It's interesting... most of the problems I read about here involve putting your lead generation marketing on autopilot... ... Because when you attract quality leads to your site, most of your problems go away. That's why I gathered all of the best posts about lead generation strategies from the most popular marketing message boards and gathered them in this massive checklist of business lead generation ideas -- feel free to use 'em and pass 'em to your colleagues: Social Networking Social media websites are bridges which connect your website with a large audience beyond your site's normal reach... ... So whenever you create a new web page, make sure to submit it to Digg, del.icio.us Reddit, StumbleUpon and NowPublic. If you're aggressive, you might be interested in these 30 largest social bookmarking sites ranked by a combination of inbound links, Google's Page Rank, Alexa Rank, and U.S. traffic data from Compete and Quantcast. If you have extra time, you might promote your site within Yahoo! Groups and MySpace. Blogging The top blogging spots are: - Blogger (Owned by Google) - TypePad - WordPress - MySpace Send your product to bloggers and ask for a review. Search Engine Optimization I suggest investing a lot more time on the title tag of your web page than any other element on the web page. Your visitors search engines bots both like descriptive title meta tags. In order to spread the word about your blog and/or an RSS feed, make sure to submit it to: - Technorati - FeedBurner - Squidoo - Feedboy - Jordo Media - FeedBomb - feeddirectory - FeedFury You might submit your website URL to DMOZ -- it's tough to get featured, but when you do -- it's worth it. By the way, don't pay someone to submit your website to search engines... I find it's often a waste of money. FREE advertising The interenet gives us a growing number of places to submit free classified ads -- I'm not talking about FFAs (i.e. free for all ads) -- that's a scam. I'm talking about no string's attached free advertising opportunities at places like: - Gum Tree - Craig's List - USFreeads Message Boards One of my absolute favorite ways to generate FREE leads in hurry is via message board marketing. At the same time, posting in discussion boards is risky if the audience thinks you're "driving by" just to get a free link to your site. I find the best way to get a link to your site (and not be considered a spammer) is to post some great replies, tips, and/or strategies to a popular message board in your industry -- without any promotion to your site. Then, start to include a "sig file" that links to your site. This simple formula keeps me out of trouble... but best of all, it delivers some high-quality leads to my site in almost as soon as I click the "Post" submit button. The best part about message board marketing is the search engines tend to feature discussion board content in their search results... in fact, it's not unusual to get free search engine referrals from a post you made years ago. The fastest and easiest way to find message boards related to your business is to search for any the following phrases: message board [keyword]
[keyword] forum
[keyword] phpBB <-- phpBB is a popular type of message board software. For example, if I'm looking for message boards related to the biz opp industry, I might search Google for: message board biz op Publicity One fast and easy way to generate a quick jolt of FREE media exposure is to survey your customers (or website visitors) and publicize your results. You want to release a well-written media release to any of these FREE publicity outlets: - PRFree.com - PressMethod.com - PRWeb - Press-World And to track your FREE media exposure, check out CyberAlert. Send a quick media release to your local newspaper -- they're often desperate to fill pages with relevant content. Create a "Press" webpage on your site and make it easy for journalists to track down your press releases, logos, and banners. Viral One fast and easy way to jumpstart your viral marketing efforts is to create an online video tutorial and post 'em to: - YouTube (Now owned by Google) - Google Video - MetaCafe Today's technology makes it easy to create your own online tutorials... for PC users, the best solution is available at Camtasia (and for Mac users I recommend SnapZPro). If you're looking to display your videos on your website, Jeroen Wijering offers an amazing open source (and free) FREE Flash Video Player... and here's nifty wizard to help configure your online video. Article Marketing Writing articles is a great, great way to generate leads for your business. And the good news is writing articles is easier than you might think. There are many angles you can take to create new articles, but my absolute favorite way to get your first article written and distributed is to ask your prospects to help you write it... ... Here's what to do -- gather your prospects most frequently-asked questions and answer them. Yep, it's that simple. Next, find someone who is good at catching mistakes and edit your article so it's ready to publish. Finally, submit your content to the following article distribution services: The Article Post Robot is a nifty site that lists over 500 article submit portals -- all ranked by Page Rank. Among the highest ranked sites are: - SlashDot (geek news) - Articles Factory - About.com - isnare - SelfGrowth.com - Buzzle - Business Know-How - ExcellentGuide - ArticleBiz - Content-Articles.com] - SearchGuild - WebProNews - Advisor.com - All Freelance Work - ArticleCity.com - articleclick - Article Dashboard Directory - Ezine @articles - PowerHomeBiz.com By the way, if you're writing a technical article, you might consider calling it a "Whitepaper" instead of an "article." Make it easy for your prospects to ask you questions and answer them -- capture email addresses so you can alert them, too. I invest a lot of time and effort answering questions at my Stump Markus webpage. Add an external link within a Wikipediaentry. Affiliate Marketing Set up either your own affiliate program or take advantage of 3rd-party affiliate setups like: - e-Junkie - SaleFlurry.com - PayDotCom - ClickBank (ebooks) - Payloadz - Google Pay Per Action (beta) - Commission Junction - AzoogleAds Pay Per Click Pay per click advertising is my absolute favorite way to generate new leads. And whether it's fair or not, Google Adwords is the current king of the hill... I'd start with them, and then expand out to similar services like Yahoo!, Microsoft adCenter, and AdBrite Often times, you can track down promotion codes to get free advertising credits... I've personally redeemed a $200.00 voucher with Microsoft adCenter. The fastest and easiest way to track down the latest promo codes is to visit these unique message boards: - Google Adwords - Microsoft adCenter - Yahoo Search Marketing Miscellaneous Submit your website to FREE, search-engine-friendly directories. An excellent portal is found at Info Vilesilencer. Add a Tell A Friend button to your site for FREE, self-producing leads to your site. Print your Website URL on everything -- from business cards to letterhead to even the sig file in your emails. You can even print up cheap hats at CafePress -- it's a supercheap way to promote your site. Consider donating to a charity -- most reward you with a link back to your site. Add your website URL to your online profiles (for example, your eBay profile and your message board profiles). If you liked this my business-building checklist above -- let me know with a small donation, and I'll send you back more business-building ideas in a flash at: http://www.marketing-ideas.org/Online-Reports
marketingjunkie I am new at this and I found your post had great information. Now I will put more time in trying to put it to work a little at a time. thank you
This was written back in 2007 and is still some great information about how to market effectively - a great article. I also wanted to add that people can use insurancefiles.com to buy/sell insurance leads. Thanks again @marketingjunkie