There are any number of marketing strategies and finding the ones that work best for your particular business is a challenge. Most marketing activities need to be tested for a while – months usually – to find out how well they’re working, or if they’re working at all. This is time consuming and slow.
So what’s the alternative?
To generate warm leads you need a list. Not just any list, but a list of people who have already shown an interest in what you have to offer.
Sounds like the holy grail, but it’s not that difficult to create this list.
You will need:
- A document that has some of the gold nuggets that you are happy to share to help potential clients (sometimes known as a ‘lead magnet’ or an ‘ethical bribe’)
- A landing page on your website. This is just a page that people go to that is only there to get them to provide their name and email (in return for your free document)
- A means of gathering their data. Maybe MailChimp, AWeber, ConstantContact, GetResponse, Infusionsoft – or one of the many other online data management tools.
- A way to deliver the document. Generally, this will be a hidden page on your website where people are taken when they’ve opted in. Sometimes it will be an email with the document attached that is triggered when the person has confirmed their email address.
Landing pages
Very long landing pages with carefully constructed sales letters used to be common, but today these have been replaced with much shorter messages and/or video content. People have a much shorter attention span and are used to flicking down content until they find something that catches their interest.
Typically a landing page will list the key headlines from your free download document, without giving anything away! Followed by a form asking for a name and email.
Some people add other fields to their form – but my experience is that for every field you add, you decimate* those people willing to complete the form. Ask for a phone number and many people will simply exit. They don’t want unnecessary phone calls.
How do you know that these people are potential clients?
If they’re interested in the document – and that document is relevant to your business offerings – they’ve self-identified.
Not all of them will buy, but they’re interested. That means that some of them will buy and some of them may not buy this time, but may buy in the future.
There’s a saying ‘the money is in the list’ – and it’s true! If you create a good quality lead magnet, that gives people a taste of what you can offer, you’ll certainly start building a strong list.
*Decimate – reduce by one in every ten
