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Lead Generation Process Infographic

Before I introduce this lead generation infographic from my guest author today, just a quick personal note.

Back From Holiday

thanks-paper-pxIt seems forever since I was actually writing on my blog here, because I have had a holiday in the USA, followed by a cruise, followed by a stay in Bridlington for my Dad's 94th birthday.

Much as I have enjoyed myself, the juxtaposition of all these events was awful for me trying and run a weekly blog and Facebook page alongside my trips away. However I managed it by pre-scheduling Facebook posts and a series of blog articles, quite appropriately, on Time Management. james2016-250

I'll write more about my holiday and how I managed it “soon” because I'm still in catch-up mode.

But first I owe a big “THANK YOU” to James McAllister of HelpStartMySite who kept a watchful eye on my blog while I was in the grips of No-Affordable-Internet (aka Atlantic).

I hope James wasn't too overworked “binning” the spam / meaningless comments I seem to be attracting these days, but I was very grateful to leave him in charge, and I came back home to a very healthy looking blog and he did a great job of approving the good comments I received.

I really appreciated James taking time from his busy schedule to help me over this period and I hope I can repay the favor some day.

Thanks also to those loyal readers who still visited even when I was “swanning it” on holiday!

Introducing Brad Shorr of Straight North

And now for the promised lead generation information…..

Straight North is a Chicago based SEO Services company that has been creating and implementing expert SEO campaigns for Chicago clients since 1997.

I am pleased to present to you a lead generation infographic produced by Straight North's Director of Content Strategy, Brad Shorr. This serves as a great blueprint for creating an integrated internet marketing strategy to generate more leads and sales.

Free Lead Generation Blueprint here

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Lead Generation – Points To Ponder

As Internet Marketers, the most important part of our marketing process is finding leads.

The Internet marketing “Lead Generation Ecosystem” infographic created by Brad Shorr of SEO Chicago firm Straight North and shown below (with permission) helps you identify weaknesses — and opportunities — in your marketing efforts. An infographic is quite helpful in this regard, since the mechanics of a lead generation campaign are rather complicated.

A few things you may want to take note of and ponder:

  • Are we conducting the right campaigns? Some companies lock themselves into a mindset that SEO or email marketing is going to be the “magic bullet.” But without testing other approaches, such as social media and display advertising, you’ll never know for sure whether that bullet is aimed at the competition or your own head.
  • Are we capturing the right information? For the most part, online leads are made of phone calls and form submissions prompted by your Internet marketing campaign(s). But do you know which campaigns are producing the leads, and are you aware of all the leads you are receiving? Many companies fail to track phone leads, which are often the best leads. In addition, companies frequently fail to track leads granularly enough to determine which campaigns, keywords, times of day, etc., are driving results. As a consequence, they cannot effectively improve their campaigns.
  • Are we maximizing the lead generation power of our website? These days, effective website content has to be more than just text accompanied by overused stock photography — users are too sophisticated and too accustomed to visual content. Infographics, video, customized imagery, embedded slide presentations and other creative content forms may help you take your lead generation results to a whole new level of excellence.

Lead Generation Infographic

Lead Generation Process

So you can see from the graphic that your leads can come from several sources:

  • Social Sites
  • Display Networks
  • Search Engines
  • Off-site Content
  • Referral Sites

These should all lead to your company website or blog, where prospective clients expect to find:

  • Articles / blog posts
  • eBooks
  • Free information
  • Case studies
  • Webinars
  • Contests

If your content is sufficiently interesting and relevant, your visitor may make an inquiry by phone, or by completing an online form – a direct enquiry, or opting in to receive follow-up information from your auto-responder.

Through following this lead generation process your visitor may be converted to a customer either by automated email marketing, or by telephone interaction with one of your sales team.

Stated baldly like that it sounds simple. If only!

How Does Your Lead Generation Process Compare?

The lead generation process described above is ideal. Many of my readers are solopreneurs.

Some, like me, are part-time – not even full-time in their online business. However, this is an ideal blueprint that you can work towards.

Take a few minutes to look in depth at all the different ways of collecting leads and supplying relevant content for your site.

If you're not covering all of them, treat this as a learning opportunity. Pick one new strategy and work on it. When you're happy with that, pick the next and implement it. 

Note that your company website / blog is the central point of the conversion process, as is the auto-responder which will help you to keep in touch with a prospective client who isn't quite ready to buy yet.

Looking at this ideal process, I can see that – while I have the basics in place – there are many other things I need to work on.

But the beauty of having a blog and an auto-responder are that you can start small and add on extra items as your skills increase.

Professional SEO Services

Although small businesses often try to cut costs and “go-it-alone” with their marketing, sometimes this is false economy and the time and stress you save by hiring a professional can reward you in faster profits.

If you're ready to take the important step of contacting an SEO services company, please contact Straight North and request a quote. I have no business relationship with Straight North, other than appreciation for this lead generation blueprint that I hope you will find instructive.

Over To You

Having seen the lead generation process that professional SEO companies recommend, what do you feel is your top priority?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Joy
 

I left it too late to plan for a financially secure retirement. Don't make my mistake. Start building an extra income with a part-time (or full-time) business online. Think you don't have time? Can't afford the start-up cost? Can't meet sales targets? Contact me for free advice (no obligation) on the best fit for your circumstances.

Enstine Muki - June 13, 2016

Hi Joy,
I appreciate what James did to keep your blog active while you were away. This reminds me of a friend who also took control of my blog some years back when I traveled to Nigeria.

Always exciting to have such people you can trust with your business any time.

Thanks for sharing this infographic. Brad has practically demonstrated they know their stuff.

I think it should all start with the company website. It should have a clear message geared towards conversion else, the traffic will be a waste.

I have had some companies contact me to guide on driving targeted traffic to their sites. A few of them have no idea how to properly use their websites to generate leads.

To them, a website is to give information about the company and it’s services. That’s all.

If a site is not optimized for conversion, I don’t see any need to drive traffic.

Good a thing, the infographic carries the very essential lead generation elements and from this, I know it won’t be wrong outsourcing to Brad and his team.

Hope you are set for another wonderful week

    Joy - June 13, 2016

    Hi Enstine,

    Yes, I was so very grateful to James for helping out with my blog. Getting ready to go on holiday was a mammoth undertaking, but at least that was one box I could happily tick off.

    I was very pleased to share Brad’s lead generation tips – even though it did remind me I still have more work to do on my own site! I’m hoping to get more time to work on it going forward because for the last month it’s just been a matter of maintaining it to keep it running over the holiday.

    Still – I, and most of my readers, already have an active website / blog in place, so that’s the biggest starting point in place and it puts us ahead of some larger companies who just have a static website or an un-updated blog.

    So…. back to work after all my holidays 🙂 Taking a little while to get caught up again!

    Hope you have a great week too,

    Joy – Blogging After Dark

Lea Bullen - June 14, 2016

Hi Joy,

You’re lucky to have someone who can appropriately look over your site while you’re away. Hope you enjoyed the break though.

I think my top priority is getting people to understand what they’re getting on my blog. I think it’s the first step to getting leads and conversions. People are going to move forward if they’re confused.

~Lea

    Joy - June 14, 2016

    Hi Lea,

    Yes, I really appreciated what James did for me and know just how lucky I have been. It was a lovely break – even more so because I didn’t have to worry about my blog!

    You raise a very good point on being clear about what your blog is offering. I suppose it’s largely to do with the About Me page. Yours is good and I think it does show clearly what you’re offering.

    Actually, you’ve helped me realise that, for anyone who lands on my home page, it’s pretty tough to find my About Me page! Thanks for that – added to the “to-do list”.

    I sometimes worry that I’m a bit pushy with what I offer, but on the flip-side there are many blogs I visit where the articles are really interesting but I have no idea what their main business is. On occasions I have opted in to something “elsewhere” and realised later, to my embarrassment, that it’s something someone else I know is offering.

    Working on clarity of purpose is important and I’ll freely admit it’s still a bit of a work in progress for me.

    Joy – Blogging After Dark

Edward Thorpe - June 14, 2016

Hi Joy & Brad,

Uh, bullet to our own head, eh? Apt metaphor. Or would that be an analogy? I’m old and sometimes forget what I know.

Anyway, good post, good tips and thank you Brad for them. And, thank you Joy, for giving up the platform for him to do so…Have a great week.
Edward

Kim Willis - June 15, 2016

Helpful Infographic, Joy

All of the strategies work, providing they’ve been well executed.

My fav lead gen strategies are organic (blogging, video marketing, social media), but sometimes I supplement with some ads on Facebook

Of course, generating leads is one thing, but converting them is vital. Many people struggle to convert!

Thanks Joy

Kim

    Joy - June 16, 2016

    Hi Kim,

    I’m pleased you think the lead generation tips are helpful.

    Yes – a couple of catches…. they need to be implemented well, and the leads need to be retained and ultimately converted into sales.

    Often people end up on so many mailing lists that they just end up having a “mass unsubscribe”, then all that effort has gone to waste. I’m afraid I do every so often – except there are a few core lists I stay on.

    Email marketing isn’t as straightforward as some would have you believe – but still a very important part of the marketing mix.

    Joy – Blogging After Dark

Donna Merrill - June 15, 2016

Hi Joy,

You sure chose a great person to take over your site while you were gone. James is amazing. We are all fortunate to know him.

After reading this, there is still more work for me to do, but isn’t it always that way? We have things set up then have to keep the energy flowing.

I think the most important thing is to have a website where people can find everything about you..They can get a feel of your knowledge and expertise in a specific niche. From there, fee stuff offered, case studies and all you mentioned need to be on that site.

To get people there is the part that people get confused mostly. We need both a good SEO and social interaction. It is very time consuming, but this where one can delegate if they don’t have the time. This is where most of our energy needs to be.

Great stuff!

-Donna

    Joy - June 16, 2016

    Hi Donna,

    It was a great relief knowing that James was “in charge” while I was away. He kept the plugins etc updated as well as checking comments. Brilliant.

    I’m pleased to see our blogs / websites as central to the whole lead generation operation – at least I’ve got that bit well under way!

    Yes, the infographic gives us more work to do, and more things to learn about. It’s never-ending, but it keeps me out of mischief.

    For any reader checking through these comments, I heartily recommend you to visit the post about Email Strategy linked to in Donna’s comment. It will teach you so much more important stuff than just the mechanics of email marketing, which is obviously what comes after the lead generation process. (But before you hop off to Donna’s place, please do share you thoughts on the infographic here.)

    Joy – Blogging After Dark

Louis - June 18, 2016

Always love infographic, it’s a great way to visualize new information and it’s really a great way to learn about something new. And content is definitely important that would provide great value to readers.

    Joy - June 19, 2016

    Glad you like it Louis.

    Which of the lead generation techniques have you found most helpful in your own marketing, or are you likely to be implementing next?

    Joy – Blogging After Dark

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