Category: Sales

Lead Generation Marketing: How Pay-Per-Call Marketing Benefits You

In order to maximize your organization’s revenue, you’ll need to invest in a solid lead generation marketing strategy. Not everybody knows which avenue they should take, though.

Pay-per-call marketing is a reliable method your organization can use to acquire interested customers. For those who are unsure of how to get started, we’ve put together a comprehensive guide that details everything you need to know.

Let’s dive in.

What Exactly Is Pay Per Call Marketing?

As the name suggests, pay-per-call marketing involves an advertiser allocating a specific amount of money to publishers. The publishers then generate customer calls on their behalf.

In practice, this would look something like a business working with a specialized marketing firm in order to encourage prospective customers to reach out to them by phone.

For each quality call that the publisher generates, they receive compensation.

Calls must satisfy certain criteria in order to be considered valid. In general, a call will be logged by the publisher if the customer who reaches out then speaks with a representative from your sales team for a predetermined amount of time.

This is known as the ‘call duration’ and is established before your pay-per-call marketing campaign begins.

Similar to how you can closely monitor the performance of a pay-per-click digital marketing campaign, you can do the same with pay-per-call marketing. This allows you to double down on strategies that have proven to be effective while reworking those that aren’t quite meeting your standards.

When configured correctly, this type of marketing can provide an exponential return on your initial investment. Keep this in mind if you’re on the fence about whether or not you should pursue it.

What Benefits Can It Provide?

Generating revenue isn’t the only benefit that pay-per-call marketing can offer. In fact, there’s a handful of attributes that make it a worthwhile choice for your marketing strategy.

Let’s explore a few of the most notable.

Avoiding Cold Calling

Let’s face it — cold calls rarely provide the results that you desire. This method also carries the risk of potentially deterring a member of your target audience from interacting with your brand in the future.

This is simply due to the fact that many people perceive cold sales calls as annoying and invasive.

Unfortunately, even a single instance could sour their mood toward your brand. In contrast, inbound calls are far more effective.

By the time somebody has taken the steps to reach out to your company by phone, they have likely made up their mind about whether or not they would like to make a purchase.

In fact, many customers who get in touch with a particular brand often do so in order to learn a bit more information about the company, its products, etc.

So, pay-per-call marketing is able to generate hundreds (and sometimes even thousands) of phone calls that have a significant chance of converting.

Cost Efficiency

Even if a marketing strategy is able to generate a large amount of revenue, it won’t mean much if you also have to allocate significant funds in order to do so. Small businesses, in particular, often find it difficult to leverage a marketing strategy that gives them enough of a return for the money they invest.

In some cases, they may not have a budget large enough to reap the benefits.

Pay-per-call marketing is one of the most reliable ways to get a solid return on your marketing strategy.

Additionally, the overall cost that you will end up paying is highly predictable. Once you have established your call duration and the amount of compensation that your publisher receives per call, you can easily track the amount you spend by looking at your current metrics.

This information provides detailed insight into the performance of your pay-per-call campaign.

Since customers who contact you on their own by phone are already highly interested in what you offer, each call that you end up paying for is notably likely to convert. This means that even a relatively high amount of publisher compensation per call will still provide a significant amount of revenue for your company.

High-Quality Lead Generation

We’ve already discussed how ineffective cold calling can be. Not all leads are created equally, however.

Through other methods of lead generation, you might find yourself in a situation where hundreds or thousands of people make it to your company’s website without intending to make a purchase. In this scenario, these are low-quality leads that are often unlikely to convert.

This is similar to how it is much more beneficial to receive a high amount of engagement on a social media post, blog, etc. as opposed to solely garnering an extremely high number of impressions.

Pay-per-call marketing is well known for its high-quality lead generation capabilities. This ensures that you never encounter a situation where you have an ‘inflated’ audience full of individuals who aren’t likely to make a purchase.

Generating high-quality leads is also essential for building a community around your brand.

Lead Generation Marketing Can Be Game-Changing

With the above information in mind, you’ll be able to ensure that your lead generation marketing strategy is as effective as possible. From here, you’ll be able to hit metrics like never before.

Want to learn more about what we at HyperTarget Marketing have to offer? Feel free to reach out to us today and see how we can help.

June 21, 2021
What Is a Qualified Lead and How Do You Determine One?
When marketers segment their email list, their emails receive a 39% higher open rate. This is just one example of the positive impact of targeting your audience based on data. Focusing your marketing and sales efforts on those most likely to respond can save your business time, money, and energy.

But how do you do this? That’s where qualified leads come into play. Read on to learn all about what a qualified lead is, why it’s important to qualify your leads, and how you can do it.

What Is a Qualified Lead?

First things first: what even is a qualified lead? Essentially, a qualified lead is an individual that fits your target customer profile and has the potential to become a customer.

Qualified leads allow you to focus marketing and sales efforts on potential customers rather than those who will likely never buy. This saves your business resources like time, money, and energy. With a targeted strategy, you can hone in on your best prospects to lead them through your digital marketing funnel toward a sale.

To consider a customer as a qualified lead, they must meet minimum criteria. The criteria are not standardized; you create them based on your business and sales funnel.

It’s important to remember that people must opt-in to be considered a qualified lead. Cold prospects and purchased email lists don’t count. A potential customer must “raise their hand,” so to speak, to become a qualified lead.

In most businesses, there are two types of qualified leads: marketing qualified leads (MQL) and sales qualified leads (SQL). These distinctions help you determine where a potential customer is in your sales funnel.

MQLs meet the minimum criteria to be considered worth marketing to. Your marketing efforts can then lead them toward becoming a sales qualified lead, who is then passed off to the sales department. SQLs have indicated an interest or need for your product or service.

Why Qualified Leads Are Important

The reality is that not everyone will be interested in your product or service. Qualified leads help you avoid wasting resources on those who cannot or will not turn into customers.

Essentially, a qualified lead allows you to skip wasted efforts and hone in on those that will be most impactful. It is easier to convert warm prospects than cold prospects. Focusing efforts on qualified leads will make your business more effective and efficient.

Distinguishing marketing qualified leads from sales qualified leads is also helpful. It allows the marketing department to pass the lead off to the sales department at the exact right moment.

How to Create Qualified Lead Criteria

Clearly having criteria that qualify leads is important. But how do you create it?

It’s important to remember that the criteria used to qualify leads differ between businesses. The following is an overview of the process you can use to create and use qualified lead criteria for your business.

Lead Generation Strategy

There are two main ways to generate leads which you can later qualify to determine how warm of a prospect they are. You’ll want to start by determining your lead generation strategy.

The first method is sales prospecting. This is where you find individuals who match your target customer persona and gather their information.

You’ll start by making a list of things like their name, job, email address, company, phone number, and any other helpful information. These are cold prospects who have not opted in for communications. Once you reach out, you can determine if they are qualified leads or not.

The other method of lead generation focuses on finding warm prospects. With SEO content marketing or social media, you can get individuals to opt-in to your marketing funnel. The goal is to attract customers get them to share their information voluntarily, thus becoming a qualified lead.

Gather Info

Once you know how you will generate leads, you need to figure out how you will qualify them. When you contact your prospects or get individuals to opt-in, you’ll want to gather some information that will help with this.

The information you collect will differ between businesses. Therefore, you’ll want to make a list of questions based on your own sales funnel. Make a list of questions that will determine:
- Are they the right fit for your product/service?
- Are they the key decision-maker?
- Are they willing/able to make this purchase?
- Do they need this product/service? Do they know they need it?
- Are they currently looking to change/add this product/service?
- Do they have a budget for this? What is it?
You can ask these questions while cold calling or with forms you use for customer communications. You may also want to uncover specifics of their company with survey questions.

Lead Scoring

Once you have the information you need, you can score your leads to determine if they are worth focusing your marketing efforts on. The way you score leads will depend on your company.

Generally speaking, marketing qualified leads are more deeply engaged. You can identify them with the information they provide during your lead generation phase. You can also use other data, including:
- web pages they’ve visited
- their downloads (case studies, ebooks, etc.)
- other engagement with your business’ content
Sales qualified leads are individuals you deem worthy of a direct follow-up. These are individuals who indicate that they are close to a sale by doing things like requesting a quote or consultation or signing up for a free trial. Essentially, if leads do anything else that indicates they are close to a sale or ready to make a purchasing decision you should qualify them as SQL.

Use Qualified Leads in Your Marketing Strategy

Focusing your efforts on a qualified lead will make your marketing and sales communications much more effective. You can qualify leads by gathering information on those who opt-in and using it to score individuals based on the minimum criteria that you set.

Finding qualified leads can be a time-consuming process. Here at HyperTarget Marketing, we simplify the process by doing the work for you. Learn more today about how our pay-per-call service can help qualified leads start calling you.
April 22, 2021
What You Need To Know About Lead Generation For Small Businesses

Roughly 80% of businesses fail in their first year of operation. The juggle of operating a new business while growing a client base becomes too challenging for the majority of business owners.

While established businesses have time to weather the ups and downs of trends, new business owners need to see results fast if they expect to survive.

The key is as simple as lead generation for small businesses. Lead generation is the engine that brings customers to your door.

But without a solid strategy and a seamless implementation, your business could be sunk before it even gets a chance.

Here’s the way to build those solid leads starting today:

1. Marketing Drives Operations

In traditional business structures operations always came first. A company would develop a product or service and a marketing team would step in.

Those days are gone in the digital economy. In today’s marketplace marketing takes the lead.

Because of the easy availability of data in real-time, marketing professionals can inform changes to goods and service.

They drive operations to create a more customer-focused experience. For small business owners, it means shifting gears in your strategy.

Rather than think like a business owner with a product to sell it’s time to think like a customer. What problem do they have that you are about to solve?

2. Start With Your Brand

This point cannot be emphasized enough: Protect your brand at all costs.

There are numerous ways to build a brand and brand recognition. But your brand can tank in a moment if you don’t have a great online presence and work to make your market strategy simple.

Your lead generation strategy will represent your brand out in the world. If you provide a value proposition that isn’t true to your brand you’ll fail before you begin.

Remember, marketing takes the lead now. Make sure you protect the brand and present your value, not confusion.

3. Retention As A Goal

You don’t just want clients. You want long-term repeat clients who provide the foundation for your business growth.

Embedded in your lead generation campaign should be an eye toward client retention. As part of your brand strategy, your company should be working to build a long-term relationship, not a one-time sale.

It is 5 to 25 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. How does that factor into small businesses who barely have a pipeline at all?

It is too late to think about retention after you’ve acquired a customer. It should be your priority as you start the process.

4. Qualified Leads

Back in the old days of digital marketing, many professionals used to judge the quality of a website by the number of visitors it had.

But business owners quickly found this could be a lot like opening a store that people visited a lot. But they never bought anything.

The same is true with lead generation. You don’t want visitors or leads that are no good to you.

You need to focus on qualified leads. This means crafting your lead strategy toward ROI (return on investment).

5. Proactive Lead Generation

A sales pipeline is like a lake. It needs an inlet and an outlet.

Or it dies.

For many business owners they get so focused on the closing (good) they forget about the pipeline (bad). Unless you have an active an thriving pipeline of qualified leads your business is in danger of dying.

As a result, proactive lead generation needs to be a standard part of your business operations. You and your employees have to focus on client satisfaction, closing deals, lead generation, and brand management.

If there are too many balls to juggle there it is important to get support.

6. Doubling Down

We already mentioned ROI above. The great news about marketing with today’s technology tools is that is directly trackable.

You should be able to calculate every dollar spent and how it led to a sale. This level of data will help you grow your business in ways traditional marketing could not.

The bad news is that many business owners misuse this information. They think, “campaign A is running great, why not try something else?”

Why?

You have proof that your lead generation strategy is delivering results. A wise business owner should invest more heavily in processes that are delivering results.

7. A Clear Process

Lead generation is not an art. It is a science.

Your internal lead generation strategy should be as clear as your billing or account receivable process. Unless you have milestones and clear actions your lead generation is doomed to fail.

Milestones also provide you with internal measuring sticks to judge your progress.

8. Active Buyers

What is the difference between an active and a passive lead? A passive lead might tune out while they stumble upon your ad someplace.

An active lead comes to you. They have been prepared through a lead generation process and are already in the sales funnel.

Active buyers are the leads business owners dream of. They are the investors who really want to buy a house or the moviegoers who can’t wait to stand in line for a film.

Active buyers are already participating in the process. An object in motion tends to stay in motion.

The same is true for a potential client. Keep them moving! Your next step is to nudge them along the sales cycle to buy.

Trust the Best Lead Generation for Small Business

Small business owners often have to wear many hats. In operating their business there is a challenge between keeping existing customers happy and finding new ones.

And marketing investments can be tricky. As soon as one strategy works the entire rulebook seems to change.

That’s where Hypertarget Marketing comes in. We are a performance marketing agency focusing on much more than call tracking.

For business owners who struggle to find qualified leads, our platform delivers results. We help increase ROI in desired channels, provide qualified leads, and maximize conversions and sales.

Don’t waste another penny on marketing guesswork. Come and find out more about Hypertarget Marketing’s success stories.

July 17, 2018
Do Outbound and Inbound Lead Generation Have Anything in Common?
Leads are the life source of every business. But getting them can be a real challenge, especially if you’re using the wrong marketing methods.

Now, there are two forms of marketing brands use to boost their business – outbound and inbound lead generation. A lot of companies juggle between the two and some marketers will even say one is better than the other.

In most cases, outbound marketing gets a bad rap, but don’t give up on it just yet. In this article, we’re going to go over what inbound and outbound marketing have in common and how (or if) you should use the two.

Let’s take a closer look.

What is Outbound Lead Generation?

First, let’s review what outbound marketing is all about. Outbound marketing is oftentimes referred to as disruptive marketing. This is because you’re contacting prospects directly, which may disrupt whatever they’re doing at the time.

For instance, giving a prospect a call, text, or email while they’re washing dishes or watching TV. Back in the day, knocking on someone’s door was a popular method for outbound salespeople. But because of the intrusion it imposes on consumers, it received a bad reputation.

This is especially true for the businesses that abused this method and made consumers hate it.

So a lot of the focus went to inbound lead generation.

What is Inbound Lead Generation?

You can look at inbound marketing as the exact opposite of outbound. In this case, prospects are coming to you, rather than you going to them. This sounds like a gold mine but isn’t always easy to pull off.

One way to get inbound leads reaching out to your brand is to use incentives or information trails that they can follow to your business. This allows consumers to choose whether they want to interact with your brand and when.

Now, there are various ways you can get inbound leads. Two of the most powerful tools you can leverage today are search engines and social media platforms.

The issue is your content trail ages quickly on these channels so it requires consistency in your posts. But that’s the beauty of using content marketing, which is a form of inbound marketing.

Next, let’s take a look at the similarities and differences between inbound and outbound lead generation.

What’s the Difference Between the Two?

Here’s a quick look at what you’ll get with outbound lead generation:
- You choose when interactions occur
- You choose the medium where the interactions occur
- The campaign duration is finite
- The campaign has short-term, but higher costs
- Main mediums used included phone, web, direct mail, and email
- Skills needed include planning, graphic design, internet, and copywriting
Next, let’s review how inbound lead generation is:
- Prospects choose when they interact with you
- Prospects choose the medium used for the interaction
- The campaign duration is indefinite
- The campaign cost is long-term but lower
- The main mediums used include social media, web, search engines, and email
- Skills needed are same as outbound marketing and SEO, social media, and internet marketing
Now that you understand the differences, let’s see what the two have in common.

How Are Inbound and Outbound Marketing the Same?

Inbound and outbound lead generation have key areas in common. For example, the objectives are the same – to get more traffic/calls to increase conversions.

Both require an understanding of the core audience so the campaign is successful. Also, the two fair better when you use incentives to motivate consumers to act.

Last, lead nurturing is essential on both fronts, which can help convert more prospects into customers.

Which Should You Choose for Your Business?

If there’s one thing you’ll learn about business marketing it’s that there’s no black or white. In many cases, there’s black, white, gray, blue, and a host of other variations.

There’s no definitive method a business can use to get great results because there are so many factors at play. For instance, the audience demographic and location, the product/service you’re selling, and the mediums you can reach your audience on.

This is why it’s recommended that you use all available options to test and see what works best for your audience and brand. You may find that a nice combination of inbound and outbound works well for converting your prospects.

Also, keep in mind that inbound marketing yields long-term results.

How You Can Use Both in Your Lead Generation Strategy

Now, there are many ways you can combine inbound and outbound lead generation in your strategy. For instance, you can have a blog and social media accounts to promote your blog content on.

And while that’s generating traffic to your blog, each post has a call to action to convert visitors into a subscriber or buyer.

At the same time, you can use outbound marketing, such as email marketing. All the subscribers you convert from your blog are sent an email directly.

You can promote your content, share tips, and offer discounts on your products or services. But this is just one type of strategy you can use by mixing both forms of lead generation.

There are many different ways you can remix and add to it so definitely play around with your options!

Getting Lead Generation for Your Business

What’s great about the internet is that it makes it easy for brands to market their products and services. However, you need a solid strategy to make it work.

Unless you have experience or the time to learn all there is to know about marketing and inbound lead generation, you should hire a pro.

The experts at Hyper Target Marketing offer a range of services that can help boost the traffic and conversions for your business. This includes PPC campaigns, SEO, social media, pay per call services.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help grow your brand, then contact us today
May 14, 2018
What Pay Per Call Could Mean for Your Business

In theses days leading up to Affiliate Summit, I have been thinking about what it is that we do at HyperTarget. Now I’m not talking about all the fun we have at our offices here in Santa Monica, CA, the many wonderful day to day interactions we have with our clients, or the awesome performance of our sales team (without which we would quickly find ourselves doing nothing at all!). I’m talking about what it is that we do for our client’s businesses, and how we do it.

What We Do

I find it surprising when I talk to people about HyperTarget, how much confusion there is about pay per call marketing. After I finish explaining that I do not create phonebooks for a living (though if there was enough interest, I would) the next question is always the same, “Do you have a website?” I think that this question is not rooted in an ignorance of how business, especially marketing, is done today, but rather a real confusion regarding how we remain relevant in the digital space when we work with a marketing platform that is almost 150-years old.

The question is one that I encounter often, and for all intents and purposes is justly founded. Traditionally, we have tended to think of the telephone as an older means of lead generation. The first thing that comes to mind are those pesky 5 o’clock phone calls that annoyed many households and ruined plenty of family dinners growing up–nothing like bothering people to make them receptive to a pitch.

Change for the Better

Image courtesy of The Movie Network

However, when the first internet capable phones were introduced to the market in the early 2000s, the dichotomy that existed between phone use and internet access came to an end. Now, not only were the same networks providing the infrastructure for the exchange of telephonic and internet data, users could access this data in tandem. Suddenly, the user experience of researching a phone number and making the call were streamlined into a single activity.

It is with this development that pay per call has truly come into its own. While pay per call is an effective affiliate strategy across all platforms, the fact that people are researching purchases on a device that has the capabilities to make those fact-finding and converting calls opens up new possibilities for growth in the industry. This is only compounded by the fact that around 30-50% of inbound calls convert versus the 2.35% conversion rate of most pay per click campaigns.

Why Pay Per Call

This is the brilliance behind adopting a pay per call strategy for inbound marketing and qualified lead generation. First, the leads come to you. Whereas in the past the process of finding leads, buying leads, and networking may have been an absolute necessity in any sort of lead generation, today the problem is sifting through the enormous amount of data available to establish leads. Pay per call represents an inversion of the telemarketing paradigm as far as having an enormous source of potential leads out of which only those who are interested call you, reducing the need for outbound marketing.

The question remains, are these “Glengarry” type leads? Yes, and without the cold calls. In addition to the advantage of having leads call you, these leads are qualified by the fact that when they call you they are expressing interest in your product or service. That is why you see conversion rates that are typically over 25% in pay per call campaigns. And as great as it can be to build brand awareness through pay per click campaigns, the ultimate goal of any campaign is to be closing.

Do you think that this sounds like something that you would be interested in? If so, see how much power a phone call can do for your business:

July 22, 2015
Generational Bias May Not Be Founded

“Know your audience” is the marketing industry’s equivalent to Socrates’ directive “gnothi seauton” (though perhaps marketing could use a little more self-awareness from time to time).

Know your audience. It sounds like a simple imperative, especially when big data allows us to see trends that in the past would have seemed unfathomable or strictly hypothetical. This understanding is even more available when we consider all the interactions that occur publically across different social media platforms, providing direct feedback on our marketing efforts.

Understanding your audience is essential during the brainstorming process before launching a marketing campaign. However, from a practical standpoint it is necessary to know where that audience resides. Traditionally choosing a platform for a particular marketing campaign has relied heavily on demographics, such as using print media and television for Baby Boomers and social for Millennials. But as hinted at in our previous post on multi-pronged marketing, and expounded upon by Liane Dietrich in her recent post on Marketing Land, this arbitrary division of different platforms should come to an end.

We (Were) the Future

(via Unsplash.com by Jeff Sheldon)

Liane writes, “Cross-device behavior is often seen as being associated with Millennials. This young, tech-savvy demographic group of digital natives is known for using multiple platforms to connect with brands, research, and shop for products.” As a member of Generation-Y myself, I understand the point that she makes here. I use Twitter for social interactions, LinkedIn for business networking and Netflix for entertainment. Not only that, my entire career has taken place sitting in front of a computer screen (a little sad, but true).

Often times the driving force behind this level of engagement across different platforms comes from a generational desire to do things better, more efficiently and to not heed the warnings and advice of earlier generations (for better or worse). In fact, old media in some ways has been dubbed “old” because of its association with its primary demographic. I remember one time when I wanted to get a new bed. I mentioned something about it at a family dinner to my grandmother. One week later, she came back to the house with a bundle of newspaper clippings of different beds. Little did she know that earlier that week, I got a bed off Craigslist, ordered sheets from Ikea and had a custom pillow made on Etsy.

Change is Happening (Not Where You’d Expect)

Whether due to the increasing integration of “things” with the internet, increased exposure, or negative feedback like the situation described above, the demographics of those using multiple platforms is changing. According Liane, a study done by ComScore reveals that people over the age of 55 are now the fastest growing group of multi-platform adopters. So it high time that we abandon our preconceptions about where our target audience is. We live in a global society, but it is important to not forget about the generational diversity that exists across different marketing platforms.

May 28, 2015
The Benefits of a Multi-Pronged Marketing Plan
Fact: Every business needs customers. That goes undisputed. Generating qualified leads should be in the fore mind of every person working in the digital marketing sphere. This circle continues to expand as traditional marketing disciplines finally shuck their aversion to going all-in with digital services.

“By 2019, 35% of ad spending will be online. Digital marketing is getting to be a bigger piece of the pie — and that means that traditional marketing and advertising agencies are moving into the digital space in a big way.”

– Moz webinar (4/7/15)

Photo via Unsplash.com by Todd Quackenbush

Changing of the Guard

This is so true. Many old-school PR and advertising agencies have struggled to embrace the online marketplace. I remember in the mid-1990’s when most companies thought “this whole having-a-website thing” was a passing fad. Furthermore, popular sentiment back then was businesses that included a URL in their marketing materials or ads were thought to be pandering to a silly trend.

My, how things have changed! Marketing and advertising are the latest industries to fall prey to the “how-the-heck-do-we-go-digital” trap, but these industries are certainly not alone in their battle to stay relevant.

Print media (book, magazines, and other periodicals) and entertainment (traditional television, the entire distribution system of both music and film) have struggled with this evolution for the last 20 years, with no end in sight.

These industries, and many others, have to continually reinvent themselves. The threat of becoming obsolete has proved to be a real one. Trying to compete with the constant barrage of new ideas and platforms is tough. Staunchly holding on to outdated, conventional methods and hoping the “trend” will pass isn’t a recommended strategy.

So, what are the recommended strategies then? With all the online chatter, what’s the best way to stand out from the crowd? What does a thorough marketing plan really need?

The Multi-Pronged Approach

Luckily, the best marketing strategy is a comprehensive one: a plan that includes both modern marketing methods and long-established promotional techniques. There are plenty of ways to spread the word online: SEO, pay-per-call/click, mobile promotions, link building, social media advertising, PR campaigns, pre-video snippets, native or sponsored content, banner ads… The list goes on.

The goal is to get your brand or message in front of the right set of eyes. The goal is to target consumers who are already actively interested in your product or service. But this must be done in a natural way.

We live in a consumer culture. Some people get squeamish when human beings are referred to as “consumers”. But hey – I buy things. I’m a customer, a purchaser, a user of services. I consume, therefore, I’m a consumer. I’m fine with that. It’s far preferable to legislators referring their constituents as “taxpayers”. But I digress.

Furthermore, I don’t mind being “targeted” when I’m actually on the hunt for something – whether that be granite countertops, red cowboy boots, or a refinance on my mortgage. The objective of any marketing company is bringing together those who provide, and those in need – regardless of specific industry.

Make your marketing/advertising campaigns count. If you put the needs and desires of people in the forefront of your mind, qualified leads and conversions will follow.

Related pay-per-call guides
May 14, 2015
How to Meet Your Lead Generation Goals

A recent study by 360Leads concluded that only approximately 17% of companies from six continents meet their lead generation goals, despite many of the companies’ participation in lead generation programs. While it is important for any individual company to analyze why their lead generation efforts aren’t gaining momentum, it is equally important to look at possible solutions or changes that can be made to a lead generation campaign in order to make it more successful.

Make Yourself Credible

Another thing that lead generation campaigns can benefit greatly from is increasing a business’ credibility. Make yourself known in the industry. Don’t be shy, spread the word about your company (in a non-spammy way), and engage with competitors in discussions and roundtables. By gaining credibility or spreading information about awards or interviews published regarding your business, you can help influence prospective customers’ view of you. Credibility will make you seem authentic, and that can greatly impact the success of your lead generation campaigns.

Embrace Mobile

It cannot be reiterated enough: mobile is important for any type of marketing plan. If your marketing or lead generation strategy does not include mobile, then you are doing it wrong. Today’s world is mobile. There is no going around it. To succeed in a mobile world, it will require you to embrace mobile to some degree or another. A majority of individuals use mobile to search for products, and a majority of individuals make purchases over their phones or at least make contact with businesses by going from mobile search to direct calls.

Focus on Relationships

Stop focusing on the numbers aspect of your goals. Yes, they are important. But they are not the only important thing. Relationships have the potential to make or break a business. Focus on fostering relationships within your industry and focus on growing relationships with potential customers (as well as current customers). The success of your lead generation can greatly benefit from cultivating relationships with prospects and showing people that these relationships are cherished.

Engage the Community

This ties in with focusing on relationships, but the target here is to engage with the community in a personal sense. A lead generation campaign can profit from a company’s presence. By engaging with the community at a personal level, you have the potential to garner a customer’s attention. Let them know your interests (outside of your business interests and wanting them as potential prospects). Not only does this make you more credible, but people will see you as genuine, and this can help show how independent your business is from similar companies.

Meeting any goal can be hard, especially in a difficult industry. It is important to constantly evaluate how you operate and how effective these strategies are. Given the right tools, more and more lead generation campaign goals can be met.

February 18, 2015
Rule #1 to Performance Marketing – Choose a Product You Know or Care About
When a performance marketer chooses a product, the calculation goes something like this: “How much does it pay? How easy is it for me to get the customer to take the action that pays? How much competition is there in the market?” While all of these questions are essential to evaluating the potential profitability of a campaign, there is one question which is missing. The question which should come before all of the aforementioned questions is “How much do I know about this product, and why do I care about it?”

Too often performance marketers are drawn by the idea of making big bucks, not by the idea of offering a genuinely helpful product or service to the customer. While there are countless stories of people who have become rich by finding the correct niche and exploiting it earlier or better than everyone else, this is not the most reliable way to achieve success. Here are some tips for entering a field in which you are an expert or at least genuinely interested, and thereby boosting your chances of getting conversions.
1. Look for offers in a field that you have worked in – Do you have experience as an insurance agent? Maybe an insurance offer would be ideal. Do you have experience as a personal trainer, and helping others lose an impressive amount of weight? Perhaps you should look into weight loss offers. The starting point to choosing an offer to market should be analyzing your familiarity with the product or service. It is always best to promote an offer with which you are familiar, all things being equal. And one of the best ways to become familiar with a field is to work in it.
2. Look for offers in a field in which you are an expert – When you promote a product of which you have an expert level knowledge, your marketing materials will demonstrate your familiarity with the subject, and your customers will trust you. Even if your knowledge is in an area that does not qualify as a current interest or hobby, it can be leveraged in your advertising to demonstrate to your potential customers that they should choose your offer over that of the competition.
3. Look for an offer in a field that interests you – Another way to choose the ideal offer to promote is to look for something that genuinely interests you. For example, gamers would make ideal candidates to promote gaming offers. A person studying Spanish as a second language can more readily identify with the difficulties that arise in that process, and can transmit that understanding into all of their marketing – giving the customer a sense of greater trust that the product being recommended will actually work. So, it is not necessary to be an expert in the product or service you wish to promote. Being genuinely interested in the product or service should be enough.
If you have been struggling to make money with your offers, perhaps you are promoting a product that you know nothing about or care very little about. While it is true that expert marketers may be able to make a mint selling just about anything, it is a good idea to get your first successes under your belt by promoting something that you have a personal connection to.
March 25, 2014
The Major Mistake that All Average Affiliates Make
So you want to be a super affiliate? It is the dream of every person who enters into affiliate or performance marketing that they would soon shoot to the top of the program, making thousands or even tens of thousands, of dollars per week. Of course for the vast majority of performance marketers this never happens. Why? The reason is simple: Those who fail to reach their goals as performance marketers lack a well thought-out plan for achieving their goals and lack the focus to carry that plan out. Here we will take a more in depth look at this mistake, and what can be done to change it.

The first part of the major mistake that virtually all performance marketers make is that they lack a well-thought out plan for making their opportunity pay. That is to say, they have very little idea exactly what they will do in order to realize the kinds of profits that they desire. Here are some pointers to making a plan to promote your affiliate offer:
- Read through all the information provided to you by the company offering the affiliate program. Familiarize yourself with the product and any marketing materials the company offers.
- Ask the company for marketing pointers, focusing on what is already working for top producers.
- Create a marketing plan with your budget in mind. At first your plan should be considered to be in “testing” phase, in other words simply gauging the market. Often times affiliates get discouraged when their initial marketing efforts fall flat. Remember that your initial efforts are usually used to better set parameters for later marketing efforts.
The second part of the mistake that virtually all performance marketers make is that they do not develop the focus and concentration on their effort which is needed to see it through to success. This is one reason why it is always best to choose to promote a product or service that you really care about, and with which you are intimately familiar. It is a far easier to promote an offer that has benefited you in the past, or of which you have expert knowledge. Here are some pointers for developing the focus needed to see your way to success:
- Before beginning to promote a product ask yourself if you really believe in it. If the answer is no, you should probably not get involved unless there are pressing and compelling reasons to go against the rule.
- Before beginning to promote a product choose a definite amount of time you will work per week, and a definite number of weeks or months you will dedicate to your success. Next, evaluate your commitment honestly. Ask yourself if your time commitment is likely enough to lead to the success of your efforts.
- As you promote your offer, check your actual time and effort invested versus your earlier commitment. Ask yourself if you are living up to your commitment. If not, try to identify why not. If possible, step your activities up to match or surpass your commitment.
The major mistake that virtually all average performance marketers make is thinking that the process will be easy. They think that they can get into the business and make money quickly, without rendering an amount of service equivalent to their compensation. But successful performance marketers realize that success can only follow selecting the right offer, making a plan, and consistently following through.
March 20, 2014