Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Lead Generation - An Inexpensive Way To Have Customers For Life

By Miguel Pancardo


In order for your business to thrive you need a fresh supply of leads on a regular basis. The problem is that obtaining these leads can be expensive so it is a challenging task when you are first starting out and don't have much in your budget to spare. Here are some things to consider that might lower the cost of getting business leads.

When many people start their business, they simply put up a sales page and sell an item. While this might be profitable, it does nothing to encourage the growth of the business. Although an email address is probably obtained with each sale, no follow up is made to it.

This type of sales process is singular and contains you to a single sale to a single customer. What you want to do is design it so you have a way of selling other items you have for sale to that same customer. Now, sales letter type pages require an effective text that drives the customer to hit the "Buy" button at the end. Sales copy is a skill that not all people have, so having it written for you is the answer.

However, copywriters that are good at what they do are not cheap to hire. The expense should pay for itself over time however. No matter what type of business you go into, there is an initial outlay or overheard where you have to put money into the business upfront and wait a while for sales to turn into actual profit.

The site itself has to be designed so that anyone can navigate through it. I have seen a lot of expensive, flashy sites that basically generate no income for the owner other than the sales that come from it. Add in the costs of hosting, domain registration and upkeep and you may never recover the entire cost of the business as it will always be creeping up and biting you on the butt!

A site that is set up to generate leads on an ongoing basis on the other hand is more profitable in the long run and can pay for itself many times over. The site doesn't even have to be anything fancy or expensive. You can simply offer a free report in exchange for an email address and name. As long as this person stays on your list, you can market to him multiple times and hopefully he will buy from you multiple times over the years.

Since that person has agreed to receive your email(s), there is no danger of a SPAM report from them. Once they have accepted your initial offer and given you their information, they are asked to confirm that they want to register on your list. This is called double opt-in and it works like a charm. Not only do you now have a prospect, you have a prospect that knows what you offer and wants to receive it willingly.

This is why lead generation is so important. You add new people to your list every day and have an ever growing list of people to market to. It only takes a few minutes to implement and compared to hiring someone to craft a sales page and design a fancy website, the cost is minimal. Treat the people on your list well in order to build trust and you will have customers for life.




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