechanism to test the conversion of your advertising spend? Or are you aiming in a general direction, hoping it may hit some of the times. A well designed Online Lead Generation campaign will give you the ability to test on a small scale and split test what works in your market. Once you hit the target consistently you can scale up to drive all the business you can handle.
Lead Generation Failure: Reason #6 Not Starting Lead Generation Campaigns Because It Is Too Hard or Expensive I often hear small business owners say that this Internet stuff is too hard to do and will cost a fortune. But nothing could be further from the truth. It is not that complex and you manage how much you spend on acquiring new leads. You fit it into your current budget and grow it as it starts paying for itself. You can get started for around $10 or $20 per day and test your market for a few days. And it doesn t take long to see the results. You can generate new leads in a matter of days with online lead generation. Setting up lead generation sites are not complex. It just requires a little thinking and some very specific content that will appeal to your market. Tip: Ask your current customers and prospects what keywords they would use to look for your product or service on the Internet and let us help you refine it to get your first highly targeted qualified prospects expecting you to phone them. Your current customers are the best ones to describe what they are looking for and what you provide. See, it is easy.
Lead Generation Failure: Reason #7 Not Hiring A Site From Local Lead Generation Expert Hiring a lead generation website that is specifically suited to your target market is ideal to test (reason #5) how effective Internet lead generation can be for your target market (reason #2) without the high cost of setting up a dedicated site (reason #6). Hiring a site from a local lead generation expert means that you will be up and running in a matter of days. How many customers are you losing per month (reason #2) while you wait for your website to turn into a lead generation site (which is not recommended reason #4) As you can see, there are enough reasons to start by hiring a lead generation website from us today. Let us help you with our 6 Step Lead Generation Plan on one of our specialist websites. By The Way: We also provide a lead generation service where you pay only for performance. That is, you Pay Per Lead. Give us a call on 615-358-8678 if this is more suited to your requirements.
Thank you for taking the time to read through this short report. I'd love to have a chance to talk with you for even just 10 minutes about your current marketing strategy to see if there is any way we can improve it by using the power of the internet. It's possible that by starting with a small lead generation campaign, you could see huge results. So please, give me a call at 615-358-8678 and we can set up a time to meet. Thank you again for reading this report. Yours in business, Jason Livingston