Internet Lead Generation: 10 Effective Internet Lead Generation Methods

When approaching lead generation it can be difficult to know where to start, what to do and how to do it! One obvious starting point is to find out what types of lead generation methods successful businesses use that already work on the internet.

In this article I describe 10 internet lead generation methods that are very effective and are used by the majority of successful businesses that use the internet as their marketing tool. These methods are being used to create high quality leads for their products and services, and the best part is that these leads can be generated for very little cost. By using some or all of the methods I describe, you too will be able to generate a regular supply of high quality, pre-sold leads that are already looking for the product or service you supply.

You will also be in a position to take control of the costs involved in generating your leads, as opposed to spending large amounts of money with your current offline methods. By mastering each of these established and proven online methods you will be in a position to have a regular supply of leads and will find over time that people will start to approach you for help as your lead generation efforts spread across the internet. All for no additional cost.

If you don’t take the time to learn and implement internet lead generation you will always be relying on others to generate leads for you, spend more money than you need to and waste your time trying to convert leads that are not qualified.

The 10 Lead Generation Methods Explained

I define an internet lead generation method as a proven method that works online to generate qualified leads. These methods have been used by many businesses and a lot is known about the results that can be obtained and how to get them. What’s more, other people have made mistakes which you can learn and profit from much faster without having to go through the same learning curve yourself.

The best way to work with these methods is to

• choose a method that takes your fancy, or one that you may already have had some moderate success with
• learn more about how it works for others and why
• implement your chosen method in your business, copying the implementation of the method from someone who is particularly successful using it
• track the results and make changes to improve them
• once you are achieving the results you expect move onto the next method.

Here are the 10 effective internet lead generation methods in no particular order:

1. Pay Per Click Advertising

This method of lead generation costs money and can be very expensive if not managed properly. If you are new to internet marketing, and especially pay per click advertising, avoid this method until you are earning enough to implement it.

Pay per click advertising, also known as PPC marketing, is a system of placing adverts that appear on search engine results pages and other sites. When someone clicks on one of your ads and goes to your website you pay a certain amount for that click, irrespective of whether you sell to that visitor or not. The most popular PPC service is Google Adwords, although Microsoft has a similar service.

The disadvantage to pay per click advertising is it requires careful management and you have to be good at converting the leads into sales to make it pay. The advantage is you can drive traffic to a brand new website and be making sales within a matter of hours, so it is worth learning how to manage a PPC campaign.

2. Lead Capture Page

This type of web page is designed to collect names, email addresses and possibly other information from anyone interested in your offer. In the past you may have completed forms like this to get a free report or some other gift. The page you visited to get this information in return for your details was a lead capture page.

What makes these pages a success is offering something of real value that helps your prospect so much that they feel it is worth giving you their details in return for it. You will need to drive traffic to the page in order for it to work.

3. Website

You can turn your website into a lead generator by encouraging your site visitors to leave their name and email address. Again the best way of doing this is by offering them something of value for free.

4. Articles

Writing articles and placing them on websites called article directories can be a good way of generating leads. The articles should be around 300 – 500 words in length, be informative, not sales focused, and in the author bio box at the end of the article you should link to the product or website you are promoting.

Very often you will find that a good article will be picked up by other website owners and re-published on their sites. A condition of them doing this is they have to keep your author bio box intact so the number of links to your website grows and, in turn, this can generate more leads for your product or service.

5. Blogs

A blog is a special type of website that allows you to post short or long articles, known as blog posts, to the website without you having to have any technical knowledge. The major search engines, especially Google, love blogs because typically they have content regularly posted to them. Search engines love fresh and relevant content.

If you want your website to be found quickly and indexed by the search engines you cannot go wrong by including a blog on your site, or even making your entire site a blog. You can include blog posts that review your products and collect names and email addresses on the site. A blog makes it much easier to get traffic than a more traditional website.

6. Podcasts

A podcast is an audio recording. Often they are used to deliver regular internet radio shows to people covering specific topics. There is software available that allows you to create podcasts quite easily and there are companies online whose sole business is to create high quality podcasts for you.

Podcasts can be distributed for free on Apple iTunes, which is now the most popular place for podcast distribution on the internet.

To make them work as a lead generator you should include your website address within the podcast and encourage people to visit. Podcasts can also be hosted on your website and you can offer them as a free gift in exchange for a name and email address. For podcasts to work as a lead generator they need to be informative, useful and interesting to your prospects.

7. Reports/eBooks

Several times I have mentioned giving something away for free in return for getting a lead. Reports and eBooks can be good tools for this. An eBook is simply a book that can be read on a computer or eBook reader. Information delivered in a high quality eBook can raise your perceived status as an expert which in turn can lead to more leads being generated.

Make sure your reports and eBooks contain links to the product, service or website you are promoting, and make it clear that they can be freely passed onto people who may be interested in the subject. Very popular reports can spread around the internet like wildfire, an effect known as “viral marketing“.

8. Video

Another effective online lead generation method is video. YouTube, Google’s video sharing website, gets millions of visits each day and many fortunes have been made from video alone.

It is very easy these days to create video using a webcam and a piece of software such as Camtasia Studio. Again there are companies who specialise in producing video for web if you don’t feel confident doing this yourself.

I would make your videos informative not a sales pitch. Those videos that work best solve a problem and then lead the viewer to a website or product that can provide further value to them.

Once your video is created make sure you host it on YouTube first and then distribute it to other popular video sites. The best way of doing this is to use a service at Tube Mogul where they will distribute your video to several video hosting sites for free.

9. Email Course

The next lead generation method I would like to cover is an email course. This is a series of emails that together form a training course. At the end of each email you can give your reader an exercise to do, or instruct them to follow the steps in the email before the next lesson arrives.

Any topic that can be taught step-by-step is great for this type of delivery. You need to make sure the topic is related to your product in some way and at the end of each email provide a link to the product sales web page.

An email series such as this can be very effective at building relationships with prospects to build up the trust so that they eventually buy your product. You would need to drive traffic to your website in order to get people to sign up for your free email course.

10. Mobile Devices

The last internet lead generation method I would like to discuss is mobile devices.

In the latter half of 2011, Google experienced more people using their search engine from mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets like the Apple iPad, than from desktop and laptop computers. If mobile devices are the internet users weapon of choice, you need to make sure you can be found via these mobile devices.

This means ensuring your business

• has a listing in Google Places (it is free)
• a mobile specific version of your website (expecting your standard website to look good on mobiles is at best a folly)
• is using HTML5 to deliver your video. If you are not tech savvy ask your website designer about HTML5 and what needs to be done to make use of it.

Internet usage from mobile devices is increasing dramatically as the prices of such devices fall. This is leading to more people wanting to access their social media communities whilst on the move.

11. Social Media

Ok so I lied, my 11th. entry in the top 10 is not actually a lead generation method as such but, instead, should be used to make your articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos and other content reach a wider audience and potentially help to generate more leads.

Social media websites, and engaging via these sites, is now vital to businesses, and should be a mandatory part of your marketing plan. Helping your prospective customers on social media websites, engaging in conversations with them, pointing them to resources you know they are interested in, and providing your valuable content to them, is a vital part of the marketing mix.

Focus is Important

Now you know of 10 effective internet lead generation methods it would be very easy for you to rush off and try to implement all of them at once.

To be successful, I would advise you to only focus on one method at a time. Focus on your chosen method until it is working and generating leads for you, before moving onto the next. In fact, if your chosen method is really successful that may be the only method you need to employ in your business.

The problems that stop most people from following through, and making one method a success, is that they see it is quite simple to set-up each method so fall into the trap of thinking the more methods they implement, the more leads they will generate.

Avoid this temptation. Yes, each method in itself is easy to implement, but you need the persistence to make it work and work well, which is why I suggest getting one method working for you first before trying a second.

Another problem is people often don’t track how well a particular method is doing for them. They then end up losing money and giving up. Or they assume the method they used doesn’t work and they try another one. It is important that you track the results of every step of the method you choose and make changes to the method where the
results aren’t as you expect. The worst thing you could do is to give up as these methods are proven to work when implemented properly.

Looking at your results is important as these methods work differently for every business and every individual. When setting up your tracking make sure to track the entire process all the way, from generating the lead right through to the sale. When making changes to improve results, go about it logically. Identify a weak spot in the method, make changes to that spot and see how the results change. Don’t make multiple changes at once because if things get better, or worse, you won’t know the change that caused it.

The biggest impact you can make to any of these methods is to improve the lead to sale conversion rate. Improving this by a small percentage can yield significantly more revenue without you having to generate any more traffic.

If you follow this advice you will generate more leads for your business, higher quality pre-sold leads that will convert more readily to a sale, and you will get leads coming to you once the method starts to work.

One technique you should apply to all of these methods is to make sure the words you use in your sales page, landing pages, emails etc. is relevant to the problem your prospect is trying to solve and is aimed, not at trying to sell them straightaway, but to start building a relationship with them whereby eventually they will trust you enough to buy from you. If you go at your lead generation efforts by always answering the question “How can I help my prospects and give them something of value first?” you will improve the number and quality of leads you generate.