Sign Up Free to View All Services & Prices

Small business owners have many reasons for seeking out the services of a lead generation company

The best part of pay-per-call lead generation is you don't have to stress about spinning your wheels trying to market your business online... you just have to focus on answering the phone, booking the business, providing good customer service and building your fine reputation!

Countless businesses have turned to online lead generation to grow their bottom-line because they either do not have an online presence and need one, or do not have the time investment required to learn how to generate leads online.

Most business owners have a difficult time learning and managing search engine optimization (SEO), Adwords, social media, content marketing, reputation management and all the other facets that go into effective online lead generation marketing. This is especially true when all their time is absorbed into running their business and servicing customers.

The solution is, small business owners benefit from online lead generation by using their marketing and advertising budget to implement lead gen marketing strategies to grow their business. Once the leads come in and convert to new business, there will be new profits to invest back into getting more leads.

Before you decide if lead generation is right for you, there are a few things you should know.

 

Is online lead generation worth it?

 

Every business owner knows... if your business is not growing it is dying. Therefore, an effective lead generation strategy is essential to your business growth and health. When it comes to buying leads for your business, there are a couple of things you need to consider before you invest your marketing and advertising budget.

1. Are they qualified leads? There is no point in paying for leads that are not targeted to your business niche. Another issue is how old are the leads? You want to make certain the leads you buy are fresh and are people who need the services you offer. Are they live leads or email inquiries? It is better to have a lead calling you on the phone than an email inquiry. People who call you on the phone are typically ready to make a decision whereas email tends to be more of a general inquiry with less urgency.
2. Are they exclusive leads? You never want to purchase leads that are shipped out to you and 2 or 3 competitors. This will dilute your chances of getting new business and erodes profit margins from bidding wars that inevitably occur.
3. How much does the lead generation company charge? This is really relative to the previous two points. You need to weigh out the overall lead quality to the cost per lead. If the leads are not converting they are not worth a penny. If you are closing 7 out of 10 lead calls, you just hit pay-dirt! You need to know how much profit you could gain by getting quality exclusive leads calling you on the phone every day. The cost per lead depends on your type of business and size of the local market. The typical fees for exclusive leads that call your phone are $20 to $60 per call depending on your niche.

5 top five online lead generation tips to help you grow your business.

 

1) Website leads:

Implement best practices for optimizing your website and landing pages for better lead generation. Your website is the first impression people get of your business online and optimizing it for capturing leads should be your most important first step.

The questions you need answers too are:

• Is your site navigation easily understood by visitors and can they navigate through your content easily?
• Does your content engage the customer; provide value and information to help customers make a buying decision while on your site?
• Do you have multiple unobtrusive calls to action above and below the fold?
• Are your services and pricing easy to follow and transparent?
• Does your website have ease of access to a phone number, web forms, business address, hours and directions?

A lead generation website for a local business is very much like any website except the web design and the copy is designed for one purpose, and that is to get your phone ringing with new sales leads.

There are many great looking business websites out there but most were designed to look good but fail hard when it comes to converting website visitors into paying customers.

A lead generation website would incorporate:

• responsive design so the site looks great and works on desktop, tablet, and mobile (this is critical as local business search is often more than 50% on mobile)
• analytics to track user behavior, time on page, visitor conversions and much more.
• heat maps to track on-page mouse movements
• retargeting to tag site visitors for further remarketing
• A/B split testing for improving conversions
• Call tracking 

 

2) Lead generation through organic search results:

Another specialty of online lead generation is search engine optimization (SEO) which means having your website rank in the organic search results for the key search terms your customer will use to find you online.

Is your site is not listed on page 1 for your key search terms for your niche in your city? Being found in organic search results only happens with solid SEO practices and is a key lead generation solution for your website to be a profitable asset for your business.

While there are many factors to SEO, your number one factor to implement is good quality content which will get shared on social networks and gain backlinks naturally.

How profitable is organic lead generation?

Here’s what the most recent organic ranking study by Moz.com shows:

• On average, 71.33% of searches result in a page one organic click.
• Page two and three get only 5.59% of the clicks.
• On the first page alone, the first 5 results account for 67.60% of all the clicks
• The results from position 6 to 10 account for only 3.73%.
  Source: moz.com

It is pretty clear, organic ranking in the top of page one for your keyword is crucial to lead generation marketing online!

3) Pay per click (PPC) lead generation:

Generating leads through PPC can be a costly and time-consuming task when you first start out. For this reason, many may think PPC Marking is not a viable lead generation technique. There is much more to a PPC campaign than just posting a couple of ads and expecting to make sales. When done properly, PPC lead generation for local businesses can be very effective. Here are the top 3 PPC platforms for local businesses:

1. Adwords
2. Facebook
3. Yahoo/Bing

4) Social media lead generation:

Businesses become the stories people tell about them. In today’s internet marketing scene it is not an option to leave out social media from your marketing strategy. It is well-known people buy first from those they know, like or trust. There is no better platform to engage and bond with your leads than on social media. Social media marketing is not about sales it is about building your brand to be known, liked and trusted... in other words - shared, recommended, tweeted, endorsed.

The top social networks for local business are:

• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Twitter
• Google+
• Youtube

5) Email marketing lead generation:

Building an email list is still a profitable asset generating activity for business. However, very few local businesses do engage in email marketing. Primarily because they don't have the time to write emails, feel their customers will not respond or be irritated.

The truth is, it does take time to write good emails and some customers will be annoyed but...

If you think email marketing is not important to your business carefully consider these research stats by Fluentco.com

When asked: Have you ever purchased a product after receiving (via device) an email about it?

• 43% purchased on a website
• 45% purchased in a retail store
• 38% purchased on mobile
  Source: www.fluentco.com

 

What are the Benefits of outsourcing online lead generation?

As a small business owner, you need a constant flow of new customers. In today’s tech-savvy world, your customers first turn to the internet to find products and services they need. Most small business owners do not have the internet marketing skills, time or budget required to capitalize on internet lead generation.

An online lead generation company can help make this happen in many ways. They have the skills to collect leads from websites, social media, citation sites, and countless other avenues. While the lead generation company invest the time and money in lead generation, small business owners only pay for the leads they receive.

Most small businesses fail at lead generation because they are unable to find the right target audience for their services and products. Not targeting the right customers online can quickly eat up any marketing budget and not deliver qualified leads.

Online Lead Generation Companies have the expertise:

The internet seems like the Wild Wild West to most business owners and most are too consumed with running their business to learn the ins and outs of internet marketing. That is why they hire outside companies to build a website and do search engine optimization (SEO). But that is where most business owners stop.

There are many opportunities to generate leads on the internet. A few examples of what you should at least be doing to generate leads online are:

• Website optimized for lead capture
• Squeeze pages/landing pages
• SEO for high traffic keyword searches
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Video marketing
• Optimized citations
• Reputation management
• Optimized social media profiles/pages
• Social proof
• Pay per click advertising
• Remarketing
• Lead generation software

A look at a pay-per-call lead generation:

For small local businesses, nothing beats a customer calling you on the phone to book an appointment.

So how can pay-per-call benefit your company?

Let’s look at a home service business like a contractor, plumber or roofer. And let’s say overall you profit an average of $4,000 per job.

From experience, you know you can close 1 in 3 phone calls from people looking for your service.

If your cost per phone call from lead generation services is $40, you just invested $120 to profit $4,000. Most smart business owners would make that deal all day long, wouldn’t you?

Let's also look at an appliance repair service. For this example, we will assume an average repair job is $300 and the cost per lead is $15. This is a $45 investment in phone leads to pocket $300.

These examples show how investing your marketing budget with a lead generation company that specializes in small local businesses can add consistent profit to the bottom line

The best part of pay-per-call lead generation is you don't have to stress about spinning your wheels trying to market your business online... you just had to focus on answering the phone, booking the business, providing good customer service and building your fine reputation!

Lead generation companies save you time and expense:

Many business owners look at the cost per lead and do not realize all that goes into lead generation. The reason is most small business owners do not know the cost to obtain a lead. If they did, they would see the value in contracting out their online marketing.

Most of the business owners we have worked with either realized they did not have the expertise or tried to do online marketing themselves spending thousands with nothing to show for their efforts.

In the pay for performance lead generation model, you pay for qualified leads exclusive to your business and not shared with your competitors. All the research, set up and investment risk is on the lead generation company.

Your lead generation results are predictable:

Once all the lead generation systems are set up and generating calls, you will be receiving a fairly stable flow of leads. On your end, all you need to do is answer the phone and close the lead to get the business.

What to Know Before purchase business leads:

There are many different lead generation companies out there but not all are the best option for small businesses that provide local products and services.

Here are a few things you need to know:

• Are the leads exclusive
• Are the leads in your service area exclusive to your business
• Are the leads a live phone call
• Are the leads tracked and recorded
• Are you required to pre-purchase a leads package
• Are you locked into a contract

 Is Your Website Set up to Generate Leads?