How To Choose The Best MLM Leads

How To Choose The Best MLM Leads

by: Jeff Schuman

What are the characteristics of the Best Mlm Leads? This is a good question to ask before you spend any money buying leads to build your MLM business. Before we get to that letกs take a look at why you would want to buy MLM leads in the first place.

Over the years the multilevel marketing business has gotten a black eye because of the over hyped promises of money and freedom. Very few people have ever achieved a high level of success in any MLM business. And even fewer have ever been able to maintain the level of achievements over a period of time.

That does not make MLM companies bad. Nor does it make the opportunities they afford the average person as a way to make extra money or even as a way to drastically change your lifetsyle. It can be done and using MLM leads is a great way to do it.

There are 2 big benefits to buying MLM leads.

1. It gets you away from approaching your friends and relatives. If you have been in more than one MLM business over the years you may have already approached them and used up your credibility when you were unsuccessful.

2. This is a duplicatible way to build your business that you can pass on to your downline. Any successful network marketing business will tell you that one of the main components of success is duplication. Anyone can buy leads and work them over the phone or thur the internet with the use of an autoresponder.

If you are unsure of how to work a lead over the phone I would suggest getting the book ‘recruit Your Way To Millionsก by Fred Stegge. After reading this book you will be able to explain what you do and what you offer to a new prospect in 30 seconds or less. http://www.teamschuman.com/recruityourway

If you are unsure of what an autoresponder is or how to use one read this article I wrote กHow To Effectively Use An Autoresponder.ก This is an absolutely essential business tool if you are going to succeed online with your MLM business.

http://teamschuman.com/articles/article15.html

Now that you understand some of the benefits of buying MLM leads and how to market to them letกs take a look at what are the characteristics of the Best MLM Leads.

1. How many times are the leads sold? Many MLM lead companies sell their leads over and over. You will be contacting a prospect that has already been marketed to. Personally I like eads that are exclusive to me.

2. How old are the leads? Would you rather contact a prospect that has expressed an interest in the past 48 hours or in the past 48 days. Being able to strike while the iron is hot so to speak is a great benefit of a fresh lead.

3. How many leads do you get for your money? Obviously the more leads you can get for the best price the more leads you can buy at a time. This is especially important when you are first starting or when you are helping your downline get started.

4. What is the quality of the lead? Nothing compares to a lead that contains both a phone number and email address along with a few qualifying answers to questions like กHow much can you invest to get startedก or กHow soon do you want to get startedก or When is the best time to contact you?ก If a prospect is answering these type of questions you are getting a much better quality lead than if you just have a name and email address.

5. What is the response rate? This will improve as your skill level at working your leads improves, but the fresher higher quality leads will give you a better response rate even when your skill level is low.

6. Do your leads come with any extras such as an autoresponder, training on how to work leads, prewritten email marketing letters, phone scripts, your own website, flash presentations, etc.

These are the top qualities of the Best MLM Leads. Be careful when choosing a place to get your leads. Not all MLM Lead companies are created equal. It is going to be the single most important decision you make when trying to grow your MLM Business. Make the wrong choice and you will waste your time and money as well as the time and money of your downline. Make the right choice and you can be building your business successfully for years to come.

Copyright 2004 Jeff Schuman

About The Author

Jeff Schuman has made over $35 Million Dollars in sales in his 20 year sales and marketing career. His Best Mlm Leads website contains the best mlm leads companies available today. His TeamSchuman.com website contains the best make money, and make money online websites anyone can use to get started making money from the comfort of their own home.

http://www.teamschuman.com/bestmlmleads

http://www.teamschuman.com

This article was posted on November 01, 2004

by Jeff Schuman

Get more than just กa presenceก on the Internet

Get more than just กa presenceก on the Internet

by: David Leonhardt

The water purification salesman had been talking to us for what seemed like hours. During a lull in his monologue, I asked if he had a website.

กYes. In fact, we are the only independent distributors of this product who does,ก he proudly beamed.

กSo you get a lot of leads from the website, then?ก I asked.

กNo, actually I don’t think weกve gotten a single lead from it,ก he replied.

‘then why do you have a website?ก I wanted to know.

‘to have a presence on the Internet.ก

A few days later, our home inspector was giving us an update on the state of our house. We had bought it a few years earlier in winter, when snow was on the ground and on the roof, and we thought an update would be a worthwhile investment.

กDo you have a website?ก I asked.

กYes, I do. But, I don’t think a single customer found me that way.ก

‘then why do you have a website?ก I asked.

‘to have a presence on the Internet.ก

A lot of entrepreneurs and small businesses are sold on paying for a website because it is important to have a presence on the Internet. For many businesses, that is true. But what does กa presenceก mean?

Would you open up a store in the corner office of the fifth floor of an office building, or would you open it up in the mall?

Would you leave the windows bare, or would you fill the windows with merchandise and open the door to make your store inviting?

Would you ignore customers when they enter the store, or would you carefully place merchandise and staff to maximize the revenue from each visit?

กA presenceก is only valuable if the website serves a purpose, if it fulfills its goals. Just sitting there, somewhere in cyberspace, is not a sound business strategy. An experienced website marketing consultant can help you determine what goals, if any, are viable for your business website.

Here are a few of the goals you might want for your website:

Online pamphlet.

If you connect with customers by telephone, this is an ideal way to instantly deliver a pamphlet to them. No mailing, no delays, they can even call up your information while you are on the phone with them. This website has to look credible and be choc full of information.

Credibility booster.

If you are selling a big ticket item, particularly one that requires a good reputation, a website can help. This website should look upscale and focus on credibilityboosting content. It is ideal for speakers, consultants and other businesstobusiness service providers.

Lead generator.

One excellent use for a website in many nonretail businesses is as lead generator. The idea is to funnel traffic (website users) into the site and lead them to take action. Such action might be to call you, to request a brochure, to request a free sample, etc. The main requirement for this is the maximum amount of targeted traffic possible, of people interested in what you have to offer.

By way of example, my marketing website at http://www.seowriter.net serves these first three goals: online pamphlet, credibility booster and lead generator.

Email Address Gatherer.

This is really a form of lead generation, but it is unique in that you are not trying to sell through the website, but through an email newsletter (also called an ezine). The website is there primarily to pique interest, and the newsletter is there to build affinity and trust in order to make the sale. You need to have a newsletter set up, and you need targeted traffic.

By way of example, my personal growth website at http://www.thehappyguy.com serves this goal, attracting subscribers to my Daily Dose of Happiness.

Sell.

Of course, if you sell hard goods, electronic goods or even many services, you can make the sales right online. You need some form of payment gateway and/or shopping cart, and your website needs to be able to make the sale from start to finish, which is not always easy. Of course, you also need customers in the form of targeted traffic.

By way of example, my liquid vitamins website at http://www.vitaminsupplementsstore.net serves this goal.

What you want your website to achieve should dictate the look, the structure, the content, the writing style and whether or not the site is optimized for the search engines. Before investing any more money of time in your website, invest the time required to determine the goals you want your website to achieve.

Or you could be like that water salesman or my home inspector, satisfied with having กa presenceก. Of course, many people go through life having กa presenceก on Planet Earth, but most entrepreneurs I have met are gogetters. If กa presenceก is not good enough in the real world, why settle for it in the online world?

A website should be an investment, not a cost. If your website is not working for you, or if you feel your business should have a website, determine realistic and useful goals, then set your website up to achieve them.

Maybe you don’t need a website at all. Or maybe your website could double your profits. Either way, don’t let it sit there gathering dust somewhere in cyberspace.

About The Author

David Leonhardt is an SEO consultant

http://www.seowriter.net/freelance/seoconsultant.html

and a website marketing consultant:

http://www.seowriter.net/freelance/marketingconsultant.html

Pick up a copy of his SEO ebook:

http://www.seowriter.net/books/seobook.html

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 30

by David Leonhardt

How Heavy Hitters Avoid Rejection Working MLM Lead

How Heavy Hitters Avoid Rejection Working MLM Leads

by: Ed Forteau

ขBut, these people are telling me NO and I don’t like the way that feels,ข he told me.

ขThe same rejection, real or imagined, that make some people $10,000 per month in this industry will cause others to abandon their dreams,ข I replied.

In the MLM industry, you see the heavy hitters who know how to work MLM leads flourish no matter if the industry is up, down or flat. Why? What do they know that the masses buying MLM leads don’t know? How are they able to quickly and easily get through enough leads and find the right people to give them a $10,000+ per month lifestyle?

There’s a quote I use in our seminars, ขThe fire that burns one person warms anotherข.

Heavy hitters know how to get warmed and not burned in working MLM leads.

First, a couple of facts.

FACT #1 – MLM lead quality has steadily gone down over the last 10 years.

FACT #2 – The quantity of leads has risen and well the as the number of MLM lead companies.

Fact #3 – MLM lead lists are sold over and over again. The people you call have heard their phone ring many times from these lists!

Being at the junction of these three facts is needlessly hurting tens of thousands of well intentioned MLMr’s.

Our survey of top MLM lead list buyers who make fulltime incomes has revealed three critical points.

Critical point #1 – A manual phone sort after an internet automated sort is no longer enough. You used to be able to ask someone 34 qualifying questions and determine who you should take through your information process. Not anymore. Now the numbers you need take through most systems are three to four times what they were just a few years ago.

Critical point #2 – Heavy hitters tell us rejection never feels like rejection if it’s from someone who truly can be successful in MLM. It the prospect is truly high quality, they’ll take a serious look at your opportunity in a businesslike fashion. That is a good feeling. This is opposite of the millions of tire kickers and wannabees filling out lead inquiry forms as you read this. These low quality prospects drain the life blood out of you. That kind of rejection is blood curdling.

Critical point #3 – Successful heavy hitters look at time management differently. They are using the 80/20 rule to their advantage. How? By getting in a position to only get rejected by capable prospects. Knowing low quality prospects can’t move their business forward, they continually seek ways to only talk to higher probable prospects.

Capable prospects who are also looking are the people you need to build a strong sixfigure income. Capable means they have the ability to build a business. They’ll have a bigger warm circle of influence, better people skills, ability to inspire and lead a group, stay on autoship longer, buy a sufficient number of MLM leads every month, and they’ll enter your opportunity at higher levels. Any MLM lead list contains about 23% of what we call these ขtop tierข prospects.

Looking means they’re ready to take action immediately after they’ve been through your information process. Frustration is talking to or sponsoring someone who is looking but NOT capable.

Here lies the big problem in the industry. MLM lead list brokers only tell you who’s looking. The process of optimizing MLM leads tells you who’s probable of being successful.

We’ve noticed heavy hitters have been the early adopters of MLM lead optimization.

Because they are time conscious and want to only be softly rejected by capable people, they’re only calling 2025% of their MLM lead lists. They’re focusing 80% of their time on capable and looking prospects.

The time they’re saving by not prospecting and working with the wrong prospects is spent with the family, traveling and enjoying their MLM lifestyle.

I think that you need a closer paragraph. Did you address who what where when why and how??

About The Author

Ed Forteau is the CoFounder of www.OptimizedMLMLeads.com. His is the only company in the MLM lead list industry which optimizes MLM lists to pinpoint the prospects most probable of being capable.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 07, 2004

by Ed Forteau

How to Tap in to the Holiday Publicity Bonanza

How to Tap in to the Holiday Publicity Bonanza

by: Bill Stoller

If your product or service can be given as a gift, a publicity windfall awaits at the end of the year but you need to start working in June. Each December, media outlets cover the newest, the hottest and the most unusual Holiday gifts. The reporters assigned to develop these pieces typically depend on two sources of information:

1. Phone interviews with local store owners

and

2. Press materials that have been sent by publicity seekers.

Let’s deal with Point 1. Here’s a cool trick: In early November, write a letter to stores and major websites that carry your product. Remind them that they may be hearing from journalists soon about hot gift ideas, and request that they consider mentioning your product when that happens. Point out a few reasons why your product is the newest, coolest, best or whatever. Ask the vendor to drop you an email or give you a call if a story results that mentions your product.

Now, on to oldfashioned publicity. When to contact the media depends on the publication or program’s lead time (how far in advance of publication or airing the material is developed). Magazines like Woman’s Day have a lead time up to six months, so get materials to them now. Newspapers have a lead time as short as a week for feature material, so send materials in November. In between are wire services, mediumlead magazines, กinflightก magazines and others. To learn the lead time of a particular media outlet, call the editorial department. If that doesn’t work, try the advertising department.

What you send should be kept simple a press release about your product/service, a pitch letter explaining why it’s such a great gift idea, and, if applicable, a disk with color product photos. See our articles กHow to Write a Great Pitch Letterก http://www.publicityinsider.com/pitch.asp and กHow to Write a Great Press Releaseก http://www.publicityinsider.com/release.asp for more details.

As you craft the materials, think about where your product/service fits. Based on its nature, cost, rarity or usefulness, it may work with a variety of typical Christmas Gift stories such as: Great Stocking Stuffer Ideas, Gifts for Teenagers, Gifts for the Person Who Has It All, Gifts for Executives, Gifts that Relax, etc. By suggesting a category for your product, rather than simply stating กHere’s a product that would make a nice holiday giftก, you’re making yourself stand out and maybe even giving the journalist an idea for a story angle that he or she wouldn’t have thought about otherwise. Either way, your chances of getting coverage are greatly improved.

About The Author

Bill Stoller, the กPublicity Insiderก, has spent two decades as one of Americaกs top publicists. Now, through his website, eZine and subscription newsletter, Free Publicity: The Newsletter for PRHungry Businesses http://www.PublicityInsider.com/freepub.asp , heกs sharing for the very first time his secrets of scoring big publicity. For free articles, killer publicity tips and much, much more, visit Billกs exclusive new site: http://www.publicityInsider.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on June 03, 2003

by Bill Stoller

กDo Not Call Listก…Death Knell For Leads Program

กDo Not Call Listก…Death Knell For Leads Programs?

by: Michael Lemm

Iกd pay close attention to this for awhile. There are implications for leads programs especially.

In about 610 months or so your company is going to have to subscribe to the FTC กDo Not Callก (DNC) list of people that do not want calls. Even if it is an innocent prospecting call your company (& you) can get in trouble. The wife may have answered your ad, the husband may have put them on the DNC list. Bang….your company (& you) innocently gets burnt. The fines are pretty noteworthy so be careful.

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/donotcall/index.html

Hereกs my general thoughts on this issue:

1. The leads companies will have to be VERY careful. Anyone selling leads had better make sure that they are truly กwaiting to hear from youก….optin permissive marketing compliant….fresh….yada yada. Any slip shod harvesting of leads without thorough scrubbing of their viabilty will lead to big trouble. I see a lot of leads companies going under….or just plane being scams hoping to make a quick buck and leave customers holding the bag.

2. The number of companies offering leads will likely decrease due to the effort, cost, and risk involved to ensure the leads are compliant. What will be left could be just a few expensive high quality companies….and a few scams after the quick score.

3. Those leads companies that กsurviveก will pass the increased cost on to the consumer….you. Meaning the cost of leads will likely go up significantly….regardless of the source.

4. Those who purchase leads will also be vulnerable to some extent (how much Iกm not sure) since they are the individual กcontactingก the lead. I doubt regulators and agrieved กleadsก will not hold those who contact them faultless. Since กweก aren’t employees of the leads companies we would have some responsibility/accountability attached. Their argument would be that we กchoseก to contact these people. As opposed to an employee of a telemarketing firm who is ‘toldก to make the contact.

5. If leads companies can navigate this challenge successfully….the resulting leads will truly be กqualityก. They will definitely be interested in being contacting. So this could be a silver lining…or glass half full….situation. However, it could well be at a higher cost than we now see.

6. Now….if you read carefully on the FTC website, it mentions that there is a period time of which someone can still be contacted.

a. If they were a customer, you may contact them for up to 18 months after the last business transaction.

b. If they requested information (as the website says, submitted an inquiry) you can contact them for up to 3 months.

Lead companies will have to provide Date/Time stamps and IP stamps with every lead. Is this hard? No, they do it anyways, so it shouldn’t result in large cost increases.

Additionally, all company/personal “prospecting” websites will need to contain language similar to this: กBy submitting your information you agree to be contacted by phone, email, or regular mail with information regarding a home based business, secondary income source, or a work from home opportunity.ก This will bind the user to 3 months of being contacted.

All that doom and gloom aside….what we hopefully will see is a drastic reduction of junk lead companies or companies that generate leads not targeted for our industry. Those that navigate the impending changes with quality compliant optin systems will survive and prosper. Those that don’t…..m’bye bye.

About The Author

Michael is a Moderator for MLMForums.com and the owner of FreedomFire Communications…. providing businesses a variety of voice, data, and internet solutions. His free tool for finding the best phone rates in your area will save you a fortune: http://billzilla.com/mscprez

This article was posted on April 10, 2003

by Michael Lemm

How To Generate Leads And Grow Your Business

How To Generate Leads And Grow Your Business

by: Charlie Cook

If you are an independent professional or small business owner, building the list of prospects you market to should be one of your core marketing activities. The more people who are interested in your products and services, the better your chances of growing your sales.

Wouldn’t you like to have the contact information for another thousand or ten thousand prospects for your products and services?

Obviously you want to choose promotional strategies that pay for themselves. If an ad costs a thousand dollars and brings in fifteen hundred dollars of business, youกve made money. On the other hand if you pay a hundred dollars for a mi1lion e*mail addresses and they don’t generate any business youกve lost money. In addition youกll be stuck dealing with all those people whose email address youกll need to delete from your system.

How should you spend your time and money to build a list of highly qualified leads? Hereกs an overview of common lead generation strategies.

MAILING LISTS:

Email, Fax and Snail Mail You can buy hundreds or millions of names to e*mail, fax to or mail to for just pennies per name. Yes, ten thousand or a million people could get your marketing message, but if they are not your target market, it won’t help you a bit and instead could create a negative impression.

Some services like PostmasterDirect.com sell onetime use of lists theyกve built through opt in signups. These lists are composed of people whoกve chosen to receive emails on selected topics. When you have PostmasterDirect.com send your mailing to this list, you won’t be spamming anyone and there is an increased likelihood the recipients will read your email.

The problem is that just because people on the list signed up for free information doesn’t mean they are interested in your particular service or product. You may get a response from use of these third party opt in lists, but in my experience it may not be worth the expense. Worth a try but watch your ROI (return on investment).

COREGISTRATION SERVICES

Identifying people who are interested in the problems you solve and your services and products is the key to increasing sales. Coregistration services offer the promise of helping you do this in a cost efficient manner.

The way these work is that you provide a brief description of your business, and the coregistration service then distributes your ขmini adข on their web sites or ezine signup pages so people can opt in to your newsletter. You pay for leads when someone signs up and you are provided with the contact information. Some services let you target your market by country.

Your ขmini adข might read something like this.

Use these strategies to attract more clients, and make more Money Sign up for the Free Marketing Guide and the marketing newsletter, กMore Businessก from CharlieCook.net. Learn how to use the 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing to grow your business.

A few services like Hiplists.com and Leadfactory.com actually provide you with what you pay for. They send you qualified contacts for fifteen cents or less per lead. Many other lead generation services and coregistration services just send you junk email addresses. If you’re not careful about who you use for lead generation, your subscriber list will fill up with people who don’t speak English and obviously didn’t sign up, childrenกs email addresses and invented email addresses such as [email protected].

If the coregistration service says they can provide you with a thousand opt in names in a day or so for pennies a name, be careful. The services that deliver quality leads charge more and take longer. Once you get the names track your sales to see if your purchase paid off.

ADVERTISING

Advertising allows you to reach thousands of people who normally wouldn’t find out about your services and products. But you may be spending thousands of dollars to put your message in front of people who have no interest. How should you allocate your advertising dollars?

Radio, newspaper, search engine and newsletter advertising can all work. The results will depend on how many people who want your services are exposed to your ad, whether the words you use in your message actually attract clients, and the cost of the advertising campaign relative to income generated.

Radio and newspaper ads deliver your message to hundreds or hundreds of thousands of people, but only a fraction of a percent will be in your target market. Search engines and newsletters offer you the opportunity to target your ads based on interests and geographic regions.

FREE PUBLICITY

Thousands of online and offline publishers are constantly looking for content they can use to attract and keep readers. Use your expertise to write articles that demonstrate your knowledge and ability to solve problems. Include a free offer at the end of your article, get it published, and youกll find prospects contacting you without spending lots of money on advertising.

Unlike advertising, this strategy helps you build credibility and, overtime, a steady stream of highly qualified prospects. If you’re not using your knowledge to share a few solid ideas and attract prospects for free, you should be.

DON’t WASTE YOUR LEADS

Once you have a lead make sure your marketing communication addresses the problems they want solved. Plan to contact your leads a minimum of six to eight times. Use the lead generation strategies that work for you, and produce more income than they cost and youกll see your business and your profits grow.

2003 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

The author, Marketing Coach, Charlie Cook, helps independent professionals and small business owners attract more clients and increase their earnings with the 5 Principles of Highly Effective Marketing. Sign up to receive the Marketing Guide and the กMore Businessก newsletter, full of practical tips you can use at http://www.charliecook.net

*****

2003 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Charlie Cook is President of In Mind Communications in Old Greenwich, CT and can be contacted via www.charliecook.net, or by calling 2036371118. To get the Free Marketing Guide and the กMore Businessก newsletter, full of practical marketing tips go to www.charliecook.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 08, 2003

by Charlie Cook

Online Lead Generation: Can it Work for My Busines

Online Lead Generation: Can it Work for My Business?

by: Kristen Steingrandt

Businesstobusiness service providers have a wide range of tactics they can deploy to gain new clients or customers. Direct mail; cold calling; TV, radio or print advertising are all ways in which B2B services gain new customers. In the last 10 years, the Internet has become another strategy to boost business, through advertising, web site optimization and online lead generation.

What is Online Lead Generation?

Simply put, online lead generation automatically sends information on prospective clients and their service needs to your email inbox or to a web site account. Internet services such as ProcureAPro.com provide your business with an account where you can upload your business profile, location, hours of operation, client testimonials, and licensing information. Potential customers fill out a form online with their requirements for what kind of service they need, that potential client is matched with B2B providers for that service in their local area (or nationally, if the situation warrants), and the client’s information is emailed to the matched B2B providers.

What Kind of Information Do Potential Clients Provide?

When a potential client fills out a form to request B2B services, they provide their name, phone number, location, and type of service needed. Depending on what kind of B2B service the client needs, they may provide even more detail, such as when they need the work completed; their target audience (for marketing services); the size of their staff (for human resources and other business services); technical requirements; the size of their office space (for furniture and other facilities services); and more.

Can Online Lead Generation Work for My Business?

Mark Shulimson, manager of ProcureAPro.com says ขWe use a number of both automated and human quality assurance checks to ensure the quality of our requests.ข While receiving a lead from a potential client is a major part of the equation, salesmanship comes into play. How you approach the potential client when you contact them is a big factor in whether you can convert a lead into a customer. ขOnce you receive a request, actively following up with them is key. Don’t be passive, don’t let email do the work for you, pick up the phone and make your presentation in personข, says Mr. Shulimson. ขGive potential customers reasons to hire you and a sense of urgency. Why should this customer act now? ‘I’m usually booked but have an opening in my schedule this week’.ข Be sure that the person who contacts potential clients knows your business, pricing structure, licenses, experience and availability.

What Will it Cost Me?

Fee structures for online lead generation service vary widely. Fees also vary depending on what kind of B2B service you provide. ขHowever pricing is structured you need to look at the Return on Investment or ROI. At ProcureAPro, our vendors setup a monthly budget. Say for example $100 budget for lead generation. At the end of a specified time period answer the question I spent $100 did I receive $100 worth of value? Most of the time the answer is going to be yes!ข

The bottom line is that online lead generation is a costeffective tool that can help you gain more customers. Using online lead generation in combination with traditional marketing techniques can help you build a string and success B2B service business.

For more information, contact ProcureAPro at http://www.procureapro.com, [email protected] or call 18666385323. ProcureAPro.com is powered by Respond, an online community with 2.5 million members.

About The Author

Kristen Steingrandt has been in the internet marketing business since 1999. She has experience managing affiliate programs, performing search engine optimization and managing payperclick campaigns, as well as writing and editing articles and newsletters for various web sites.

This article was posted on January 10

by Kristen Steingrandt

Winning the Traffic Exchange Game

Winning the Traffic Exchange Game

by: Shannon Herod

Winning the traffic exchange game can be done. I was just starting out online and had no money so I was looking for a free way to drive traffic to my site. That is when I first found traffic exchanges. I found the concept to be great and signed up for everyone I found and started clicking and clicking and clicking. After countless hours, a blistered clicking finger and a lot of frustration I found the secret to the game.

Traffic Is What They Want

The members clicking for hits at the traffic exchanges are looking for the same thing you are. Traffic to there site. Most are not interested in finding a new opportunity or looking to go shopping they just want traffic. So how do you get their business? The most effective way is by using a lead capture page.

Lead Capture Page

A lead capture page is a simple site that stands out to the surfer. The object is to not sell your product or information but to create curiosity. At the bottom of the page you will need a form so people can request more information from you. By nature we are curious people so people will sign up.

The people that are surfing for hits have 30 seconds on average to review your site it is hard to sell a product in 30 seconds but it is pretty easy to peak someone’s curiosity. You can see the page I use in the traffic exchanges at: http://www.dreams2freedom.com/listbuilder.html

Follow Up

O.K. I have a lead capture page but were do I send the people that sign up? An autoresponder. An autoresponder is a program that will automatically follow up with your prospects for you. You can create a number of different messages and have them sent at different intervals to your prospect after they signup through your lead capture page. This is a great tool because it puts your business on auto pilot after you do the initial work to get the lead. The autoresponder I use is GetResponse It is featurerich and free to set up. You can check it out at: http://www.GetResponse.com/index/dreams2freedom

Now that you have an autoresponder you are going to write detailed instructions on how you product works or a report on how you product can benefit the subscriber and split it into at least 5 emails. Most people will not buy on the first contact so you want to give the subscriber at least 5 exposures. You can see an example of what I use by sending a blank email to: [email protected]. Now set the messages to be sent 3 days apart and watch the sales start coming in.

Capture Leads Not Sales

In conclusion winning the traffic exchange game is fairly simple, don’t try to sell your products just create curiosity and capture their name and email. Have a solution to a problem people have and you will get people begging you for more information.

Hint: People at traffic exchanges want more traffic.

Copyright 2004 by Shannon Herod

About The Author

Shannon Herod is the CEO http://www.dreams2freedom.com.

Do you want a Flood of Traffic to your site? How about a huge Profit Pulling list of subscribers? Well then Shannon Herod Publishes a newsletter for people like You!

Send an email to: [email protected] for more info.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 07, 2004

by Shannon Herod

Capturing Leads on Free Traffic Exchanges

Capturing Leads on Free Traffic Exchanges

by: Michael Lawrence

There are 3 basic components to capturing leads on free traffic exchanges that need to be understood. Lead capture pages, Autoresponder follow up systems, and Ad tracking URLs.

The lead capture page can be hosted anywhere but it needs to have at least one thing on it to be effective… a way to capture a personกs email address.

Why waste your traffic exchange credits sending userกs to your sales page where they only have 15 seconds to decide whether they are interested in your product or service? It is too easy just to let your website rotate to the next causing you to lose a potential prospect.

If you set up an incentiveladen lead capture web page (by incentive I mean a contest or freebie for providing their email address) that has a short tag line about your product or service combined with a 2 line form consisting of name and email address you have a simple yet incredibly powerful marketing tool.

In fact what would stop you from advertising 5 or 10 different lead capture pages on several traffic exchanges for each product or service you are promoting?

Ok, so you have a personกs email address and name.

What now?

Let me explain the purspose of an Autoresponder before I do that. An Autoresponder is a script that sends out timed follow up messages to anyone in your Autoresponder email list. If you connect the form on your lead capture page to your Autoresponder you have a virtually unlimited opportunity to advertise to your now กopt inก subscriber.

Your only real job becomes promoting your lead capture pages. The Autoresponder system once set up requires little or no maintenance on your part.

Now when a person sees your incentive laden lead capture page on a Free Traffic Exchange they can quickly scan your opportunity and provide a minimum of information (nobody likes filling in forms, especially when they only have 15 seconds to decide on your offer).

Freebies work well, free downloads, contests, giveaways. People like free stuff and this gives you a nice way to build up credibility with your customer.

To take this a step further you can track your campaigns by replacing the URL for your product with an Ad tracking URL.

This will tell you every time someone clicks on a link within your email message or lead capture page allowing you to weed out ineffective ad copy.

Make sure you set up a different ad tracking URL for each lead capture page or email message and you can truly see how well each of your campaigns are performing in real time.

So get busy creating your lead capture pages, connect them to your Autoresponder follow up system, and start promoting and tracking your campaigns. You should see improvements in your sales and recruiting efforts immediately.

Copyright 2005 Cobrasurf.com

About The Author

Michael Lawrence is the webmaster for http://www.cobrasurf.com a free autosurf traffic exchange. He also publishes a web promotion related blog at http://cobrasurf.blogspot.com.

This article was posted on August 14

by Michael Lawrence

Increase Your Profit Through Effective Entry and E

Increase Your Profit Through Effective Entry and Exit Strategies

by: David Bell

It is amazing that so much time goes into building great looking websites, promoting them, yet most webmasters pay little attention to how their visitors will actually use them. You could be throwing profits away, if you don’t pay attention to entry and exit strategies that is, looking at how your visitors enter, walk through and leave your site, and how you can steer their course to increase your profits.

Letกs look at entry strategies first. Where can visitors enter your site? Check your wesbite statistics for more information (you are doing this anyway, aren’t you?). Often, many visitors enter through a กside doorก unintentionally left open. By this we mean they enter at a page, which was not designed to be an entry page, and they are left floundering around lost, not knowing where to go next, a bit like wandering into an office building through an open fire escape door!

This often happens because of search engine indexing, where a keyword rich page gets an unintended good ranking. Remember, any page can become an entry page (unless you use the Meta robots tag to avoid indexing), so ensure visitors who appear in the wrong place are efficiently & easily lead to the กfront receptionก.

Once in, what do you want your customers to do? Read content and gain exposure to advertising? Read sales copy and make a purchase? Sign up for a newsletter/ezine? Often, itกs a combination, so make sure itกs not all screaming for their attention at once. A visitor who becomes overwhelmed, will soon dash out the door!

Lead them through, one thing at a time. I particularly cannot understand websites, which, as soon as you enter, request your email address, via a pop up box, and I suspect many others feel the same . I like to get a feel for a site first, experience their subject matter and see if their expertise fits with what Iกm after, before I sign up for a newsletter, or other communication. So, lead them through, reassuring them that you can be of great assistance, becoming their friend, stating the advantages of keeping in touch , before gently requesting their details.

Now to exit strategies I see many puzzled faces here! Like it or not, every visitor is destined to leave your site. They can do one of two things :

1) Stop surfing and go and do something else

2) Continue surfing and visit another website.

You can influence them in both instances. By channelling them to a partner site, via a banner or an affiliate link, you can profit. You must do it at a logical point identify the points where customers are likely to leave, and provide an กemergency exitก for them. Analyse your own กsurfingก habits, and those of your friends and colleagues.

For instance, if Iกm visiting a website which I find is not for me, I always subconsciously scroll down to the bottom of the page before I leave. I don’t know why perhaps itกs because I don’t want to feel Iกm missing out on something they could be giving away $20 bills at the bottom you never know! One or two attention arousing links to affiliated sites could be placed tastefully there, tempting a กlostก customer to visit and perhaps earn you some commission through an affiliate scheme.

What about purchasers? Where do they leave? Most usually through an order confirmation page, where thereกs only a link กback to homeก. Well, let me point out that people usually purchase after theyกve gleaned all the information they can from your site to make their decision. Theyกve decided what they want and purchased it .Why would they go back immediately? Give them a place to go links to affiliate sites of related interest. Make the links provocative; arouse their curiosity to click through. Text links are usually more effective than banners, particularly when they are in the form of an endorsement or personal recommendations.

In short, analyse where your visitors go and are likely to go. Ensure visitors entering through กside doorsก, get speedily directed to the reception foyer. Position strategically placed กemergency exitsก which lead to partner sites. Join some affiliate schemes, do some joint venture deals, and get profiting from those กlostก customers that leave your site.

I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

About The Author

David Bell

http://www.wspromotion.com/

Advertising research and development center.

This article was posted on April 19

by David Bell

Forget Conventional Marketing Embrace the Web!

Forget Conventional Marketing Embrace the Web!

by: Lee Traupel

Tactical marketing processes are once again undergoing fundamental shifts from traditional to webbased processes. Many traditional marketing firms/agencies are still touting the tried and true to their clients; i.e. Tradeshow attendance, Print, Traditional PR, TV and Radio. However, these conventional marketing processes work best for broad market awareness and/or branding, especially for a Fortune 1K company with significant resources to spend on demographic analysis, test marketing and more test marketing. Itกs much more difficult for a smaller company (startup to $50M per annum) to leverage the economies of scale that are typically available for a larger company for the media buy and operational efficiencies.

Itกs obvious that lifestyle and business processes are shifting towards a much greater dependence on digital media people are traveling less due to cost issues and the everincreasing speed of business is underscoring the usage of the Internet for information and research. If you’re a small to medium sized business the chances are that youกve probably cut your marketing budget significantly by eliminating or scaling back tradeshow attendance, trade magazine advertising and/or direct mail in favor of response driven marketing on the web that can be deployed faster and more costeffectively than traditional marketing methods.

Capturing leads from a web site generated by optin email, newsletter inserts, text link advertising and/or other forms of pay per click marketing is still the absolute best way to generate leads that are quantifiable as soon as they are generated. You have the ability to easily track where the lead came from and via what interactive advertising process; assuming this has been setup for you by your interactive ad agency or with the online publisher. And, there are typically no lead times like more traditional marketing processes weกve created and deployed campaigns (creative, media buy, testing, ROI analysis, etc.) for our clients in 35 working days in some cases.

There are some pitfalls to webbased lead generation and follow through that you need to be aware of as you deploy an interactive campaign. Here are five of the most important กgotchasก that you need to think about as you build an interactive lead generation program around your web site:

1) Don’t make it difficult for people to contact your company make sure your web site really communicates with your prospects by กcommunicatingก I mean by providing telephone contacts, email address and/or a lead capture form that is short. Note: this form has to be supported by a published Privacy Policy (กwe won’t divulge your info to a third party under any circumstancesก) and it absolutely must be short; i.e. don’t request any more than baseline information, name, phone, email and address, augmented with a comment box.

2) Your marketing objectives have to be supported by your sales team the sales team has to be incentivized to respond to inbound emails and requests for information via a contact form in a timely manner, within 24 hours or sooner. If you have a geographically dispersed sales team then make this clear on the web site by providing specific contact points for states, regions and countries.

3) Make sure you IT person/department attends your marketing planning meetings with your sales team your web site will need some type of a lead capture setup that redistributes leads based on function and/or geographical responsibility. Your IT staff has to create a database solution that captures, stores and distributes leads this does not need to be done inhouse, products like Act (the market leader in contact management software) are now webenabled, you can capture leads via a web server and share leads with others via a browser and very inexpensively.

4) We don’t advocate popup advertising for most of our clientกs advertising campaigns. But, we have กcrossed over to the other sideก and we do (highly) recommend using popups on our clientsก web sites to present opportunities that in turn capture leads. Studies have shown effective popup lead captures increase lead generation by 4085% depending on the market segment. Popups can be set so they only launch on a frequency basis per session (visit to a web site) or a number of times for a specific visitor they don’t have to setup so they are intrusive and annoying.

5) Last but not least (drum roll) make the customerกs usability experience the most important aspect of your web site. Create a user interface (กexperienceก) that is pleasant for your visitors; i.e. use standard universal (top of page and local page left) menus, utilize 23 sentence paragraphs with lots of white space, don’t overload your pages with graphics that slow down load times and make sure your contact points (phone, email) are readily available from every page.

So, to summarize; advertising is shifting from traditional to webbased or interactive if you will so, to get on board this tsunami build a web site that communicates with your prospects/customers, provide contact points via telephone and email via the site, involve your IT and Sales staff with the lead capture process so they are all stakeholders and utilize popups to accelerate your lead capturing.

About The Author

Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is an internationally recognized ebusiness strategist. Check out her free tipsheet กBeyond the Search Enginesก for 17 ideas to promote your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html Philippa can be reached at (831) 4650317 or mailto:[email protected].

This article was posted on November 14, 2002

by Lee Traupel

Triple Your Business In Three Ways

Triple Your Business In Three Ways

by: John Jantsch

There really are only 3 marketing functions…once you master them, the rest of the game is pretty simple.

Every small business owner wants more business. So what do they do. They focus all of their marketing attention one thing advertising, lead generation, making the phone ring.

Oh sure, without a steady flow of new leads most businesses are sunk. But, it does no good to have a bunch of leads unless you can turn them into clients. And, you are absolutely missing the boat if you don’t have a systematic way to turn those clients into a bigger and bigger clients.

You can triple your business almost overnight if you will focus all of your marketing efforts on 3 functions.

Lead Generation, Lead Conversion, and Client Reselling. (I kind of made that last term but I rather like it.)

Lead Generation is finding ways to get กqualified prospectsก to call, write, click, or otherwise act in a manner to find out more about your firm.

Lead Conversion is your firmกs systematic approach to turning those leads into sales, customers, and clients.

Client Reselling is your method of taking your existing clients and getting larger, more frequent, and new purchases, or leveraging your relationship to get more clients and selling opportunities.

If you can create systems that help you do all three of these marketing functions then you are home free…and tripling your business is guaranteed. (guarantees are a tremendous lead conversion tool by the way)

All 3 of these marketing functions are intertwined, yet I rarely come across a small business owner that understands this.

Hereกs what I mean.

LGN You must have multiple ways to target your best prospects and get the phone to ring. Your website, your Yellow Pages ad, direct mail, flyers, pizza box coupons, church bulletin ads, radio ads, airplane banners…just to mention a few.

LCN You then must also have a set response when the phone rings. Presentation over the phone, send out an educational packet, direct them to a special page on your website, have them complete an evaluation, set an appointment (with a predetermined outcome) The point is that response must be predetermined and scripted. Everyone in the organization should be able to deliver it!

CRS Once you land a client you must have a preplanned strategy to get them to buy again, more, bigger, faster, updated, upgraded, versions of your business. You should even look to create or add products for this purpose. In addition you must build referrals into your reselling efforts.

Look there are many things that fall under the heading of marketing but if you can just draw up a simple checklist of steps for perfecting these three functions (even if you do nothing else) then you will absolutely crush your competition.

Copyright 2004 John Jantsch

About The Author

John Jantsch is a marketing consultant based in Kansas City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business marketing tactics and is the creator of ขDuct Tape Marketingข a turnkey small business marketing system. Check out his blog at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php

This article was posted on April 04, 2004

by John Jantsch