1. A Modern Marketing SeriesThe Future of Lead Generation

2. AUTHOR PAGE: Mark VallesFollow him on Twitter @growthplatformMark Valles is a Sales Acceleration Expert with infusion-4, he is focused on helping small businesss rapidly acquire new customers and grow revenue. Mark has helped many small businesss transform their sales process. His approach emphasizes being process driven in order to achieve remarkable results. This is accomplished with tools, best in class software, and best practices. Small businesss are under constant pressure to increase cash flow. They need to adopt modern sales and marketing practices in order to grow efficiently, this eGuide should give you a good framework - Mark Valles 3. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Get Noticed..4Stay Connected......8 Sell More.....11 TOMA ...14 Why should you read this? You will learn best practices, tips, new ideas, and get free tools to immediately accelerate your lead generation efforts. Be sure to click each one of the links they have some awesome surprises that are useful tools to generate more leads.If you would like a quick and free way to see how your website stacks up and some ways to make it better. Click Web Test 4. CHAPTER 1: Get NoticedIn order for any small business to --> transform and properly engage their prospects and customers, they need to completely understand their business drivers inside and out. A focus of attracting not just any kind of traffic to your site, but the right kind of traffic. There are ways that are readily available to help you win, if properly and consistently done. Blogging and social media are somewhat digital versions of cold calling. This is where most small businesss fall short or have attempted blogging in the past and stopped due to lack of results. Here, we will highlight some of the most important ways to Get Noticed so you can move the prospect to the next phase Staying Connected // Page 4 5. Some of the most important ways to help your lead generation are:Blogging - Blogging is a great way to get prospects to notice you and drive interest. Do not make the most common mistake and put out a blog every now and then and assume it will get results. Simply pushing out blogging content will get you no where! The biggest reason most people do not blog is they have no clue what to blog about. They procrastinate and stop any momentum. At first, just blog! Get a handful of posts out there. A tool to help you get blogging ideas and helps you generate both people and search engine friendly blogs blog idea generator. It takes time so give it 90-120 days and you will see results. Social Media Sharing engaging content and valuable information on your social channels while putting a human element by making it fun will get you the best results. Examples are sharing jazzy videos, posting eye-popping images, and add personality. Make sure you respond to peoples comments and comment on others posts. Do not try and promote yourself! That is a way to distract and not attract a following. You must understand the connection between lead generation and social media. Use social media to extend your reach of possible customers. In other words, get the word out in a massive way. Interact and choose the social networks where your audience is most likely involved. See how much blogging could potentially impact your topline. Try -->> blogging revenue calculator// Page 5 6. Secret Additions While this eGuide is primarily focused on modern online techniques, lead generation requires you to examine each step taken, methods used, and map it all together to the buyer stages from being a suspect to becoming a customer. It helps you better understand how to get noticed by your prospects so they begin to see your hand raised amongst the crowd, staying connected to them with top of mind awareness (TOMA) so you will be in a position to get to them first, sell more by focusing on the small things that others choose not to do or dont know how to do. These secret additions acknowledges that marketing doesnt just happen, you do it. You do it using tools and applications that help you create and deliver actionable information that will appeal to precisely the right people (your audience or niche) in the right places (channels) at just the right times (buyer stages). These are additions and not a replacement for traditional lead generation activities such as cold calling, networking, etc. They all work hand in hand.// Page 6 7. Winning new business and growing revenue goes way beyond an occasional cold calling campaign or doing a lunch and learn only when business is needed. You must implement best practices to enable sales and for marketing to be able to show exactly how its contribution is adding to your growth. I speak to far too many small business owners who purchase leads, hire lead generation companies, buy online marketing toolkits, etc. but cannot measure their marketing. If you spent time in this one area alone, it can be a world of difference. The lifeblood of any effective lead generation program is highly dependent on all the forces and efforts working in sync. You cannot look at your numbers and wonder why they arent growing if you arent willing to do what it takes. All Cylinders, Full Throttle!Inquiry Stage// Page 7Lead StageBetween 40-70% of potential sales often come from early-stage leads that were initially lost, discarded, or ignored. Source: Marketing Sherpa, 2013Sales Ready Lead 8. CHAPTER 2: Stay ConnectedYouve got prospects, the next step is to convert them into leads by getting their contact information. At the very least, youll need their email address. Their contact information is the most valuable currency. In order for your prospects to offer up that currency willingly, you need to offer them something in return. That payment comes in the form of content, eBooks, whitepapers, infographics, or tip sheets -whatever information would be interesting to your target audience. It should carry enough value for them to give you their contact details. // Page 8 9. Today, there are more people accessing the internet and engaging with information to window shop, buy, and sell from their mobile device of choice. Businesses that choose to ignore this trend will be faced with prospects accessing their website or content and buyers abandoning their efforts out of frustration because it isnt accessible. Just because you dont sell online doesnt mean you shouldnt be thinking about this area either. Furthermore, business owners will have capabilities to access key information from their mobile device to make real time business decisions that impact revenue. Small business sales and marketing automation software is now affordably available. Solutions range from firms which serve enterprises to start-ups like Agile CRM who cater to small business. Sales and Marketing for small business is about both inbound and having an outbound approach.// Page 9Having your website, content, landingpages, and reporting functionality accessible from ANY mobile device so you can make faster decisions that affect the bottom line should be considered when evaluating a solutionSustained Growth 10. Some of the most important tools for converting prospects into leads are: Calls-to-Action - Calls-to-action are buttons or links that encourage your prospects to take action, like Download a Whitepaper or Get Updates. Avoid call-to-actions that are dull like Submit. They do not draw attention and do not give the prospect a compelling reason to take action. Make sure the buttons contrast the colors on the page. You want them to stand out and cause the prospect to immediately take notice. If you dont have good call-toactions, you wont generate any leads. Landing Pages - When a website visitor clicks on a call-toaction, they should then be sent to a landing page. A landing page is where the offer in the call-to-action is fulfilled, and where the prospect inputs the information that you can use to begin a conversation with them. Try and use landing pages to grow your social media channels. For example, instead of having a visitor fill out your form, have a Twitter-Follow-To-Download option. This is very effective at growing your social channels. You should have a landing page for every product or service you have in your line card. Far too many small businesss do not utilize this method. Reporting - Keep track of the leads you're converting in a marketing database. This should track where your leads are coming -- be it through email, a landing page, social media, or otherwise that way, you can optimize your future interactions to more effectively convert an inquiry to a lead. This should be a place where you can quickly take the pulse of your business in real time. If you spot anything unusually high or low, take action right on the spot. Being able to make those decisions will give you a healthier bottom line. // Page 10 11. CHAPTER 3: Sell MoreYoure on the right track. Youre getting noticed and attracting prospects. You are reaching out to them by phone to qualify their readiness to purchase. But now you need to transform those leads into customers. How can you most effectively accomplish this task? Certain marketing tools can help at stage. Lets go take a look at a few of those tools.// Page 11 12. Some good tools for keeping TOMA include:Lead Nurturing - What do you do if a visitor clicks on your call to action, fills out a landing page, or downloads your whitepaper, but still isnt ready to become a customer? A series of emails focused on useful, relevant information can build trust with a prospect and guide them through the buyers journey. You want to include variations such as drip marketing campaigns for your prospects that need a more long term nurturing, use birthday emails, and accelerator campaigns for your hot prospects. The advances in technology here alone with triggers, workflows, etc. can have an immediate impact. In fact, it can beTransformational Click POWER ON// Page 12 13. Sales & Marketing Automation Using software that can help you automate some of the processes discussed in this eGuide is highly desirable. You want to make sure the solution you choose has a robust email marketing solution and is easy to use. There are some providers that are bloated with a bunch of features you will never use. I encourage anybody looking to enhance their lead generation to evaluate this option. Measurable - How do you know which marketing efforts are bringing in the best leads? Is your process effectively converting those best leads into customers? You need to see which of your efforts are working and which efforts are not. For example, you should be able to track how many leads came in from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all your other social sites. You can determine how effective your landing pages, PPC, or mailers are performing. Bottom line, you need something in place that measures all your sales and marketing activities. It can eat, no CHOMP at your cash flow if you are not doing it and you wont have the information to make revenue impacting decisions to either stop investing in non-performing activities or double down on the ones that are seeing good results. // Page 13 14. CHAPTER 4: TOMA (Top Of Mind Awareness)I wanted to end with a brief discussion on TOMA. If we put together blogging, social media, lead nurturing, cold calling, direct mail, etc. It comes down to one thing. Top of Mind Awareness. In fact, Forrester Research did a study on this and found that if you are not touching your prospects and customers at least 9 times a year, they will forget about you. In other words, if you dont call them, send them a Christmas card, send them emails, invitations to events for a total of 9 timesyou are out of mind! // Page 14 15. Ways to keep TOMA include: Social Media - Using various social platforms such as Twitter and Facebook gives you the opportunity to provide real-time customer service, reach more potential clients, and grow your list. Newsletters The proper use of newsletters to keep your current clients up to date about recent news, events, and offerings will allow you to stay top of mind and could also be a great way to announce promotions to cross-sell other products and services. Remember, use links and landing pages. Email Marketing Make sure you send your customers and prospects an occasional email. Depending on the situation it should be at least once a month. Your newsletter alone wont get the job done. Of course there are ways to automate this but if you dont have such a system its highly imperative that you reach out to both customers and prospects. There are many low-cost solutions out there to help you do this. // Page 15 16. Receive a Free Lead Generation Assessment Our mission is to help small businesss grow and compete regardless of size. Thats why we are giving away 100 Free Lead Generation Assessments to show you how to optimize your lead generation. So hurry and claim yours now, theyre going to go fast! Get Free Assessment >>Enjoy? Share the fun!Share on Facebook