The Changing Face of Lead Generation
Posted on 17. Oct, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Duct Tape Marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
The Changing Face of Lead Generation
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last few years professing the virtues of what I’ve been calling the lead generation trio made up of some combination or advertising, public relations and referrals.
GoDakshin via Flickr
The idea behind the trio concept is to acknowledge the need to spread your lead generation activities out and diversify them in a manner that allows prospects to experience your brand in different variations and from entirely different points of view.
The components of the lead generation trio are dependent upon one another to work. They support and compliment each other and the sum the effort is definitely greater than the parts.
Lead generation in general has changed dramatically over the last few years as traditional broadcast or outbound methods have grown increasingly ineffective.
This doesn’t mean, however, that marketers are left without proactive methods for generating leads.
The fundamental idea of the blended lead generation approach is still valid, but when choosing members of a lead generation trio, business owners must now take into the account the shifting online and social landscape.
While I still contend that advertising is a primary lead driver when employed correctly, I further believe that SEO, or the ability to be found, and social media, or the ability to create direct engagement, have become primary lead drivers and must be included in any discussion concerned with rounding out the new lead generation trio.
In fact, you could easily make the case that referrals have become a member of the social media family and that public relations is now a subset of SEO. I know this point of view won’t sit well with some PR practitioners, but here’s how I now see the major lead generation activities
Advertising – this includes online ads, offline ads, direct mail, pay per click and the all-important elements of ad testing, conversion and tracking.
I believe every business that focuses on promoting content using advertising tools and incorporates landing pages, including mobile landing pages, into their conversion process can still generate leads in a quasi outbound manner.
The thing that advertising has going for it that no other form of lead generation can match is control. This is the one vehicle that allows you to select who gets your message and when.
SEO – The area of SEO is really much bigger than page and search optimization. I use this term to incorporate the production and use of keyword rich content and the acquisition of links in ways that make it easy for prospects to find your business when they search globally, locally and mobily (I know that’s not a word, but perhaps it should be these days.)
Using this broader description of SEO makes it easy to incorporate a great deal of today’s public relations activity, a great deal of which is designed to create content, links and direct prospect contact under the banner of SEO.
Social media – I’ve been saying this for some time now, but social media behavior and tactics have simply become baked into marketing in general, and of late I’ve seen this behavior mature to the point where it’s become a stable aspect of the lead generation trio.
I know many people still cringe at the idea of social and sales being mentioned in the same sentence, but social platforms have now become such an integral part of content discovery and sharing that it is nearly impossible to effectively generate leads via any form of advertising without the integration of social and most forms of successful SEO now rely on social platforms as well.
In a way social media has become the ultimate referral vehicle. Throw ratings and reviews into the social mix and you’ve pretty much round out the new face of lead generation.
So, if you still view SEO as the art of search engine manipulation or social media as a tactic still struggling to produce ROI, think again. Advertising, SEO and social media are now the foundational elements of a solid lead generation program and like so many things that are meant to go together – you can’t have one without the others.
The SEO Cupcake
Posted on 11. Jul, 2011 by John Jantsch in Blog, Keywords, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Social Media
The SEO Cupcake
This content from: Duct Tape Marketing
When asked to talk about marketing these days I spend increasing amounts of time explaining the notion of being found. Like it or not, generating leads by putting lots of valuable content in the places where people look for just such a thing is central to marketing success these days.
When looking for a simple way to illustrate the important relationship between content, social and SEO, I decided to forgo the obvious pyramid or Venn diagram and chose instead the uber trendy cupcake.
I mean, who hasn’t stood in line these days outside an Airstream trailer in Austin or a chic little boutique in Soho, just to purchase one of these little delights? Okay, maybe you haven’t jumped on this trend just yet, but for illustration purposes the cupcake serves well.
Content – You can’t exactly have a cupcake without, well, the cup. The little wrapper is the foundation for the entire thing. Likewise, content is the underpinning of any attempt to score well in SEO – you need lots of it, in many flavors. In fact, there’s really no reason to preheat the oven without a firm commitment to the production of content.
Keywords – Now, if all you did were serve up wrappers of content you wouldn’t have a very tasty treat. We need to add the cake in your cupcake. We need to test out the flavor combinations that keep your customers coming back for more. Keywords, the actual stuff that prospects put into search engines to find a business like yours, are what give your SEO efforts tastiness and set the table for surfers and search engines alike.
Links – Of course, if you really want to attract the search engine spiders you’ve got to pile on the icing in the form of links pointing the way to your content. Creating great, keyword rich content, is the best way to attract lots of links and form a strong base for mounds of traffic fattening icing.
Social – There, you’ve got an awesome cupcake, now it’s time to add that all important finishing touch. Lots of folks get the connection between social and SEO, but they don’t fully appreciate that social without content turns a scrumptious desert into a health snack. It’s nice, but it won’t satisfy the surfer’s sweet tooth. In this case, one of the best reasons to even grow raspberries (participate in social) is to top off the cupcake and add a very attractive package to your overall content play.
Okay, so today’s lesson leans a bit to the goofy side, but I just couldn’t think of a better way to simplify the interdependent relationship and hierarchy of steps involved in winning the being found game.
Why Email Marketing Doesn’t Work…
Posted on 30. Mar, 2011 by Daniel Levis in Articles, Blog, brand, buzz, email, hype, open, pitch, professional, promise, proof, publicity, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, Traffic
Despite all of the buzz and excitement swirling around social media marketing — much of it driven by hype I might add — email remains the killer app for online marketers who demand an immediate and measurable return from their marketing efforts.
Given a choice between 100 visits driven by social media and 10 from email marketing I’ll take the 10 any day of the week.
My professional opinion is that traffic is only as valuable as the conversion (leads and sales) it brings you. “Buzz” should never be a primary aim, rather a by-product of generating leads and making sales. And in most markets, email driven traffic is 15 to 20 times more likely to convert than social media traffic.
So why are so many marketers struggling these days to make email marketing work?
One reason is because they’re wasting too much of their time with social media.
Here’s the pop theory…
Social networks are like backyard barbecues. You head on over and sit around the barby sippin’ a few proverbial wobbly pops, chatting up the locals, making friends, talking about the weather and the game and other idle gossip. And sooner or later somebody is sure to ask: So what do you do?
And that’s your chance to invite ‘em over to your place — your blog, I mean. And on your blog you’ve got plenty of hearty hospitality that proves you’re a swell guy or gal definitely worth knowing the next time your new-found friends ever need what you’re selling.
Now, even a hair-on-fire social media fanatic will tell you your next step in the long and winding road to revenue is to try and get these visitors to sign up to your email list. So you’ve got an email sign up box on your blog with a delicious free gift your new friends can take home with them. That way you can market to them on demand — well into the future.
Just one problem with all this awesomeness: Way too much work for too little return. You have to sift through far too many of these social media butterflies to find a serious prospect. I mean, why do people go on social media sites? To socialize! That’s why they’re called “Social” networks.
Why not start with quality traffic in the first place…
… People who are actively searching desperately for an answer to the problem you solve. Duh!
Beware the social media cool aid that says you can get all of the traffic you could ever want for free. Nothing’s free. You got into business to leverage yourself, not to become a $2 an hour social media slave.
Go out and buy yourself some decent traffic, or do some good old-fashioned joint ventures, or publicity. And build you list on a solid foundation.
Another reason marketers struggle with email these days — even those who understand that you need quality traffic to begin with — is what I call the curse of voluntary anonymity.
I see this all the time and it breaks my heart.
What am I talking about?
Simply this: Business owners hiding behind their “brand”… or their “product” instead of interacting personally with people.
There is an epidemic of distrust on the Internet…
Unless you’re a known brand like Apple or Amazon, the first thing a new prospect does when they come to your website or blog is try to figure out who the heck you are.
Before they engage with your promise and sign up to your email list, they want to know if you seem honest, competent, and sympathetic. And if they do decide to connect with you via email they want to be subtly reminded of these qualities each time you drop in to say “Hi”…
Yet you’ve seen it a thousand times before… flashy html emails from waxing poetic about — the whole piece written in disembodied voice.
This kind of an approach might work fine in the offline world, but it’s just not how email works. Think about it: email is the most personal marketing medium on the planet. You trade emails with your friends and family. And you do it in plain text. You read those emails. You trust those emails.
If you send flashy looking html masterpieces, instantly you go in the spam folder of your prospect’s brain. Your email looks and feels like an intrusion.
Even if someone does open your email, they’re ten times more likely to trash it. You failed to make a human connection. Email is a one-to-one medium. Get personal, or go home.
One more reason email doesn’t work (the last one I’ve got time for today)…
It’s when marketers become extremists. Instead of walking the middle road between providing valuable information and asking for a purchase, they’re either all content or all pitch.
You need both. If you run your list like a soup kitchen you’re just training people not to buy from you. On the other hand, if you’re emails are just pitch, pitch, pitch — nobody’s going to open them.
Mix it up for heaven’s sake.
Email may not be the idiot proof marketing money machine it once was, but make no mistake, it’s still the cornerstone of Internet marketing.
With a little ingenuity, it’ll work for you just fine.
Until next time, Good Selling!
Why Email Marketing Doesn’t Work… originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
Why People Are Addicted to Info-Products
Posted on 12. Jun, 2010 by Ryan Healy in addiction, attention, Blog, Contributions, dopamine, drug, focus, guru, information, Matt Ritchel, productivity, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, spending, success
Have you ever wondered why people buy dozens of info-products… and yet never seem to get around to consuming them, much less using them?
I have.
And for a long time I just blamed it on people being lazy. In my own case, I blamed it on being too busy with client work to get around to some of those extracurricular learning pursuits not necessary to my daily work.
But there is now new research that discounts “The Laziness Theory” and “The I’m-Too-Busy Theory.”
Turns out, it’s not that people are lazy or unwilling to take “massive action” — it’s simply that living an always-on wired life causes people to become addicted to new information.
Addicted to Information?
I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.
Check out this article — Hooked on Gadgets, and Paying a Mental Price — by Matt Ritchel.
As Ritchel explains, scientists have discovered that reacting to a never-ending stream of “information bursts” causes the brain to become excited and release dopamine, which in turn causes feelings of happiness.
As Wikipedia reports, “Dopamine is commonly associated with the reward system of the brain, providing feelings of enjoyment and reinforcement to motivate a person proactively to perform certain activities.”
So let’s connect the dots…
- Whereas, responding to “information bursts” causes the brain to release dopamine;
- And, whereas, dopamine reinforces the behavior that produced it;
- Thus, replying to emails, tweets, Facebook updates, forum threads, and other forms of real-time interruptions can lead to compulsive behavior, possibly even addiction.
Yikes!
If you’re not careful, you could find yourself checking email dozens of times a day, replying to text messages the minute they arrive, logging onto Twitter multiple times an hour, checking for Facebook updates, seeing what’s popular on Digg…
…and on and on and on in a never-ending dopamine-reinforcement loop.
It’s a dangerous, time-sucking, attention-killing cycle.
Social Media: The Drug of Choice in the 21st Century
Once you’re hooked on social media — with your cell phone in your pocket and your laptop on the kitchen table — you’re little more than a human version of Pavlov’s dog:
- Every time you hear (or see) a notification, you respond immediately…
- Your brain rewards you with a little more dopamine…
- And the cycle becomes a little bit stronger, a little bit harder to break.
The negative side effects of constant distraction (a.k.a. “multi-tasking”) are many.
Ritchel reports, “While many people say multitasking makes them more productive, research shows otherwise. Heavy multitaskers actually have more trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant information, scientists say, and they experience more stress.”
Let’s not beat around the bush here. Research has plainly shown that multitaskers get less done and are more stressed out than people who focus on a single task at a time.
So I think it’s reasonable to ask: Are email and social media keeping you from success? While you’re pondering this, let me tell you…
Why People Pay Good Money for Information…
… Information They Don’t Need and Will Never Use!
Stress and decreased productivity are not the only consequences of an always-online, always-distracted lifestyle.
You may also find yourself inexplicably compelled to buy information — even information you don’t need and will never use.
This is because multitasking literally rewires your brain.
Recent tests conducted at Stanford “showed multitaskers tended to search for new information rather than accept a reward for putting older, more valuable information to work.”
Are you feeling compelled to buy yet another home study course even though you have multiple home study courses gathering dust on your shelves?
Or are you wanting to sign up for another membership site even though you already have multiple online memberships that you never use?
Well, now you know why.
The More Distracted You Are, the More Money Marketers Make
Marketers like to whine about how hard it is to sell to people who are distracted… how there’s so much competition for people’s attention that it’s hard to make a buck.
I think there’s some truth to this. But I think there’s more truth on the flip side of this argument.
Here’s my theory: The more distracted you are, the more money marketers make.
That’s because the more caught up you become in the distraction-dopamine cycle, the more likely it is you’ll continue to reinforce those positive feelings by seeking out new information.
And the more you seek out new information, the easier it will be for marketers to sell you “secrets” you think you don’t yet possess.
Which means: Not only does multitasking rob you of your productivity, it robs your bank account, too!
Now you know why all the gurus want you to follow them on email, Twitter, and Facebook.
They want you to be distracted.
Because the more distracted and confused you are, the easier it will be for them to get your credit card number — and sell you yet another overpriced course you’ll never use.
With that in mind, don’t you think it’s time to reconsider your use of social media?
Tips for Breaking Information Addiction
(And Taking Back Your Life)
In spite of the risks, I don’t necessarily recommend swearing off cell phones and social media. So here are a few suggestions for getting value out of social technology without letting it rule your life:
- Limit your connections. Connect only with people you really want to connect with. Don’t follow just to be followed.
- Tether social media profiles together so you can control multiple profiles from a single control panel or with a single RSS feed.
- Spend no more than 30 minutes a day on social media. Set aside a specific time to update your profiles and reply to people.
- Turn your cell phone off to block unplanned interruptions. Being accessible all the time should not be a badge of honor.
- Use a tool like RescueTime.com to block distracting web sites during periods of focus time.
- Be cautious about spending money on new information, especially if you have information you’ve paid for that you haven’t used yet.
As we sail deeper into the uncharted waters of the 21st Century, I believe one of the keys to success will increasingly become a person’s ability to block out distractions and focus on completing one task at a time.
Ultimately, self-control and constant vigilance win the day.
Why People Are Addicted to Info-Products originally appeared on The Michel Fortin Blog. Please visit to subscribe to it, or Tweet This.
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