The Complete Guide to the Lead Generation Process

The lead generation process is powerful virtuous circle with 5 components, each supporting the one that follows.

The fifth segment of the circle provides valuable information that greatly improves the results obtained in the next campaign (i.e. virtuous in nature). The 5 components are...

1. Set objectives
2. Get visitors
3. Convert to leads
4. Follow up
5. Analyse and report

This diagram shows where each of these components fits, and how they work together. Note how component 5 flows back into component one, providing useful information to the next lead generation campaign.

Each component has a specific job to do. In the rest of this article we'll take a quick look at how each of them works.

1. Set Objectives:

The objective of any lead generation campaign is to generate a certain amount of revenue. For example, I might invest £500 in lead generation and aim to make £2,000 in gross sales (400% return on investment).

The main metrics that make up your campaign objectives are...

• Campaign budget
• Target ROI (return on investment) expressed as a percentage
• Number of leads needed to achieve target ROI

If you've run lead generation campaigns previously, you can use the results from step 5 to provide some of the ratios you'll need to work out the number of leads required to reach your target for the current campaign.

2. Get visitors

Use online and offline methods to attract people to your lead generation landing page. The following sources can be used to provide visitors to the campaign...

• Offline advertising
• Direct mail
• Email sent to existing clients
• Email sent to a purchased list
• Twitter - click and see how
• Pay per click (PPC) advertising and search engine marketing (SEM)
• Search engine optimisation (SEO)
• Forum posts (via the signature)
• Press releases
• Article marketing
• Newspaper and online classified sites
• Directories
• Online and offline business networking (e.g. LinkedIn, BNI, BRX)
• Your own, your company's, and 3rd party Blogs
• Social bookmarking sites (e.g. Delicious, Stumble Upon)
• Create and promote a Squidoo lens
• Use an SEO virtuous circle

As you can see, there are a wealth of free and paid options open to you. In fact, there are many more ways to send visitors to your site than I can possibly include in this article. As always, Google is your friend (as is Bing and Yahoo search).

The teaser ads used during this stage have one job to do. They have to persuade people to visit your landing page (see next section).

They must not try to sell the idea of becoming a lead, or buying your product (a common mistake). These teaser ads should also be planned in conjunction with your landing page and the follow up (i.e. sales) conversation.

Everything has to makes sense to the lead, and support the next stage of the process.

3. Convert to leads

This stage is what most people tend to think of as lead generation. It involves a landing page specifically designed to convert a visitor into a lead. Click the link if you're asking yourself what is a lead?

The biggest mistake most people make is to try and sell the product. That's online selling, not lead generation. The job of the landing page isn't to sell the product. It's to sell the value of...

• A phone call
• An appointment
• More information

And that's all it has to do. Stick to that objective, and you'll find your lead generation delivers more leads. It's also worth taking a quick look at the approach outlined in this article (very powerful).

4. Follow up

Once a lead has been generated, it should be followed up within 24 hours (unless the lead specifies otherwise). The sooner you do it, the warmer the lead will be.

If your landing page sells people on the idea of requesting more information, deliver it digitally so it can arrive instantly. You should do this even if you also post the information.

Why? Because the process of becoming a lead is something most of us do on the spur of the moment. The lead generator needs to get in touch as soon as possible and strike while the iron is hot.

It's worth noting that the follow up conversation ought to meet these criteria...

• It picks up where the landing page left off
• It's designed in conjunction with the landing page so it makes sense (and is powerful)
• The person following up must have something useful to offer (i.e. a strong benefit even if the lead doesn't buy)
• The fulfilment material should prepare the way for the follow up call
• It's part of an overall strategy designed to prepare the lead to close
• Don't run lead generation in isolation from, and without incorporating the needs of the sales team

5. Analyse and report

What do successful lead generators do that unsuccessful ones don't? They test and measure absolutely everything. This is much easier than it used to be, thanks to the web's ability to track everything automatically.

This article explains how to use and work out simple direct response measures. It's designed for absolute beginners, and will get you started. This one goes into more detail.

The metrics you produce during this final stage deliver valuable data that can inform the targets and budgets of your next campaign. And the data gleaned from the tests you run can be used to produce ever more powerful ads that send you more visitors per dollar invested, and improve your lead conversion rates.

Think of it as a virtuous circle that feeds back into itself. It's very much a 'pull yourself up by your bootlaces' approach to marketing.

Google’s New Algorithms Technology – Latest 2010 / 2011 Overview

Latest 2010 / 2011 Overview

Hey To all- Here is Google New Algorithm 2011……Big changes in Search Engine Optimization.

Google’s co-founder Larry Page focused on developing the “perfect search engine,” an algorithm that would understand what you mean when you are typing a search term and the search engine will give you the exact results that you were looking for.In our last count, we can happily reveal that there were more than 120 different factors that effect the natural rankings by Google’s latest algorithm. The latest algorithm was updated to penalise websites that use forums with negative feedback to boost their rankings.

Google’s New Algorithm 2010 / 2011 Revealed
Many SEO Gurus have attempted to give a rough outline of what the Google algorithm might look like. Based on research and suggestions this might be how the formula basically could look like;

Google’s Score = (Kw Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain * 0.25) + (PR Score * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) – (Automated & Manual Penalties)
If you are asking yourself how does the latest 2011 algorithm work or what does SEO mean, you will find on this website all the secrets you want revealed for absolutely free. Learn how the algorithm best works and the most common factors that effect your website ranking with this breakthrough revealed information.
Search Engine Optimisation Key Word Usage Factors:-
• Keyword in title tags
• Rich Header tags
• Documents rich with relevant text information
• Keyword in alt tag
• Keywords in internal links pointing to the page
• Keywords in the domain and/or URL
• The order key words appear


Google New Algorithm

Domain Strength / Speed-
• Domain Strength
• Domain Speed
• Local/specific domain name
• Quality Hosting


Registration history-

• When the Domain was registered
• Strength of the links pointing to the domain
• The topical neighborhood of domain based on the in bound and out bound links
• Historical use and links pattern to domain
• Inbound links and referrals from social media
• Inbound Link Score

Age & Quality of links

• Quality of the domains sending links (non paid)
• Links from Authority Websites
• Quality of pages sending links and relevance
• Anchor text of links
• Link quantity/weight metric (Page Rank or a variation)
• Subject matter of linking pages/sites
• User Data

Historical CTR to page in SERPs

• Time users spend on a page
• Search requests for URL/domain
• Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users

Content Quality Score

• Duplicate content filter
• Order of key words in content
• Content update frequency
• Highlighted and visibility of keywords
• Usability and W3C rules

Negative Penalties (for SEO purposes)

• Forums
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Article Submissions
• Blogs
• Link Exchange
• Paid Links
• FFA’s (Free for all backlinks)
Google over the years have persistently pursued innovation, constantly updated its algorithm or algorythm (if that is the way you spell it) and refused to accept the limitations of existing models.As a result, Google’s latest development was the breakthrough PageRank™ technology that changed the way searches are conducted today. And if there is one SEO company that knows how the algorithm works and how would it would boost your rankings on Google organic search that would be White Hat Works.
What’s new about Google’s latest algorithm in 2010 / 2011?
There is much talk in the SEO world about what Google is going to focus on in 2010. Matt Cutts, head of Google’s Webspam team has mentioned and hinted in various forums, Youtube and on his Blog that SEO professionals’ latest focus should be in 2010. Part of the Caffeine project, apparently in 2010 the speed of your website and web pages loading will now play a major factor in the algorithm.
To achieve faster speed your website needs to be hosted on a super fast host and reducing the overall size of your web pages. Obviously this means moving to a better Internet Service Provider and serving faster websites by increasing the download speed.
This will mean less content on a page, utilising CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and images have to load faster. A webpage downloading speed of 3 seconds or less is pretty good, but 1 second or lower might have to be achieved in cases. You can now measure the speed with a program in the Google’s Webmaster Tools.
Does this mean Google in a way is pushing developers to write and create better websites that load faster and content writers to write quality content instead of quantity content? and the digital marketing guys, will they have to be at the same time creative but their art work must be short, sweat and fast loading? Does using flash animations go out the window? Hosting Video clips on your own website? would that be wise? or better to be hosted on You Tube instead?All these are questions and probably the answers you are looking for is, yes it is!What could happen is Google favouring certain websites and in the other hand penalise other ones. Websites owners that keep stuffing their pages with content, customer reviews, endless blogs and articles, videos, links and endless images will be penalised.
The good news is websites that are clean, focused, compatible and fast will benefit.
Many SEO professionals are saying that this is not fair for the SME’s (small to medium sized business) that cannot afford to be hosted on super fast hosts and do not have large teams that can restructure their websites to go faster. The question is how fast can the cooperate companies react to the ever growing demands of the Internet? Probably not and it will take them months before they even decide what to do. In the other hand SME’s probably will be in a better position to react a lot faster due to quick decision making compensating for all the other factors.
The SEO e-marketers also mention about countries that have slow internet access, like in Scotland and other rural areas where you cannot get broadband? Are they going to get penalised? Probably not, as its the Google Bots measuring the speed and not at what speed the website is loaded in these areas on an end users computer. Actually Google in a way by “forcing” developers to increase their websites overall speed would mean these areas with no broadband will benefit in the long run. Mobile phone users with their web enabled devices like the iPhone and Nexus by Google will be able to load more and more websites, specially the ones that are more lean and load faster.

White Hat Works Conclusion for 2010 and 2011:

• Host your website on a super fast Internet Service Provider
• Use CSS as much as possible and comply with website usability
• Write quality content, not quantity content
• Convert your a Flash website to a HTML website
• Export your Flash animations where possible – more SEO Tips
• Keep images and their size to a minimum without loosing the quality
• Test your website in various browsers and mobile phone devices
• Make your website Google Friendly
• Get free guidance from a reputable SEO E-marketing Company

Faster websites means Google can keep up with the growth of the Internet without the need to keep buying and installing new servers. Many have asked, how many servers does Google have? This is a well kept secret, but if you do your maths and calculations the number of servers could be around 700,000 and growing. These servers are spread over 100 data-centres around the globe and makes Google the largest IT producer of (Co2) carbon emissions on Earth.
Google is in the business of providing a top notch service and encouraging growth, but at the same time be profitable by keeping their costs and carbon emissions down.
Hence the need for this new factor that will be included in the updated Google 2010 Algorythm. Maybe the main reason Google is focusing on speed is because what they really are trying to do is to reduce their carbon foot print and we (SEO guys and website owners) all need to help them achieve this.
One effected company said:
We are an ecommerce site that has been running for almost 5 months and have seen steadily growing traffic. We have made no major changes to our website recently but are continually adding content and products to the site. Our site has been severely affected (almost 50% down on traffic) since last Tuesday (07/12/10) which coincides with the latest 2011 algorithm change which was the response to the New York Times article regarding Black Hat SEO techniques.
I have struggled to find much information about it and it doesn’t seem to be widely talked about at the moment. As far as I can tell it will specifically target site reviews and penalise people with negative feedback. Because we are a relatively young site we don’t have any feedback (negative or otherwise). Is it visible that this could have such a dramatic effect on a site that has essentially done nothing wrong and has anyone had the same problem?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated because we are being hit particularly hard in the lead up to Christmas which should be our busiest weeks.
Thanks Matt Cutt.

Web Marketing Strategy

A sample document for Web Marketing SEO Strategy/Plan
Developed by
Bojja Balasubrahmanyam



      1)  Executive Summary:
This strategy and web marketing plan includes a search engine strategy to get the customer placed at top positions in the search engines online. This strategy is particularly tailored according to your time and financial constraints/budget. This comprises of selecting and focusing on the most appropriate key words suiting your business, paid listings campaigns management, improving and maintaining search engine rankings, directory listings, increasing link popularity, writing web copies (Articles & PRs) and various other marketing tactics & strategies to boost traffic and ROI growth. 
Results of all these will be measured by industry standard web analytics tools & software. It will help in reporting our success and to focus and strategize in a better way. 





2.    Industry Analyses:
            SWOT Analysis:
Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Opportunities
Threats:
Analysis of the Company, Customers, Competitors and regulatory environment. 
3.    Target Market:

Showcase the current market demographics:
This will reveal customer’s income, interests, psychological mindsets, trends, activities, needs & preferences based on age groups and geographical areas. 




 Marketing Strategy and Objectives:

                    Marketing Objective and Mission Statement:
   To be given by the concerned authority. 
•    General Strategies to reach objectives and fulfill mission.
                       On Page Optimization (Organic Listings):
•    Website preliminary Analysis.
•    Keyword Research.
•    Identifying Keywords for particular pages.
•    Basic Design and Page layout.
•    Website verification for validation of source codes (HTML & CSS).
•    Site internal Link Analysis. (Linking of pages with other pages)
•    Broken Link Check.
•    Check for non-crawler friendly portions in website. Flash, Java Script, frames.
•    Website Navigation and flow corrections – Search engine friendly.
•    Website Architecture Suggestion and corrections – SE friendly.
•    Title & Meta Tag Optimization.
•    Anchor Text and Image Tag Optimization.
•    Check for unique content. Remove plagiarism.
•    Content Optimization –

1.    Keyword Density, Keyword Proximity & Prominence.
2.    Header Tag Optimization.     
3.    Website XML Sitemap development and Search Engine Syndication.
•    Determine a minimum page size according to the content and info provided in the pages.
•    Website Usability Analysis, suggestion & Correction.

                   Off Page Optimization Website Promotion:
•    Directory Submissions.
•    Site External Link analysis.
•    One Way Link Building.
•    Two Way Link building – Reciprocal Links.
•    Three Way link building.
•    Submitting site to niche directory website.






                                        Articles writing & submissions to top Article Directory.
•    Creating and Publishing Ezines.
•    Press Releases creation and top PR website Submissions. 

      Specific Marketing strategies and plans suiting needs. (Organic & Inorganic)

•    Blog Creation & Maintenance.
1.    Blogger, Typepad, Server Based.
2.    Custom developed blogging.
3.    Opens Source blogging software like Word press.

•    Viral Marketing
1.    Blog Marketing.
2.    Promotion of website products and services in relevant online Forums and Chat groups.
3.    Promotion website products and services in Online Groups and communities.


•    Social Media Optimization & Marketing.
1.    Book-marking sites.
2.    Profile Sharing sites, community portals & websites.
3.    Websites of genre My Space etc. 
4.    Local Business Listings

•    Search Engine Marketing.
1.    Google Adwords - Pay Per Click
2.    Yahoo Search Marketing
3.    MSN Ad center


•    Product Listings in Shopping & Auctions Sites.
1.    Froogle, Bizrate, mySimons.
2.    Yahoo Shopping auction, Amazon, shopping.com.

•    Affiliate Marketing.
1.    Content and niche sites, including product review sites.
2.    Network Websites.
3.    Coupon and rebate sites that focus on Sales promotions
4.    Blogs & RSS.

•    Content Syndication.
1.    Website Content RSS & Atom Feeds.
2.    RSS Directory Submission.
3.    Blog RSS syndication.



                                             Email Marketing.
1.    Server based tools.
2.    Mailworkz, Lyris ListManager etc.

•    Others – Offers, surveys, contests, exchanging ads – banner, text etc.



•    Website Analytics & Reporting.
1.    Website Traffic Tracking and prediction.
2.    Identifying Leads and Weak areas.
3.    Analysis and Reporting Tools like Web Trends, Omniture, and Google Analytics.



5.    Budgets, Implementation, and Time Span:

•    Budgeting and Analysis
•    Implementation
•    Time Span



6.    Appendices:


7.    References:

Improve Your Online Presence

Having a virtual presence through website has become very required now-a-days but what is the use of having a website if your potential customers can't find it!

Having belief in the fact above, Internet Marketers can no longer ignore the huge impact Facebook and Twitter has had on the internet marketing world. Being social on the worldwide web has never been more important to business owners, Internet marketers or anyone trying to market and sell products and services through the online media. Like any other high end products and services Google offers on the web they will be continuously updated, tested and reinvented search results.

If you are seriously determined to attract prospective customers and develop your online presence and exposure, you owe it to yourself and the financial future of your business to learn everything you can about social media marketing

Use Twitter for Internet Marketing

Twitter is an online community of people writing text-based, miniature-scale (max 140 characters) tweets about every single moment in their lives. Twitter is a tool for "micro-blogging" or posting very short updates, comments or thoughts. Truly, a micro-blog.

So if you’re researching social networks, chances are good you’ve stumbled across Twitter in recent months.

At first I did not get it at all. Then I thought I understood it, but thought it was stupid and useless. Then I used it a bit more and got some more followers and followed a few more people. Now I think it has some value, especially as a marketing and PR tool.

We see companies and savvy Internet marketers coming up with new ways to use Twitter to their advantage. It is really easy to follow someone on Twitter. And you'll be surprised how often they decide to follow you as well. If you are a retailer or anyone who often has special offers, you can use Twitter to announce these deals instantly to a large audience.

Also if you participate in a large trade show or run your own corporate event, you can use Twitter to announce last minute changes, cool events that are happening. It is a great last minute marketing tool. It’s really easy to post a link to something in Twitter, and I often post links to blog articles on this blog, or other news articles relevant to HubSpot.


Just as today is a chance to introduce your business through exciting, new trend associations, it’s best to stick to the day's trends to attract as many eyes as possible. To help you achieve exactly this, Twitter holds great potential for improved online communication, collaboration and relationship building for business.

Website Security Models

Do you have a website or ready to creating one. What is the first things came into your mind may be from where u got a developer who develop your site. But you need to think again the first and foremost thing one needs to do is to chalk out a security plan and policy model for your site.A security model for your site helps you to finding out what type of site you can create which is secure in terms of privacy.
Here i am going to tell you many security models. you can apply anyone according to your site.

   1. The Open House: In this case, the front door and all the rooms are unlocked. visitors will be free to move around anywhere from any room to any room. This resembles an unprotected site where users do not require any special authentication to view the information.
   2. The Owner: A case where the front door is locked but all the rooms are unlocked. The owner lives in the house and locks the front door in order to keep the neighbours out but once anyone gets into the house, they will be free to go into all other rooms. This is a useful security model if any company gets to go into all other rooms. This is a useful security model if any company gets a lot of outsiders passing through but only want to have its employees access the site.
   3. The Garden Party: An excellent case in which the front door is unlocked but certain rooms inside the house are locked. Anyone may wish to allow people to help themselves to the bar on the front lawn and get into the washrooms but not necessarily into the bedrooms where the owner has kept all of his personal things.
   4. The Paying Guest: This is a more stringent measure than the above in which the front door is locked and certain rooms are locked. The guest has a key to enter the house and is able to get into his room only but the other rooms are off his limits. This model will verify whether or not a user would be allowed to enter the site. Once this user is authenticated, only then may he or she move freely throughout the other rooms as log as s/he has access to them.
   5. The Fort: A locked massive iron gate with barbed wire, front door locked, all rooms also locked, and there is a watchman guarding the house. Simple, unless teh users have the proper credentials or certificates or entry passes, they will not be allowed to get in.

Competitor Analysis

Compititor analysis is used to analylize what your compititors did to get higher ranking in google or major search engines. Compititor analysis is very important task. In compititor analysis we analyze first 5 or 10 compitors and find out what they did in their title tag,meta tag.

 Steps to find what your compititor did:-

   1. Find all related compititors.                                              
   2. Find how important these websites are.
   3. Find link popularity.
   4. Find number of indexed page.
   5. Select a website that rankes #1 in google.
   6. Right click to their homepage. A small popup found click on view page source.
   7. When you click view page source a new window opens that contains all the programming of your compititors site.
   8. Find title tag and meta tag and found out what your compititor did.