When it comes to generating leads, a common mistake we see many businesses make is investing money in external lead sources, such as buying leads from online directories. The outcome? A crippling dependency that wastes money and generates poor results.

What these businesses don’t understand is how easy it is to generate their own leads by taking control of their website and creating lead generation opportunities that align with their business goals. And by generating their own leads, they’d be taking advantage of three key benefits…

Benefits of Generating Your Own Business Leads

1. Control: In order to eliminate your reliance on buying leads, you would be taking control, both in terms of your website and your business’ lead generation activities. And ultimately, by nixing your dependency on paid leads from online directories and taking lead generation into your own hands, you’re taking control of your business’ destiny.

2. Savings: By implementing your own lead generation processes, you’ll save a lot of money because rather than buying leads, you’ll be generating leads organically. Research has consistently shown that companies focusing on inbound lead generation experience a 62% lower cost-per-lead than companies that use outbound tactics for lead generation.

3. Quality: Because you will be able to tailor your lead generation activities to attract the exact type of prospects you’re seeking for your business, the leads you generate will be of much higher quality. And higher quality leads equals a better lead-to-customer conversion rate!

Companies are starting to realize the value in managing their own lead generation efforts. The Lauterstein-Conway Massage School is a prime example of a company that has transformed its business by eliminating its dependency on buying leads from online directories and instead taking lead online generation in-house. Spending $40 per lead on two external lead directories and having no control of its website led to poor lead quality, low conversions, and minimal sales, and the massage therapy school knew it needed to make a change.

As a result of taking control of its own website and lead generation activities by creating content marketing offers, building landing pages to capture leads, and starting a business blog, the Lauterstein-Conway Massage School doubled traffic, generated an impressive 25% conversion rate and higher quality leads, and saved $35k from its marketing budget in 2010. The school now uses its website as the main lead generation tool and no longer uses external sources for paid leads. You can read the full success story here.

What Next?

If your business currently depends on paid leads, it may be time to make a change. Take control of your website, and get it situated on a content management system (CMS) like HubSpot, which enables you to quickly edit your website’s content, easily create landing pages and conversion forms around your marketing offers, and manage and analyze all functions of your lead generation efforts.

Chances are, you’ll start to see some favorable results — and your marketing budget will be eternally grateful.

Now go forth and start generating your own leads!

Photo Credit: Daniel Borman

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HubSpot/~3/s7OJwv7j0h0/3-Reasons-to-Stop-Buying-Leads-Start-Generating-Your-Own.aspx

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In the world of inbound marketing and social media, lots of fluffy terms like engagement and conversation get thrown around. But for marketers social media should be about one thing: leads. If your social media marketing efforts aren’t driving revenue for your businesses, it is time to evaluate your strategies and tactics. Many marketers are leaving far too many leads on the table.

Lets take a look at opportunities that many marketers are missing in the battle for online lead generation. Many of these issues stem from not including calls to action (CTAs) alongside valuable and relevant content that is being shared on social media.

7 Missed Social Media Lead Generation Opportunities

1. No Blog CTA – Business blogs are great, because they are a social media asset that a company owns and completely controls. Businesses that blog get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t. However, it doesn’t help your business if those new visitors remain anonymous. Many businesses forget to include CTAs on their blog, preventing traffic from turning into leads. At HubSpot, we have found that putting CTAs at the end of blog posts works well to increase lead generation.

2. No Referral Process – If you are sending social media followers to interesting blog content with CTAs, then some of them will become leads for your business. The next problem to solve is getting more followers so that you can continue to grow your flow of new leads. It is important to have some type of process that encourages people to follow your business on social media and recommend others to follow your business. This process could be a contest on Twitter or Facebook or could be as simple as occasionally asking your followers to recommend to others in their online community to follow your business.

3. Having a Facebook Page Without A Landing Page – The fewer clicks needed for someone to become a lead for your business, the better. One way to reduce this friction is to integrate lead capture forms into social media platforms where possible. You can add an offer and landing page as part of your Facebook page. If you are a HubSpot customer or trial user, you can now do this very easily.

4. Missing Social Media Bio Opportunities – Often the first pieces of content a potential new follower or lead sees on the social Web is your profile information. On Twitter, for example, the profile information for your account is in the sidebar of your page. There, most businesses simply put in the link to their home page. However, it is a better option to send them to a custom page only for Twitter users that features special content as well as a relevant offer to people who may follow you on Twitter.

5. Missing Social Signature Links – Signatures matter whether they are in your email, a blog comment or on a site like LinkedIn. Forgetting to include a signature with a link is a major mistake. When selecting the link to go into your signature, make sure you pick a relevant resource that also has potential to convert some visitors into leads for your business.

6. Boring Content – You can have the most amazing CTA and lead generation offer in the world, but if it is surround by boring content, no one will ever see it. If your content is boring and talks only about your product, it won’t attract any attention through social media or any other channel, for that matter. So focus on creating content that is about your industry and the problems that your customers are trying to solve.

7. Too Many Clicks – Don’t make people work hard. In the case of social media lead generation, working too hard means making people click too many times to find the information they want. Going from anonymous Web visitor to a lead could also involve a lot of work. Examine your lead generation paths throughout your social media tactics and make sure that you have reduced friction as much as possible.

Great social media marketing is about combing awesome and relevant content with voluntary opportunities for prospects to get closer to your business, whether that’d mean becoming a follower, subscriber or a lead.

What other missed opportunities would you add to this list?

Free Social Media Marketing Kit

Learn How to Leverage Social Media for Your Business.

Download the free kit for all the tips and tricks you’ll need to harness the power of the social mediasphere.

Connect with HubSpot:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HubSpot/~3/SDpJBkBh1Ag/7-Missed-Social-Media-Lead-Generation-Opportunities.aspx

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HubSpot’s latest 2011 “State of Inbound Marketing” report is now available for download. The report is based on data from a recent survey of 644 professionals familiar with their business’ marketing strategy.

The research indicates that inbound marketing dominated organizations experience a 62% lower cost per lead than outbound marketing dominated organizations. This finding is remarkably consistent from year to year.

Previous studies conducted in 2009 and 2010 showed strikingly similar results: the 2009 survey showed that inbound marketing dominated organizations experienced a 61% lower cost per lead; in 2010 the delta was 60%.

Other key takeaways include:

• The gap between spending on inbound v. outbound continues to widen: In 2009, inbound marketing had a 9% greater share of the lead generation budget; in 2011 inbound’s share was 17% greater.
• Blogs and social media channels are generating real customers: 57% of companies using blogs reported that they acquired customers from leads generated directly from their blog.
• More and more business are blogging: Businesses are now in the minority if they do not blog.  From 2009 to 2011 the percentage of businesses with a blog grew from 48% to 65%.
• Businesses are increasingly aware their blog is highly valuable: 85% of businesses rated their company blogs as “Useful”, “Important” or “Critical”; a whopping 27% rated their company blog as “Critical” to their business.

Download the 2011 State of Inbound Marketing report now.

Live Webinar: 2011 State of Inbound Marketing

Learn the latest findings from the 2011 State of Inbound Marketing Report.

Join this webinar to hear how inbound marketing channels compare to outbound channels.

Connect with HubSpot:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HubSpot/~3/dB2cYd8NfkM/Inbound-Leads-Cost-62-Less-than-Outbound-New-Data.aspx

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In the world of inbound marketing and social media, lots of fluffy terms like engagement and conversation get thrown around. But for marketers social media should be about one thing: leads. If your social media marketing efforts aren’t driving revenue for your businesses, it is time to evaluate your strategies and tactics. Many marketers are leaving far too many leads on the table.

Lets take a look at opportunities that many marketers are missing in the battle for online lead generation. Many of these issues stem from not including calls to action (CTAs) alongside valuable and relevant content that is being shared on social media.

7 Missed Social Media Lead Generation Opportunities

1. No Blog CTA – Business blogs are great, because they are a social media asset that a company owns and completely controls. Businesses that blog get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t. However, it doesn’t help your business if those new visitors remain anonymous. Many businesses forget to include CTAs on their blog, preventing traffic from turning into leads. At HubSpot, we have found that putting CTAs at the end of blog posts works well to increase lead generation.

2. No Referral Process – If you are sending social media followers to interesting blog content with CTAs, then some of them will become leads for your business. The next problem to solve is getting more followers so that you can continue to grow your flow of new leads. It is important to have some type of process that encourages people to follow your business on social media and recommend others to follow your business. This process could be a contest on Twitter or Facebook or could be as simple as occasionally asking your followers to recommend to others in their online community to follow your business.

3. Having a Facebook Page Without A Landing Page – The fewer clicks needed for someone to become a lead for your business, the better. One way to reduce this friction is to integrate lead capture forms into social media platforms where possible. You can add an offer and landing page as part of your Facebook page. If you are a HubSpot customer or trial user, you can now do this very easily.

4. Missing Social Media Bio Opportunities – Often the first pieces of content a potential new follower or lead sees on the social Web is your profile information. On Twitter, for example, the profile information for your account is in the sidebar of your page. There, most businesses simply put in the link to their home page. However, it is a better option to send them to a custom page only for Twitter users that features special content as well as a relevant offer to people who may follow you on Twitter.

5. Missing Social Signature Links – Signatures matter whether they are in your email, a blog comment or on a site like LinkedIn. Forgetting to include a signature with a link is a major mistake. When selecting the link to go into your signature, make sure you pick a relevant resource that also has potential to convert some visitors into leads for your business.

6. Boring Content – You can have the most amazing CTA and lead generation offer in the world, but if it is surround by boring content, no one will ever see it. If your content is boring and talks only about your product, it won’t attract any attention through social media or any other channel, for that matter. So focus on creating content that is about your industry and the problems that your customers are trying to solve.

7. Too Many Clicks – Don’t make people work hard. In the case of social media lead generation, working too hard means making people click too many times to find the information they want. Going from anonymous Web visitor to a lead could also involve a lot of work. Examine your lead generation paths throughout your social media tactics and make sure that you have reduced friction as much as possible.

Great social media marketing is about combing awesome and relevant content with voluntary opportunities for prospects to get closer to your business, whether that’d mean becoming a follower, subscriber or a lead.

What other missed opportunities would you add to this list?

Free Social Media Marketing Kit

Learn How to Leverage Social Media for Your Business.

Download the free kit for all the tips and tricks you’ll need to harness the power of the social mediasphere.

Connect with HubSpot:

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/HubSpot/~3/SDpJBkBh1Ag/7-Missed-Social-Media-Lead-Generation-Opportunities.aspx

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