Want to experience the happy result of watching a surge of global B-to-B qualified leads spill out of the various webpages for which you are responsible... to get "one for the record books"? It is a great feeling.
The principles involved are few, but extremely important. Get them right, and you'll see excellent business leads coming out of the woodwork. Here are four principles I find useful and important for lead gen.
Intense focus on webpage content:Is the content concise, precise, relevant? Is the content updated regularly? Are the right keywords being used for the right potential audience? Is there relevant professional 'eye candy' like images, graphics, videos, etc? Is there a strong call to action?
Search Engine Marketing:
Search Engine Optimization - SEO:
Organic SEO is vital to success. Pages must be found in order to be read. A great webpage, when not found by potential clients, is utterly useless. Is the page benchmarked against competitors in search? Are actions taken to improve content with an eye to raise search engine rankings and exploit long-tail niche targeting? Have additional language options been created when useful?
Paid Search (Adwords):
Paid Search is another important tool, lead generator and effective branding tactic. When Organic and Paid search are used in a coordinated fashion, quality lead generation benefits. Paid search can support organic search, validate your organic search rankings in the customer's mind, and fill in search engine result gaps when they occur. Using of negative search terms in paid search will help improve accuracy, conversion, and cost measurements.
Navigation and Links:
Diligent and intelligent cross-linking to other relevant webpages and blogs, with strong site and sectional navigation menus added and updated help keep potential clients from getting lost in a site. "Don't Make Me Think" is a great book, for this very reason if nothing else. Is Social Media being exploited?
Teamwork:
Having a talented, professional, reliable and innovative website management, design and webmaster team is mission critical. A well-designed website is like a fine symphony hall.... fantastic acoustics, great architecture.... just as a fine concert hall needs fine music to fulfill its destiny, so too, a good website needs good content to achieve ultimate SEO and lead generation success. Good content performs best on a good website. Get the formula wrong, and a mediocre website will produce mediocre to poor leads, no matter the quality of the content.
Discipline and Conviction:
What I have discussed are some general principles to help generate more, better, B-to-B leads. Discipline, inspiration, conviction and work-ethic are required to make lead gen success happen. Make SEO, Navigation, Benchmarking and Linkage optimization a daily habit and good things will happen.
What to do when those great quality leads start pouring in and they have to be classified, followed-up and tracked is another important topic for another day.
