Content Crooner

photo credit: Sirsnapsalot

One of the most forbidding challenges for any business is generating steady leads. Without a stead stream of incoming prospects businesses are enslaved to constant marketing, with every unit of effort producing one unit of success; if that. Instead, businesses can propel themselves into record-breaking sales by executing marketing that produces multiple units of success from just one unit of effort. The long-term ROI benefit of generating your own leads instead of continuously buying leads from others will bolster your business for perpetual success.

The best approach for creating your own self-sufficient stream of leads instead of doggedly pursuing new business is to execute a blend of marketing efforts. Put more marketing lines in the water and you automatically increase your chances of creating continuous leads.

Guide Your Prospects to a Lucrative Landing

Put another line in the water with a landing page. A landing page is different from a fully functional website—it doesn’t feature a full suite of content and images. Instead, these are usually just a single page intended to capture leads online. Your landing page must include a simple form to capture contact information. You will then direct Web traffic to the landing page which offers approximately 250 to 400 words about a specific offer. (SEO Tip: You can also plant a backlink on this page to your main website to drive reverse traffic and to boost your search engine ranking by building your overall number of inbound links.)

While you can certainly use these pages to pursue a direct sale, the main goal of your landing pages should be to build your herd (list of leads and prospects to continuously follow up with and market to). You need to offer something that encourages prospects to submit their personal information, such as a free e-book. You can even state that they need to input their info in order to claim their free gift (free 1-hour consultation, sample product, etc.).

A fine example of an information-based landing-page lead generator is the Calgary Painters Group landing page. First, they get it right by combining copywriting and video! Second, they ask for just a few simple pieces of non-invasive contact information. Third, they give you a solid reason for providing your personal information—a free, informative e-book.

Wake the Dead

Landing pages also provide an excellent opportunity to market a specific product or service. You can easily tie these pages into fresh marketing campaigns without losing people within the sales funnel of your main website. Directing them to a single page generates incredible focus on a particular product or service you’re trying to promote. This is ideal for both new offers as well as trying to rejuvenate older offers that haven’t been selling well (e.g. clearance sales, overstock items), bringing new life to dead campaigns.

Chocolate, Strawberry or Vanilla

Just because someone doesn’t share your over-the-top joy for chocolate ice cream doesn’t make them wrong. There are always going to be those who prefer the sumptuous strawberry or the reserved, yet refined vanilla over the coco bean. You will need to keep this in mind with your landing pages. There may not necessarily be a right or wrong tone that you convey with your landing pages, but there certainly are specific tones and modes of speech that will prove to be much more effective than others. Generate and test several different landing pages to see which tone best zeroes in on your target audience.

Start off by developing chocolate, strawberry and vanilla landing pages:

Chocolate: These are the people who like to indulge themselves. Include appeals to greater leisure time, making exorbitant amounts money, and materialistic values.

Strawberry: Write content that appeals to those who are looking for something new and interesting in their lives. These are people who like to be the first to try something new and thrive on novelty.

Vanilla: Incorporate copywriting that appeals to those seeking classic approaches to business solutions, greater stability in their business and daily lives and a higher quality of life.

After you’ve published your landing pages you need to use analytics tools to test which set of content is converting the most website traffic. The best indicator here is the click-thru rate, measuring how many landing page visitors actually click through to your call to action.

Get this system in place and you’ll feed your own business instead of always having to buy food from others.

To your success,
Andrew Rossillo

Andrew Rossillo is Content Crooner’s Marketing Blogger and Staff Writer. He’s ready to put his years of copywriting and online marketing experience to work for your business—he’ll help you get noticed!