Lead Generation and Email List Building

Did you know you can get more leads from the exact same website by simply moving it to a different server?

Did you know that you can get more business from a website by changing NOTHING other than by redesigning some of the source code…something none of your visitors will EVER even see?

It’s not all about design.

If you want your website to generate leads and build your business, there are several crucial elements you need to address. If you want to grab a list of the 7 most important factors overall, you can get that here.

In this quick post, I want to share a few of the more obscure issues that very few business owners ever address. We literally never even look at this stuff, and it makes a HUGE difference. In fact, these issues are so important that if they’re not addressed properly, everything else you do will have much less impact.

This stuff isn’t difficult. It’s just a matter of most small business owners not knowing what to look for. Just like anything else in business, the stuff that really makes the most difference isn’t sexy. In fact, for most people it’s downright boring. But if you don’t do it, everything else suffers.

Check these three simple principles and see how your website measures up…

Dedicated IP address

Your domain name is called a URL, which stands for Uniform Resource Locator. You may not know this, but your website isn’t actually located at your domain name. It’s located at an IP address. You may have heard of IP addresses but aren’t sure what they are. This post is NOT a technical tutorial. Don’t worry. I’m not gonna bore you to tears with technical details 🙂

Suffice to say, your site is on a web server, and that server has an IP address. Most small business websites share an IP address with thousands of other websites.

Who cares?

You should absolutely care that you share an IP address with thousands of other websites.

Why?

Because if ANY of those other website owners have poorly coded sites, malware, are involved with spamming or any other activity that is frowned upon by Google, ISPs and others, then the IP address generating that activity can get dinged.

Hear me on this…you can get blacklisted, have your search rankings dramatically affected and more. All for activity that you have NOTHING to do with. All for activity you’re not even aware of. All for activity you have absolutely no way to correct.

Talk to your developer and make sure you’re on a dedicated IP.

Modern Design

Did you know Google grades your website on hundreds of thousands of metrics? No one knows them all, as they’re not all public knowledge. But one of the newer factors we’ve come across lately is design.

Your search visibility can be negatively affected by nothing other than the fact that your design hasn’t been updated in several years.

Why the heck does Google care about this? Because their only concern is providing a positive and relevant experience for their users. They want to direct their customers to websites that have the right information, of course. But they also want the website to work well and provide a positive experience for their customers.

In other words, with literally trillions of webpages to sift through, they have to prioritize. They’d rather send their visitors to websites that look great, work well and ALSO have the information they’re looking for. Make sense?

The good news is that modernizing your design is far easier and less expensive than it’s ever been before.

But don’t get me wrong. This is NOT just about Google. Let’s be honest about this, if you were the consumer, would YOU take your website seriously? We’re tech savvy and picky these days. If you’re considering doing business with someone, but their website is tacky and looks like it was built by an intern in 1996, would you take them seriously?

I’ve come across so many companies that are doing GREAT work for their clients. They operate successful, profitable businesses. They know how crucial it is to put their best foot forward, to present themselves professionally. They put these ideals to work in nearly all aspects of their business.

And then they roll into the marketplace with a $500 website that looks like it was built by a high school student. And in MANY cases, it actually WAS built by a high school student.

It’s all about priorities, my dear 🙂

Page Speed

Another element that dramatically affects user experience is page speed. This is yet another metric that Google and other search engines look at seriously. But your prospects look at it even more closely.

Let’s be real…if you’re on a website, and the pages are taking 20 seconds to load, how long are you going to stick around? In most cases, people wait about 2 seconds. Anything past that and your visitors are going to notice.

Even if you change nothing else on your website, these three factors all work together to create a solid foundation. Yes of course, content matters. Design matters. There are however, some elements that most people never even look at, that make a big difference.

Checking into these will only take you a few minutes. Correcting them is not difficult either, and it can make a huge difference in the results you get.

Questions or need help? Hit me up. I love, love, love hearing from you all!

One of the things I discuss with clients very often is email marketing. How to get started with it. How to do it well. How to make money with it.

Even though email marketing has been around for a long time now, more and more small business owners are still getting on board with it. As a result, there are a few basic fundamentals about email marketing that are still not widely known.

Most of us who’ve been email marketing for years consider this stuff fairly old hat. Because it is. So we don’t talk about it much. But the fact is, many, many people are still very new to email marketing. This list of email marketing 101 rules is not meant to be exhaustive by any stretch. Email is a tool. Every tool takes some practice to learn and eventually master.

But getting started is simple. There are just a few basic things to keep in mind.

btw…if you think of something I may have missed on this list, let me know 🙂

Getting Started with Email Marketing

1. Definitely start building your email list right away. One of the big mistakes is to focus on SEO and other things first. Get some calls to action on your website right away. Ask people to sign up.
2. Stay in touch regularly. This is one area I know I’ve struggled with personally. I get busy too, so I understand the argument for putting it off. But if you put it on your schedule, staying in touch with your list is not time consuming. If you’re writing a blog, mailing your list can even be virtually automated.
3. Use a professional email marketing vendor from the beginning. Those of you working with us or reading the blog regularly know I’m a big advocate of Aweber. If you build a list first without using a service like Aweber, you’ll eventually (sooner rather than later) start running into delivery issues. Your prospects just won’t get your emails. That’s because everyone is on high alert when it comes to spam. So it doesn’t matter if you got the email addresses legitimately, sending bulk email is just not a task suited for your laptop. Used to work fine to do it that way. Not anymore. If you blast hundreds or thousands of emails from your local computer, expect the majority of those to not get delivered. Email services like Aweber work very hard to ensure their servers are trusted by internet service providers. This keeps your email going where it’s intended to go…your client’s inbox.
4. Don’t buy emails or rent lists. Yes, there are services that do this. But these services are virtually worthless. If you’ve purchased a bunch of email addresses, it may seem very tempting to blast em all and hope for the best. But they’re not expecting to hear from you, and they don’t know you. Mailing a list like this generates a lot of spam complaints and usually a lot of bounced emails. Yes…I’ve done it. If building an email list the “right” way seems like a pain, try getting domain off a blacklist 🙂
5. Only mail to a list you’ve built yourself. This means the emails on your list should be only people who’ve specifically asked to be on your list. They should know who you are and be expecting to hear from you. If either of these criteria aren’t met, spam complaints are soon to follow.
6. Start selling right away. I’ve definitely made this mistake before. I had thousands of subscribers before I ever offered anything for sale. Then when I did have something for sale, a lot of people were put off by it and unsubscribed. If they’re put off by the fact that I’m actually running a business here, they don’t need to be on my list anyway. So that’s fine. But by being straight with them and making offers on a regular basis from the beginning, I would have made sales along the way. I would have been building a much more targeted list that responds well to my offers. Share a lot of great content with your readers, and after giving them several pieces of valuable, helpful information, ask for something in return. It doesn’t have to be buying something. You may want them to follow you on Twitter, you may want them to help spread the word about your business. Or you may want them to buy something. But establish a dialog from the beginning. Asking your readers to respond is crucial. Ask them to do stuff. Ask them to email you. Ask them to buy from you. Ask for what you want. This is what makes the value of your email list pick up huge momentum.

How to Build an Email List Properly

1. Install opt in forms in several places on your website. I’ll list the best locations I’ve found for opt in forms further down this post.
2. Use a bribe. Give them something of VALUE that SOLVES A PROBLEM in exchange for their subscription. You’re asking someone to give you their time and attention, which is a rare commodity these days. It’s very valuable. In fact, if you can’t get your prospect’s attention, you’re finished. So get their subscription by giving them something very valuable to them as a trade for their opt in.
3. Use lead capture pages. Squeeze pages, opt in pages, etc. People call them different things, but ultimately a lead capture page is just a page with nothing other than your call to action. The only thing you can do on a lead capture page is either sign up or leave. This format gets a much higher conversion rate (at least 10 times the conversion rate in most cases we’ve tested). Even if you’re using the exact same call to action in a different place on your site, displaying your call to action on a lead capture page can dramatically increase the number of leads you get.
4. Don’t depend on Google. Free search engine traffic is awesome. Don’t get me wrong. But SEO is slow and you only have so much control over things. Google can then change something overnight, and your rankings tank. It can take weeks or months to rebuild when this happens. I know a lot of people in internet marketing, and it happens to us all. Everyone. No one is immune to this. So don’t depend on Google. Drive traffic to your lead capture pages using social media and advertising. Traffic generation is a different topic I’m happy to discuss with you. Getting traffic to your pages is actually EASY when you know how. Contact me for a quick chat if you want to discuss that further.
5. Stay in contact. Don’t let a long period of time go without people hearing from you. I’ve had people ask me about Louis CK and other well-known people that will email their list only once in a while, often several weeks or months between mailing. Well, I’m not Louis CK 🙂 I’m not on national TV on a regular basis. I don’t have my own TV show. As a small business owner, the primary way my readers, prospects and clients hear from me is social media and email. If it’s been months since your last mailing, there’s a good chance many of those emails aren’t even good anymore. Keeping your list actively engaged is an important part of the equation.

Where to Publish Your Opt In Forms

1. Upper right hand corner, in your sidebar.
2. Across the entire width of the page, at the top of the page.
3. Pop ups. Yes, they still work. Both entrance pop ups (right when you land on the site) and exit pop ups (when you try to leave the site). No, I don’t like em either. But I’ve tested them, and they definitely work.
4. Lead capture pages. As I mentioned above, using lead capture pages is the single most effective tool you can use to dramatically increase conversions. A well-designed lead capture page can literally unlock a gold mine. If you’d like to discuss the details on how lead capture pages work and how to employ them in your marketing, let me know. It’s my pleasure to help.
5. Underneath your blog posts. I’ve always found these don’t convert all that well. What I mean is that I don’t get a lot of leads from opt in forms placed here. But the leads I get are super high quality. So I don’t get big numbers from these, but I still use them because it always results in high quality results. I’ll pick quality over quantity every time.

These are a few of the basic rules when it comes to getting started with email marketing for your small business. Building an email list is hands down one of the most cost effective and scaleable ways to market your business. Imagine sending a direct mail campaign to 20,000 people. What would it cost? $10k? What would the conversion rate be? Most direct marketers are over the moon if they get a 2% response rate from a direct mail campaign.

Imagine contacting those same people, for pennies. And then imagine the response rate being 5-10 times what you get from direct mail. That’s what email marketing does for your business. It’s worth learning how to do it right. In fact, when you decide to build a list properly, you’re deciding to build what will soon become one of the most valuable assets your company has.

If you have any questions about how to get started, I’m at your service.

I recently published a report, “The 7 Point Lead Generation Checklist”. It describes the most important changes you can make to increase the number of leads coming in from your website by at least 300%. You can grab it for free here.

For those of you who prefer audio, I just completed an audio version of this. Please feel free to download it here:

Download the entire 7 Point Lead Generation Checklist Audio Version

Just a quick note for you today. I keep hearing about how email marketing is not working as well as it used to work. You know I’m an advocate of email marketing. I honestly feel that if you’re not building an email list, you’re missing the biggest opportunity you have to make your web marketing sing.

Various “experts” are talking about how social media is the new thing though. They’re saying that email doesn’t work nearly as well as it used to work. What gives?

OK here’s the deal. Millions of new businesses are using email marketing now. Not a bad thing. It’s a lot more popular than it used to be. But guess what. Most people suck at it.

That’s why open rates are down across the board. It’s due to suckage, not because email doesn’t work!

Here are a few basics to keep in mind when building an email list:

1. Use a serious email marketing service like Aweber – Go easy on yourself. Use an email service that is designed for small business owners. Aweber isn’t the only provider. I just have a rule. I only recommend services I personally use and can vouch for. Period. So I can speak intelligently about Aweber, as I’ve been a customer of theirs since ’06. It makes pretty much everything to do with building an email list and keeping in touch with your prospects a breeze.
2. Give people a legit, high value reason to subscribe – Don’t just put a box on your site that says “Sign up for our newsletter”. Why should they? Give them a compelling reason. Offer a free report, a free video, a discount…something you could legitimately charge for. Something that makes it a lock. Give them a reason, and you’ll get a lot more subscribers just because of that alone.
3. Make it visible – Put your opt in form in a prominent place on your site. Front and center, top right…somewhere it can’t be ignored.
4. Stay in touch like a human being – If you get a list going, but they only hear from you when you’re selling something, or if they only hear from you once per year, guess what will happen. Not much! You started the conversation off by offering em something cool, right? Follow up with more cool stuff. Blogging is the best way to do this. Publish an article or a video or whatever…something that answers a question, addresses a concern, helps them solve a problem.
5. Stay in touch like a human being 2.0 – When you send an email to your friends, do you use a professionally designed HTML email template? Of course not. You write a quick message in plain text. Then you click send. When you communicate like a human being, you tend to get responses from human beings. When you communicate like a robot, you tend to get robotic responses (“mark as spam”, ahem)

Questions? Need help with your email marketing? Hit me up with any of your concerns!

So your small business website is up and running. And you want to see some dang leads coming in! Ok let’s get started 🙂

The subject of lead generation is something I write about at length here, but I wanted to point out the FIRST TWO STEPS explicitly, because they often get overlooked. Here ya go:

1. Identify your primary call to action on every page – Take any page on your website and identify the one MAIN thing you want people to do there. Remember, a call to action absolutely does not have to be buying something. It can be an email sign up. It can be getting them to call you. It can be sharing an article on Facebook. It can be anything you want. Look at the page on your website and decide the primary thing you want your visitors to do there.
2. Remove distractions – Now that you know exactly what you want your visitors to do after landing on that page, make sure you have your call to action displayed prominently on the page, so your visitors can’t miss it. And remove any distractions. The biggest thing I see affecting conversions on a lot of small business websites is simply a lack of clarity. If you ask visitors to do 27 different things, there’s a really good chance they’re not gonna do anything at all. But if you ask them to do ONE thing…and if you give them a compelling reason to do so, your odds of getting that to happen go up significantly.

It’s little details like this that make all the difference in the world when it comes to getting the conversions you want on your website. Of course it helps to have a website that gives you a lot of control over each and every page on your website. That’s why we build sites that do this. But you can apply these two steps (and everything I discuss on this blog in fact) to any website in the world. It’s not a specific magic type of website that gets results, it’s just marketing. It’s just a matter of learning what works in marketing and how to translate that to the web. If you have any questions about this one…hit me up 🙂