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The online business marketing world has become very competitive and challenging. Lead generation is one of the many ways to stay ahead of the game when it comes to marketing your business.

Pay-per-click (PPC)

Pay-per-click (PPC) is when you purchase ads to display in the search engines when a user enters your target keywords.

PPC Highlights

• PPC is scalable.  You control your budget to fit your sales goals.

• PPC furnishes instant results

• PPC endows flexibility allowing you to target numerous keywords and people from different geographical regions.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing your website to get top ranking on search engines for specific keywords.

SEO Highlights

1        SEO drives qualified, cost-efficient traffic and sales

2        SEO extends brand recognition and keyword-brand associations

3        SEO enhances credibility and legitimacy

4        SEO reinforces investment in your domain name

5        SEO costs are more predictable than most other forms of marketing

Display Advertising

Display advertising provides a unique platform for products or services to resonate with prospective customers. This occurs as display ads engage interactions like clicks, mouse-over, video plays, game plays etc that increases the chances of your advertisement to be absorbed and acted upon.

Display Advertising Highlights

• Lower Cost per click and conversion.

• Display advertising reinforces Remarketing

• Better targeting to content-rich and relevant sites

• More visually appealing ad options rather than just text

• Behavioral, demographic, and geographic targeting capabilities

Video Advertising

Video ads are a new buzzword for lead generation. The theory behind it is simple – what appeals to the eyes keeps you hooked onto it for longer. And the longer the client takes to view your product or service the higher the number of leads.

Video Advertising Highlights

1        A larger portion of audiences interact with video ads as compared to other lead generators.

2        Play-through rates do not vary greatly by expandable or standard video ad formats.

3        Video click rates are far higher than image format ads.

Which is the best on-line LEAD GENERATOR?

All the lead generators are vehicles to get your business searched when a consumer is ready to buy your product or service. It is your take on what you want to achieve room your advertisements. If you are looking for instant advertising of brand name and a higher ROI than PPC will suit your needs more. But if you solely depend on PPC traffic, you will lose all your traffic if you stop PPC. This is where SEO gets thumbs up as it is long lasting. Using the short term advantages of PPC is a good way to identify keyword phrases that produce quality leads and conversion. These keyword phrases can be implemented into SEO for more long term results. A golden mean between PPC and SEO should be maintained. If you are aiming for high website traffic with an effective branding that is appealing, then you would benefit from a display advertising or video advertising.

For more information on how social media can help your business, visit www.wsiwebapplications.com or follow me on twitter @cmappleton

Every business plan needs to include a competitive analysis. So, who exactly is your online competitor? Companies tend to see competitors solely as who they bump up against when going after new business, or who prospects say they are also considering. But in the search world, the competition extends beyond other companies in your industry. It also includes any kind of content or information source that appears in search results wherever prospects are looking. A competitive analysis is your chance to look closely at your market and your competition, to learn what the others are doing and why. Have you ever had challenges with defining the competition in an online marketing effort? Have you encountered brand marketers that refuse to accept the difference between search results competition and industry competitors?

Understanding the difference between Industry Competition and Search Competition is the key to taking effective SEO strategy. The things a brand marketer can do with their SEO program to gain visibility on competing, non-commercial web pages can attract direct traffic as well as provide signals that will be useful in building top visibility for brand content in search.

The difference between competition and search competition is quite interesting. If you are in a 'niche' business, the chances are your search competition and your competition is one and the same. But, you may find companies from other regions or countries beating you for certain keywords or phrases, which may steal any business from you by competing with your clients. There are also chances of going up the SEO rankings. A great way to battle this is to invest in SEO tools such as SEOmoz (some of them are mentioned below) and track the rank of your competitors for keywords and start to combat against them. This way you can rise above them on the search engines. This will ensure an increase in traffic to your website and generate more leads, which will counter the business you may lose by your physical competition.

The following are some tools and tips to find your competitors keyword ranking:

• Do not just copy-paste your competitors’ keywords, use it as additional help for your keyword research.
• Examine which keywords your competitors optimized for their pages (i.e. tried to rank for) and which keywords they ended up ranking for. Doing this will help you avoid the mistakes they are making.

Helpful Tools:

• SEO Digger (paid with free trial) – It will indicate Google keyword position, check date (International style: DD/MM/YYYY) and Wordtracker rank.
• SpyFu (paid with free trial) – It spies for both your competitors’ organic search rankings and Google Adwords campaign keywords.

Make sure your website is NOT missing the mark with your target audience:

• Look at the copy on your site. Your copy should be speaking to your audience, addressing their needs, engaging them in an organized conversation. Self important copy is death to conversion.
• Your visitor may not read long, so you can provide more info further down the page to easily figure out what’s in it for them and if it’s worth the cost.
• Ensure your site adheres to commonly accepted conventions of website design. Put the navigation in a familiar place, make it look like navigation, make links look like links and so on
• There’s always a next step (even after they buy, but that’s another post), so ensure that every page on your site tells visitors what’s next and provide a way to move in that direction.  This makes your site “sticky” and makes visitors want to stay.

For more information, visit us online at www.wsiwebapplications.com and follow me on Twitter @cmappleton

The business scene today is rife with new competition. Budgets are shrinking, and marketing and sales teams are stretched to the limit to do more with less. In lead generation, the job of the marketing department is to develop leads to match the buyer’s readiness to buy and the seller’s expectations of selling. Marketing to sales: “We get the leads; you get the sales.” Keeping the pipeline full of effective leads is vitally important in today’s challenging business. In fact, consistent lead generation is often imperative to a company’s very survival.

Why is lead generation inherently more challenging?

• Fewer opportunities: Although the deal value of each sale is extremely high, there are simply fewer opportunities as compared to more transactional selling environments.

• Commoditization is more difficult to overcome: Marketers must work much more diligently and creatively to differentiate their organizations from increasing competition.

• Increased selling at the executive level: There must be an intelligent and varied approach to reach and convert executives who are more often the economic buyers for complex solutions.

• Must reach the sphere of influence: Buying processes frequently involve a team approach. Enlisting the support of one decision maker is rarely enough. The sphere of influence must be identified and targeted.

• Less selling time: Because of longer sales cycles, salespeople cannot afford to spend time on unqualified leads. They must focus attention on opportunities that have the greatest likelihood of closing.

• Return on investment: Direct return from lead generation activity takes time to surface. A solid plan for reporting and measuring reliable indicators must be in place to justify continued investment.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization, the process of increasing the number of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the results of search engines across the Internet, is essential for directing more traffic to a specific Web site. Some business-to-business marketers remain focused solely on enhancing the search marketing capabilities of their Web sites, i.e. indiscriminately generating more traffic at the expense of Web site content and relevance. This stems from the misconception that added traffic equals a greater number of inquiries and leads and, in due course, more sales. Search engine optimization assumes a lower rung in the climb towards more effective lead generation in the business-to-business sector. A Web site that is oriented to the demands of a lead generation program attracts the kind of visitors that results in the capture of a lot of valuable inquiries. Three underlying Web site design principles should be looked to for facilitating this. They are as follows:

Inform

People are attracted to Web sites for a variety of reasons, and it is to your advantage to promote yours as an easily accessed source of information appropriate to the needs of your potential customers. There is little point in having a Web site that no one visits. When you browse online, consider:

• What does it convey about the company?
• Is it professionally done?
• Does it have the right information?
• Is desired information quick and easy to locate?
• What value is perceived?
• What is the next step?

Engage

Converting the Web site visitor to qualified lead status is a tall order, but the results can be dramatic due to the extraordinarily large visitor potential. In pursuit of increasing the ratio of visitors to qualified leads, it is beneficial to examine:

• What is happening on each page to hold your visitor’s interest?
• What actions you want your visitor to take.
• What appeals to that person or typically to the role of that person?
• What the visitor needs to do for more information or to make contact.
• What you could be doing better.

Convert

Turning visitors into high-quality leads is regularly a matter of how quickly you respond to their inquiries. Though they obviously are entitled to your answer with all due haste, research indicates that nearly half of all inquiries are not followed up within two weeks—if at all.

Contact WSIWebApplications for all your Lead Generation and Internet Marketing Needs in Canada.