What You Need to Know About Generating Leads
Generating leads from your target market is the lifeblood of any business, particularly Internet and network marketing businesses. Leads give you the opportunity to convert prospects into customers. No leads, no conversion. No conversion, no business. It’s that simple.
But what exactly do we mean by "a lead"? Before any discussion of "converting" a prospect into a customer, or "sponsoring" a lead into your downline, it’s useful to step back and define exactly what we mean by the term "lead." Once we do that, then how you target and interact with a lead will be much more clear.
It’s safe to say that a business lead is someone who’s taken some form of action toward you or what you’re offering.
In the old model of network marketing, a lead might be someone who’s said "yes" when you asked them to attend a business opportunity meeting or to present them your product and compensation plan.
In classic Internet marketing, a lead might be someone who may have subscribed to a newsletter or signed up for a promotion or product offering, expecting you to market to them.
In both of these cases, the person has taken a definite action that indicates that they are interested in participating in your business. The person is a lead because they’ve responded to a specific opportunity — an MLM business opportunity or an web site or service.
But, in the context of Attraction Marketing and the rise of social media or Web 2.0, defining a lead may not be so clear-cut.
In this model, your business would have multiple streams of income — affiliate sales, product sales, perhaps a service offering (for example, coaching), maybe even a network marketing business opportunity. And your means of generating leads would be to provide value through useful information on a particular subject.
Which leads us to this question: Can a person who’s never signed up to receive your newsletter, RSS feed, or free ebook be considered a lead? For example, can a Facebook fan or a regular viewer of your YouTube videos be considered a lead without ever having provided you their email address or said ‘yes’ to a specific request you’ve made?
You might say, "No, because they’re not on my email list."
But I’d invite you to consider that for an Attraction Marketer, the correct answer would be "Yes, because they have taken at least one action that indicates they’re interested in the value I’m providing."
As an Attraction Marketer, your job is to attract people towards you by providing value. And having received that value, the person is compelled to take action.
In any given interaction — and, yes, reading your blog can be considered an action — your goal is to move that person one step closer to what you’re offering. That’s it. Just one step. And because you’re offering a range of opportunities, it may not always be clear which one that person may take advantage of.
A regular reader might simply read your posts and click on the occasional AdSense ad. Ok. Or, that regular reader might become an avid consumer of the affiliate products you’re offering. Cool. Or a Facebook fan might never read your website content and wind up becoming part of your downline. Great.
The point is, in Attraction Marketing, you meet your leads where they already are. And, based on what you’re providing, they’ll choose where they want to go.
This isn’t to devalue building an email list by any means. It is, however, meant to distinguish between "generating leads" and "building a list." Clearly, a list is a collection of leads. But your leads aren’t necessarily on your list. Not yet, anyway.
Next: 6 free lead generation methods you can use to build your business.
No related posts.
