Online Lead Generation

August 26, 2021

Online Lead Generation

What you need to do is build an online lead generation system but before you go ahead and build your system, you need to consider if you are a service-based business or a product sales business.  A service-based business requires a different online lead generation strategy than a product based business.

A service-based online lead generation objective is to encourage your online customers to sign up for a web form or contact a consultant. A product-based online lead generation objective is to encourage your online customer to go to the checkout and purchase the product. The two options require their own unique digital marketing and online lead generation strategies to suit the individual circumstances of the product or service.

The two objectives have similar outcomes, and you will need to develop an online lead-generation system that is specific to your business goals.  

More importantly, you need to focus on converting the website user into a sale (product objective) or ask your customer to sign up to a web form (service objective) so you can follow up on offering your services.

First, you must establish an automated digital database system.

online lead generation

Before you can build an online lead generation system, you need to have a database of existing and potential customers.  In addition, your lead generation system needs to be a  secure and easily manageable database system that is either online or offline software that makes it simple to collect your leads and compile them into a spreadsheet. For example, a Microsoft Excel CSV file, system will not work if you are considering outdated, handwritten database management. Your website needs to become an automated lead generation system and an automated system to gather customer information through sign-ups to web forms or the purchasing of products or services. Your database is the most powerful lead-generation tool for your business, and your database is an asset you can use to gain additional leads, referrals and customers.

Develop a 360-degree lead generation system

To develop a 360-degree lead generation system, you will need to implement online and offline strategies to facilitate quality lead generation. The implementation of appropriate technology will assist you in gathering and documenting information with ease and without an unnecessary overload of paperwork.

An example of how to create a 360-degree lead generation system

Before you can do anything, you need an automated database system. I suggest you ask your website developer to build you a web form on your website to automatically collect and enter relevant information into your database to capture details of your clients.

Optimise Your Website

The next stage is to optimise your webpage, and one of the most important factors among the 200 factors Google requires is to include relevant keywords to your webpage. The reason is, that Google and other search engines will not consider your webpage page to be relevant to the search terms of the title and topic on your webpage, so you need to include keywords that are relevant to your subject or topic. For example, if you are in business selling flowers, then you need to use keywords that are relevant to selling flowers.

Optimisation of your website is necessary to build your lead generation system because, without optimisation of your website, you cannot generate leads from Google, Yahoo and Bing. The optimisation will also give you the benefit of being able to use Google Adwords to place ads for greater lead generation flexibility, research and analysis.

What is Your Call to Action?

Your call to action, is your unique selling proposition your way to entice your customers to make a purchase or sign up to a web form? Before you can gain leads, your website has to keep the user interested enough to entice the customer into converting the reader into action; otherwise, your return on investment will be low, and your time and money will be wasted.

How to Bring Customers to You

Depending on the size of your business, you need to decide how you are going to bring customers to your business and website. You can do the following:

Television advertising is of course, the most effective and the most expensive.

Radio is next in line; this is also an expensive but effective method to gain leads for your business.

Telemarketing can be cost-effective for small businesses, although this varies depending of the laws of each different country. Due to the take up of mobile phones, I believe this form of marketing will decline in years to come.

Print in Newspapers is a cost-effective method of advertising for small to medium-sized businesses. However, many small businesses are moving away from Newspaper advertising and online advertising.

Email Marketing is also a great way to advertise your business and gain leads from this form of advertising. Furthermore, email marketing gives you the ability to use viral marketing to create a lead-generation referral system to bring customers to your business. For example, you can provide send-to-a-friend links on your email template, and your original recipients can then send the email to their friends and colleagues.

Build a referral system using postcard style mail out or hand out reward cards to people and reward them for finding you a customer for your business. You can quickly build your database with this method alone.

Finally, of course, your website with the implementation of Google Adwords and organic search engine optimisation so your customers can search online for your business, products and services.

All of the above can be synchronised interchangeably to build your lead generation system. Always remember to focus on building your database of customers because your database is a valuable asset to your business. Imagine if you had 2000 contacts in your database…what about 20,000? or even 50,000?

Your online lead generation system will enable you to grow your business, reducing your marketing costs through the ongoing cycle of gaining leads and entering those leads into your database. Once you have your leads, you can use your existing database in joint ventures with other businesses and their databases.

Your Final Analysis Using Google Adwords

Once you have a lead generation system in place, all your hard work needs to be analysed and compiled into reports. Google Adwords gives you some basic statistical analysis necessary for you to monitor and modify. As a result, you will be able to focus on your ROI (return on investment) and demographic targeting of your customers, saving your business time and money.

The examples in this article are only a snapshot of what can be achieved, and there are many strategies you can create on a cost-effective basis without spending tens of thousands of dollars on advertising.

Paul Murphy
Paul Murphy

Paul Murphy is the founder and business owner of Liberty Marketing since 2006. Liberty Marketing operates from Geelong, Victoria and works as a freelance digital marketing specialist and print management company in partnership with a wide range of web development and print suppliers throughout Australia. Together, we strive to deliver the latest technology solutions.