How To Generate Sales Leads-21 Lead Generation Ideas You Can Execute Today

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Generate Sales Leads Online There’s a lot of misconception and controversy about list building and lead generation. If you’re not a guru and don’t have an access to one-then you can easily get confused about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to generating sales leads online.

I would like to clear up all the fallacy and give you a list of ideas you can execute to generate targeted leads (free and paid) ASAP.

What I share in this post is not a concrete and absolute truth. I can only speak about my own experience as an internet marketer. If I say that something doesn’t work-it means it didn’t work for me.

On the other hand, if I say that something does work-don’t assume that it will work for you 100%. This post is only to get your head moving in the direction of the list building truth. You should test what works before you do anything else.

1. Streaming Video Syndication

Anyone who’s hooked to an internet connection, even if he lives in Zambia or Uganda, knows what YouTube is. Video sharing networks are a fantastic place to generate sales leads.

Videos can be easily embedded into your website, shared on Twitter, Facebook and other Social Networks and have a much higher perceived value then written text.

Many Internet Marketing experts say that streaming video is the future and I say that their hunch is just. Video allows you to connect with your clients even before they meet you, email you or talk with you on the phone.

After watching only one clip featuring you-they feel instant empathy towards you which multiplies your chances of closing the deal on the backend.

2. Article Marketing

Contrary to a huge misconception Article Marketing isn’t dead.

Amount of sales leads you generate using Article Marketing depends on:

How Good Is Your Headline
Quality Of Your Articles
Author Bio Box Click Trough Rates
Keyword Research

Article Marketing is still one of the most popular ways of lead generation online. The reason it’s still one of most notorious lead generation approaches is because it’s free and because it works. It works for me, it works for many of my colleagues and it should work for you too (if you don’t screw it up).

3. Blogging

Blogging is my personal favorite lead generation strategy of all times. I find blogging fun, rewarding and profitable but it’s a lot harder than it looks.

Behind every great blog there’s a great marketer. Blogging is much harder than any other lead generation method because it takes much more then writing quality articles couple of times a week.

Don’t be scared though, because with hard work comes great pleasure and huge success!

Blogging may very well be the only lead generation strategy you’ll ever need (e.g: John Chow, ProBlogger, CopyBlogger). Blogging can be much more than a lead generation strategy-it can and should become a separate income stream for you and your business.

Powerful and Influential blog is not a chore-it’s an asset. The difference between a blog and a squeeze page is that a squeeze page on and of itself isn’t worth anything while blog does.

Through a blog you can setup numerous lead generation sources and utilize them all at once-without spending a fortune on paid traffic.

Besides, blogging is so popular now that every major corporation started one. Isn’t about time you catch up?

4. Joint Ventures

Joint Venture is a mutually beneficial agreement that takes place between two parties.

For instance, if you have a product but don’t have a big list, you can approach a person with a list and offer a JV in a form of giving away 50% commission off every sale to be made.

Joint Ventures are actually the number one strategy the gurus use to do big launches. They approach their friends and colleagues 2-3 weeks prior to launch and personally invite them to do a promotion.

The next thing you know, every marketer on the planet talks about the launch and it’s a success.

If you’re just starting out, you probably don’t have a big list or a product (or both) so you might think that JVs are not for you. This is another misconception.

Joint Ventures aren’t only done on product-list-commission basis. JVs can take many forms: instead of offering a commission you can offer a service or something of value to that particular party.

5. Ad Swaps

An advertisement swap or ad swap is simply an arrangement where you agree to put up someone else’s ad on your site or email newsletter in exchange for them doing the same.

This is a perfect strategy for startupreneurs with small lists, because it’s all about equality. You can easily find list owners with similar list sizes and exchange promotions.

Requirements for a successful Ad Swap:

High Converting Ad Copy. Test your Ad Copy with your own list or paid traffic to develop the highest converting email template you can use to maximize the results of each Ad Swap.
Equal Traffic And Exposure. It’s important to make sure list sizes of both parties are equal or similar in size because otherwise the exchange can’t be fair.
High Relevancy. Ad Swaps should be done with list owners who are involved in similar or relevant niches.

6. Forum Marketing

Forums are another great place to generate leads, build authority and generate traffic.

Forums can be used not only to build a list but also for building profitable relationships with other business owners which can lead to Ad Swaps, Joint Ventures and other profitable activities.

Not all forums were made equal. Choose carefully-some of them aren’t worth your time. Use these criteria to hand-pick your favorites:

Size-forum needs to be big. A minimum of 2000 active members online at all times. If you can’t find a forum this big, go for the next big thing or start your own forum.
Activity-another important quality for a forum to serve a good lead generation tool. If a forum isn’t active-it’s the same as dead.
Moderation-forum should be strictly moderated by an administrator to keep it clean of SPAM and useless entries. That way the content stays fresh and has a higher perceived value by the crowd.

Use your signature file to drive traffic to your capture page, where you offer some incentive for signing up. Provide quality content, helpful answers and link to your blog once in a while with a helpful article that is related to the discussed topic. Don’t SPAM!

Your forum profile is extremely important. Fill in all the necessary information and add as much descriptive details as possible. Post links to your social profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc and don’t forget to leave a link back to your blog for the curious once.

Did I mention that you shouldn’t SPAM?

7. Social Media

It’s no secret that Social Media is on the rise. Twitter is spreading faster than news about the swine flu. Facebook has grown twice the size of MySpace and has no intention to stop.

Instead of writing another 1226 word article on what to do and where to go, here’s a list of small, easy to digest posts with concrete tips on how to generate leads using Social Media:

Social Media Marketing Guide | How To Use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and MySpace to Grow Your Internet Marketing Business

Twitter Marketing Resource Cheat Sheet

Public Speaking, Writing and Social Media Expert Mastermind Interview | Free Download

TweetLater No More. Meet SocialOomph

Boost Productivity on Twitter and Facebook

Top 65 People To Follow On Twitter If You’re An Internet Marketer

10 Ways Twitter Improved My Business In 2009

8. Guest Blogging

Guest Blogging is arguably the best way to generate new leads. By guest blogging on other blogs that are equal or greater in size you increase your marketing reach tremendously.

Guest blogging traffic is more likely to subscribe because these people conditioned to trust you more than a regular visitor who is defensive about your marketing.

9. Reciprocal Link Building

Reciprocal link building is similar to Ad Swaps only instead of email newsletter the parties exchange links on their site.

Party A links to Party B and Party B links to Party A. That way both parties receive an incoming link and traffic which they can convert into leads.

This strategy is extremely popular amongst bloggers, however it is also useful for Thank You and Download pages.

10. Banner Ads

In his book “Purple Cow” famous Marketer and Author Seth Godin says that banner ads aren’t effective. On the other hand, Internet Marketing Guru Frank Kern believes in the total opposite.

My experience proves that banner ads aren’t as effective as we want them to be but they generate leads never the less-otherwise you wouldn’t see so many of them …everywhere!

Banner ads are also effective (and cheap) because they are placed outside the content area of the website. Usually it’s either the sidebar or header-either way, no matter where the visitor lands-he can see them and there’s a chance he’ll click on them.

If you’re going to use banners (chances are that you are already), make sure to set up some kind of tracking software that will help you in identifying which banners work best, where’s the highest click through rate and how many leads were generated of each specific unit.

11. PPC For Search

Pay Per Click is known to be the fastest way for driving targeted traffic to a page if you have the money to invest.

PPC has evolved far beyond Google, Yahoo and MSN. Today you can buy PPC ads on Facebook, as well as drive paid traffic to your YouTube videos.

I am not an expert in paid traffic, frankly, because I have never paid for traffic-I used SEO to get IgorHelpsYouSucceed on the map. Partially because I didn’t have the money and partially because I refused to believe that paying for traffic is the way to go.

My perception shifted since then. I believe that PPC is the way to go. We see all the major companies prove it over and over again. Even Google, which is the most visited site in the world, uses PPC to advertise Chrome and other related products.

Many advertisers are afraid of PPC because of the famous Google Slap. I say, don’t listen to those idiots because they don’t know how to advertise with Google.

Just like any other advertising network, Google has a set of strict rules and guidelines. If you’re getting slapped by Google it means that you’re breaking the rules and Google is simply punishing you for being stupid.

Bottom line is-paid traffic works and it doesn’t cost as much as people lead you to believe.

12. PPC For Content

Basically it is the same as Google Adwords or Yahoo Paid Search only your ads are displayed on relevant Google publishers’ pages instead of the SERPs.

It’s hard to say which source of paid traffic is more effective, but if you’re not using both-you’re definitely leaving leads on the table.

13. Search Engine Optimization-SEO

Search Engine Optimization-the silver bullet 99% of internet marketers are after. They used to say that if you’re on page one of Google for your keyword-you’re destined to make tons of sales.

It sounds logical, because when you think about it: a prospect searches for something and finds you. Your social proof and authority rises and now it’s a matter of time before you close the sale.

That would be true if people were stupid, but since people are evolving beings, now it’s not enough to dominate the SERPs, it’s also important to match that domination with a compelling copy, structure and marketing.

I used to work with a client that would generate 150 unique visitors a day to his travel website using only SEO. He had position #4 for a related term and thought he was the king.

His sales stats showed him he was wrong. He hadn’t any. Why?

His website was bright and shiny, slick design and he even had a call to action. However he failed to generate the much needed empathy and connection with his visitors which resulted in astonishing 80% bounce rate and visitor to lead conversion of 0.6%.

14. Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is a way for users to store their favorite websites or bookmark them online for easy reference.

You can generate a fair amount of leads using this strategy. If your content makes it to the front page of a major social bookmaking website such as Digg, Delicious, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc you will get s**t load of visitors in a matter of hours.

Social Bookmarking is also used for link building purposes to improve SEO rankings, but don’t confuse it for a useless method of link submission. You can get traffic even if you don’t get on the first page. It’s all about how good is your content and how many people you can get to support you.

Social Bookmarking is like a huge traffic getting snow ball on a top of a hill. It doesn’t present much danger if it’s motionless, but if you get couple of people and push to over the edge, it will grow in size and pick up speed until it hits something.

If you want your snow ball to roll down the hill and pick up speed, the first step is to make the snow ball attractive and worth pushing down. Focus on the content first, and then assemble a social bookmarking support group to help you push it down the traffic getting hill.

Shorten URLs and Drive More Traffic With StumbleUpon

New Stumbleupon: Simpler, Searchable and More Social

10 Best Social Bookmarking Plugins For Your WordPress Blog

15. Rent-a-List

Your list is small, you don’t know SEO and you’re afraid of approaching PPC. Why not Rent-a-list?

There are list brokers that will rent you a list you can market to. I have never used this strategy myself, but there are good responses about it on the forums, so I thought you’d like to know.

16. Webinars

Webinars are great for lead generation purposes because they have a higher perceived value then a PDF report or an audio recording.

For me, webinars proved to convert as high as 50% listener-to-sale, which is outstanding.

I believe it happens because on a webinar you share a lot of information and you do it in “person”. It’s happening live whether the prospects visits or not and it elevates your social status by showing your prospects that they are not alone-there are more people who think you’re cool too!

17. Podcasting

Podcasting is similar to online video syndication only it’s in an audio format and there are different networks of syndication for them.

Podcasting is great for doing interviews with experts, getting them to spill useful information for your readers in exchange for exposure opportunity.

You can also say that it is similar to webinars only it’s recorded and posted later as a listenable audio or a downloadable file.

Examples Of Podcast I’ve Done:

Public Speaking, Writing and Social Media Expert Mastermind Interview | Free Download

Valerie Dawson(The Dawson Method) On How To Use The Law Of Attraction In Business

Get Free Google Adwords Training Now!

18. Safelists

Although the name sounds safe, Safelists should be avoided, because they are far from being a safe lead generation strategy.

The idea behind a Safelist is getting people to join the Safelist and refer other people so the Safelist grows into one huge list of people who are interested in promoting things to each other.

Only sometimes things get out of hand and a lawyer receives your offer, tells you he did not subscribe and sues you.

DON’T USE SAFELISTS, DO DRUGS INSTEAD!

19. Traffic Exchanges

Traffic Exchange is a network of website owners who surf each other sites to increase traffic.

They don’t work anymore …move on.

20. Software and Plugins

Developing a piece of software or a plugin that’s useful is also proven to generate leads (and donations) effectively.

Many WordPress Designers use plugins as a way of attracting visitors to their websites, make sales and get donations.

To become a viral explosion, your software has to solve a major problem your prospects have. Otherwise it’s just a useless piece of code no one gives a damn about.

21. Press Releases

Press Releases are effective in getting you on top of the search engines quickly for a short period of time. They are used to announce a release of a new product or other breaking news.

I am not an expert on Press Releases because I’ve never written one in my life, but you can visit John Cow, he knows Press Releasing inside and out.

What Do I Do Now?

After reading through my first 3,126 words post, you should take some time to digest this information and first thing tomorrow-implement at least 3 of the strategies mentioned above!

Key is to take action. Feed your stallions, shoot the ponies! Find out what works and capitalize on it! And then come back and leave a comment to let me know I didn’t write this huge ass post for nothing!

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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Mitch December 19, 2009 at 06:28

Nicely listed. I do the social bookmarking thing for my blogs, though I use SEO for my websites. I think it’s starting to generate more interest and visits; not depressed about that at all.
Mitch´s last blog ..Survey Says…

2 Igor Kheifets December 19, 2009 at 16:55: Thanks Mitch,
I put a lot of thought into that one, because
there’s too much controversy about list building.

Igor

3 Steven December 19, 2009 at 07:44

Hey Igor
This is a very big list of some great ways to generate traffic and to build your list. I have never heard of renting a list before that one can market too. That sounds like something that might get a good response. I might look into that one.
Thanks
Steve
Steven´s last blog ..The Power Of Website Optimizer

4 Igor Kheifets December 19, 2009 at 16:54: You’re welcome Steve,
I heard about it for the first time in my life
from Frank Kern, since then I continuously looking
for list brokers.

Igor

5 Money management December 19, 2009 at 11:32

All I can say is WOW!! You have stunned me with the amount a valuable reading here

6 Mathdelane December 22, 2009 at 21:20

Too many “to do” lists. Too little time. But better than nothing because these serves as guidelines. Good stuff!
Mathdelane´s last blog ..Join Software Critics’ $1,500US New Year Giveaway

7 Igor Kheifets December 23, 2009 at 00:01: Mathdelane, you don’t have to try everything, and
quite frankly you shouldn’t. Choose your favorite 5 and
try them out. See what works and stick with it.

Igor

8 forex robot December 24, 2009 at 19:39

Thanks for the great post. I have bookmarked it and will return for new posts.

9 Igor Kheifets December 24, 2009 at 23:14: You’re welcome Forex Robot,

Next time try choosing a real name, because
I won’t allow you anymore comments like that…

Igor

10 Eddie Prasauckas January 4, 2010 at 19:49

Great points..There are many ways that you use to generate leads.For me, the best lead you can have is one YOU generate.
Eddie Prasauckas´s last blog ..Search Engine Marketing Consultants

11 Dan January 12, 2010 at 17:04

Hey Igor under social media it looks like all the links are broken! I wanted to visit and read them all but couldn’t can you help me out?

12 Igor Kheifets January 12, 2010 at 19:50: I have made the necessary changes Dan, thanks for noticing!

Igor

13 wayn March 2, 2010 at 03:07

Great list.We are already using some of these and it helps a lot in generating and improving traffic in our site.

14 Lawrence March 11, 2010 at 03:28

Igor you rock!!!

I am an intenet marketing selling man, and have been looking for months for an organized list like this that crystalized what was in my head! As you mentioned, the key is to take action! Any action!!!All you sales folk remember to keep it simple, and do it now!!! Thanks for the blue print, keep sharing brutha!!!

15 Robert Brauer June 3, 2010 at 21:52

Very good post! I love this website, it has really helped me improve my business and my life. Thank you Igor!!!
Robert Brauer´s last blog ..Are You Making These 3 Mistakes With Your Sales Manager Training?

16 Sales Consultant July 20, 2010 at 21:45

IGOR, you my friend are awesome!!

17 Kaushal July 28, 2010 at 10:33

Very nice article IGOR. I enjoyed reading it. The tips are excellent and I will use it for my lead generating process.
Kaushal´s last blog ..Sales &amp Marketing Best Practices for IT companies