Top 10

The Science of Generating Leads and Sales Online

T H E E X E C U T I V E ’ S G U I D E

B Y B R I A N D O W N A R D

A N D G E O F F B R A N D T

IntroductionIn the past few years we’ve seen a significant shift in how people are shopping for and purchasing products and services. The internet and mobile devices make information accessible anytime, anywhere. What is your business doing to meet these new demands?

To help you get started, we created this helpful, easy-to-understand guide. We hope that after you read this guide you’ll be able to start generating leads and sales using the internet to keep your business relevant and competitive.

Brian Downard Brian is a marketing professional with over 8 years of experience in digital marketing.

Geoff Brandt Geoff is a management consulting

professional with over 20 years of experience consulting for Fortune 500 businesses.

In 2014 Brian and Geoff founded ELIV8 Business Strategies.

This guide was written and designed by Brian Downard and Geoff Brandt.

CLICK TO SHARE

1. Use social proof in your marketing and sales.

2. Get your business information listed in right places online.

3. Commit to creating content for prospects and customers.

4. Calls-to-action and landing pages covert leads.

5. Social media as a lead generation tool.

6. Use email marketing to close more customers.

7. Marketing automation tools save time and money.

8. Use mobile marketing to reach more people.

9. Measure all initiatives using analytics.

10. Invest in technology and software.

Contents

CLICK TO SHARE

1 O F 1 0

Use social proof in your marketing and sales.

In the battle for customer attention in a world flooded with competition. Is there a truly cost-effective way to generate more leads and sales? Social proof is still a relatively untapped goldmine in the age of the social web. What is social proof? In short, It’s the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something.

Types of social proof

A) Celebrity social proof: Up to 25% of U.S. TV commercials have used celebrities, however this is too costly for most businesses.

B) Wisdom of crowds: Highlighting popularity, large numbers of customers or online reviews implies many people are satisfied with your products and services.

C) Customer social proof: Use client testimonials, success stories and case studies to show real world examples of what your product or service can do for people.

D) Wisdom of friends: Learning from friends through the internet is likely the top form of social proof in terms of 1:1 impact and potential to grow virally. Dropbox has perfected this.

E) Expert social proof: Approval from a credible expert, like a magazine or blogger, can have incredible digital influence.

EE

C

B

B

C

What works best?

A

D

B

Using various types of social proof is most effective. What’s great about digital marketing is you can test and iterate quickly to find what will work best for your business.

CLICK TO SHARE

While doing it your self is free, each platform takes roughly 20 minutes to complete. You should prepare your self for a lot of copying and pasting.

2 O F 1 0

Get your business information listed in right places online.

Simply having your business listed and appropriate information completely filled out on popular search engines and directories will make it easier for prospects to find and reach your business no matter where they are searching from.

Focus on the most popular platforms first: Google, Yelp, Bing, Yahoo, Yellow Pages, CitySearch, Localeze and Superpages.

Where to sign up

Moz.com/local

CLICK TO SHARE

F R E E

Do it your self

$ 5 0 P E R Y E A R

Use an online tool

If you’d prefer to manage your listings from one locations and easily push your information to major data aggregators at one time, we recommend using Moz Local to get the job done quickly.

3 O F 1 0

Commit to creating content for prospects and customers.

Intelligent marketers are realizing traditional marketing is no longer effective. With content marketing, businesses create and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire prospects and leads – with the objective of driving profitable customer action. It focuses on owning media, not renting it.

The essence of this content strategy is the belief that if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their business and loyalty.

Effective forms of content

A) Ebooks & Whitepapers

B) Surveys & Studies

C) Infographics

D) Webinars & Presentations

E) Blog Posts

F) Email Newsletters

G) Photos & Videos

H) Social Media Updates

A

D

E

GH

B C

F

CLICK TO SHARE

4 O F 1 0

Calls-to-action and landing pages covert leads.

Want to convert people on your website into measurable leads? That’s where calls-to-action (CTAs) and landing pages come in. Using CTAs you direct website traffic to a specific content offer on your website called a landing page. To make sure you’re doing everything to optimize your CTAs and landing pages for conversions, follow the best practices below.

A) Attention grabbing, interesting headline

B) Relevant, supporting visual

C) Bright, obvious button for visitors to click

D) No top navigation on landing page

E) Action oriented headline that matches CTA copy

F) Sub-header that explains the content’s value proposition

G) Concise, search engine optimized copy

H) Relevant, supporting visual that matches CTA

I) Lead information capture area (should be linked to CRM tool)

J) No “submit form” button copy

K) Trust symbols that establish credibility with visitors

L) Be sure landing page is optimized for mobile devices

D

E

G

H

J

F

I

L

Copyright © 2014 Your Business

K

Visitors

Leads

1. Someone visits your website or blog.

2. They click on a CTA which sends them to a specific landing page.

3. Your lead form should be linked to your CRM tool, so when visitors complete the form, they become a lead you can nurture.

B

A

C

CLICK TO SHARE

5 O F 1 0

Social media as a lead generation tool.

Did you know social media is one of the most effective ways to generate leads? In fact, you can generate more leads for far less money compared to traditional channels. While there are certainly nuances for each social network, to ensure your social networks are optimized for lead generation follow the best practice on the right.

When posting on social media, use a mix of direct and indirect lead generation content. Direct content are things like guides and checklists that directly generate leads. Indirect content are photos, blog posts, videos and third-party content that are used with the goal of educating or entertaining followers to create opportunities future to convert them in the future with direct content.

Lastly, be sure your social accounts don't seem like they are managed by a robot, you need to engage and interact with your audience if you want to be successful on social media. Make sure responses to follower comments and shares are timely and personalized.

B

CE

G

D

A

F

Social Media - B E S T P R A C T I C E S -

A) Engaging header image (if social network allows one).

B) Your logo as your profile picture or avatar.

C) Company name as the user/profile name with complete descriptions and contact information.

D) Appropriately frequent posts.

E) Call out relevant users in posts. This can be accomplished by typing “@“ before typing their user name.

F) Shortened links that you can measure and track clicks.

G) Use high quality, engaging and visual content in your posts to capture attention in followers’ news feeds.

CLICK TO SHARE

6 O F 1 0

Use mail marketing to close more customers.

A

Email marketing is the quickest, most direct way to

communicate with leads and customers. It empowers you to reach your most valuable audience and build stronger

relationships with them over time by moving conversations

about your business to a more personal location (their

inbox)

Staying in your leads’ and customers’ inboxes will keep

your business relevant and top of mind which works to

convert leads and create post-purchase value to help

facilitate repeat sales.

A) Catchy, concise and clear subject line.

B) Recognizable “from” name and email address.

C) Opt-in only lists..

D) Company branding

E) Compelling, scannable copy.

F) At least one call-to-action

G) Social sharing links

H) Optimized for mobile devices.

I) Add to address book and unsubscribe links

H

BC

D

E

F

G

I

P R O T I P

If you have never done email marketing, we highly recommend MailChimp. It is free, has great features and is easy to use.

CLICK TO SHARE

7 O F 1 0

Marketing automation tools save time and money.

1. Use social management tool like Buffer or HootSuite. 2. Spend 1-2 hours per week “scoping” (curating your

content and content from around the web) put post ideas into a document for future reference.

3. Put content in management tool for future posting on appropriate networks.

4. Analyze each networks’ analytic tools every other week to make adjustments and maximize ROI.

1. Segment your email lists based on lead or customer type, behaviors, interests and engagement.

2. Target email content base on audience persona that you create for different lists.

3. Create each email that will be used in your workflow. You can create different workflows for different lists.

4. Analyze results and optimize low performing emails for better results.

5. Scale your workflows over time with new content.

There are some great online tools you can use for free that allow you to manage, schedule and post to multiple social networks from one location while providing useful analytics and insights.

There are various automation tools online that allow you to schedule series of emails and social media posts. This allows you to do weeks, even months of continuous marketing in just a couple of hours. It is one of the best ways for you to save time and money on digital marketing

CLICK TO SHARE

Social Media

Email Marketing

Most email marketing tools allow you to schedule one time emails as well as series of emails called a “workflow.” For example, every time someone downloads a specific ebook, you can automatically send 12 emails every 30 days for one year with any copy and content you’d like. This significantly reduces the time needed to nurture leads.

8 O F 1 0

Use mobile marketing to reach more people.

According to Delloitte’s mobile influence report, $159 billion in retails sales were influenced by mobile in 2012 and that number is growing.

When most people here mobile marketing, they think app. While that’s a great thing to give prospects and customers, you should probably start with your mobile strategy, specifically responsive design. This will create an optimal viewing experience for your website and blog on mobile phones, tablet, laptops and desktop computers.

Doing this makes it easier for visitors to navigate your website, ensures visitors stay on your website long enough to convert and even gives your website higher search engine rankings

In order to increase your overall lead and customer conversion rates, you need to optimize your website and content for mobile devices.

Mobile Lead Generation - - T I P S & I D E A S -

❖ Keep lead generations forms short. ❖ Design and employ simple calls-to-action with clear,

readable text. ❖ Provide redeemable discounts and customer loyalty

benefits. For example, “review us on Yelp for 10% off.” ❖ Optimize content for mobile screens so that it can be

quickly digested by readers. ❖ Make your contact information clickable on your

website so visitors can easily reach you. ❖ Try a text campaign.“Text this # to receive $15 off.”

Then use the phone numbers you collect to send offers and discounts in the future.

CLICK TO SHARE

9 O F 1 0

Measure all initiatives using analytics.

Simply put, analytic reporting is a decision making tool for your business. Using analytics you can measure and analyzing marketing performance to maximize its effectiveness.

Once you understand your visitors’, leads’ and customers’ behaviors you can optimize your business/marketing to improve those results.

Instead of setting vague goals, like “increase brand awareness,” or relying on your gut to decide how well your ideas are working, use analytic data to dissect campaigns, and glean true insight into your marketing’s effectiveness and return on investment.

While Google Analytics is the go-to option for most businesses, there are tools like KissMetrics and Hubspot that allow you to dive deeper into metrics. Every social network and email platform has analytic tools built in.

Metrics You Should Monitor - C H E C K L I S T -

✓ Number of website visitors

✓ Number of leads generated

✓ Visitor and lead conversion rates

✓ Traffic sources and referrals sources

✓ New visitors vs. returning visitors

✓ Bounce rate and exit pages

✓ Top performing pages and content

✓ User demographics

✓ Search engine ranking

✓ Email campaign engagement

✓ Social media engagement

CLICK TO SHARE

1 0 O F 1 0

Invest in technology and software.

If the rest of this guide wasn’t already a good indicator, I really want to drive this point home: In order for your business to stay competitive, relevant and most importantly, in business, you need to start investing more time and money in technology.

In just the past 5 years you’d be amazed how many tools have been created for business owners to save time and money while becoming more efficient at their jobs. From accounting software that automatically tracks expenses and prepares your taxes to photo and video editing tools that can make anyone with a camera look like a pro. You have plenty of fantastic, usually free, tools at your disposal.

Finding the right tools starts by understanding your companies goals. Do you need to foster greater employee collaboration or do you simply want to start accepting credit cards in your store? Start with your priorities and needs then go from there.

Because there are far too many helpful tools to list on one page, we created this helpful collection of our favorite 150 marketing and sales tools.

D O W N L O A D N O WD O W N L O A D N O W

CLICK TO SHARE

ConclusionWith the internet, search engines, social media and mobile devices, today’s customers are turning their attention away from traditional forms of marketing.

Which is why we hope that you were able to take some new ideas away from this guide that help to spark some new digital marketing initiatives. We are 100% positive you’ll be satisfied with the results.

Your next steps is to prioritize the ideas listed in this guide based your company’s goals and needs and get started as soon as possible.

“ T H E C O S T O F B E I N G W R O N G I S L E S S T H A N T H E C O S T O F D O I N G N O T H I N G . ” - Seth Godin

CLICK TO SHARE

Learn More About ELIV8’s Management Consulting Services

N E E D H E L P W I T H T H E M A R K E T I N G T O O L S A N D I D E A S I N T H I S G U I D E ?

E L I V 8 Y O U R B R A N D

ELIV8 brings together all of the consulting services you need to grow your business. Including marketing, technology and operations. See all of services, learn more about digital marketing or speak with a specialist today.

Click here to learn more

Marketing Technology Operations

Management Consulting for forward-thinking brands.