Lead Generation


 1. Intro

A lead is a person who you want to buy something from. They might be the recipient of your product or service, but they aren’t necessarily the customer.
A customer is someone who has an existing relationship with you, a customer relationship that you can use as a source of new customers/users/clients.
And as long as you have a customer relationship with someone, that means you have some form of marketing in play.
The two main types are lead generation and lead acquisition. Lead generation is getting leads from other sources (e.g., lists, online forms) and lead acquisition is getting leads from your customers (e.g., via direct contact).
However, lead generation is also much more than just this. Through your website’s various features (i.e., landing pages), it can help you to educate your customers about your offering, help them make decisions about which of several options to pursue next, and on and on…
If done correctly, these features can work together to create the ideal user experience for sales calls or cold emailing: ease-of-use coupled with maximum success rates; simplicity coupled with maximum flexibility; low price-to-value ratio coupled with quality products/services; minimal effort coupled with no effort needed; no pressure coupled with full transparency; etc... This kind of marketing has been around for quite some time now (and even very recently in the case of Slack), but it still needs some updating to become more relevant.
2. The difference between generating leads and attracting visitors to your website
i.e. the difference between generating leads and attracting visitors to your website
Even if you are a startup, you may be aware of the need for lead generation. A certain amount of lead generation is required before you can get any meaningful action from your customers
If you are not sure how much lead generation is required, we recommend this post on the topic by Sarah Harrison. It’s a good place to start when considering the benefits and limitations of different lead generation methods.
But what exactly is it? How does it differ from other methods of marketing? How important is it? And how can we measure it? Let's look at some examples:
The first thing to consider when thinking about lead generation is whether or not your product needs the help changing minds or getting people excited about what it does or offers. You must make sure that you don’t introduce too many features and make sure that there isn’t a reason people wouldn’t want to use them — otherwise, they probably won’t use them! The first step in generating leads is to know what features your product has (and which ones aren’t necessary). Once you have that information, you need to find out who else would like your product — specifically, whether anyone at work or at school has already purchased something similar, and if so, why did they buy something similar? What makes them want something similar? What motivates them? Which of these are most likely candidates for acquisition by your target market? Identify which features set your product apart from competitors and what are those features so compelling that they render other products useless in comparison — and then focus on delivering those features as part of your marketing efforts!
Next we have a good article on LinkedInThis article does an excellent job showing how LinkedIn differs from Facebook in terms of who gets targeted as well as which people will be targeted with each keyword phrase used in the company's marketing material.
3. How to generate leads with Linkedin
Lead generation is a process of identifying and then generating marketing leads. It is the process of creating and maintaining relationships with qualified prospects in order to negotiate the right deal for your business.
The most common method of “lead generation” is advertising in a publication.
However, this is not the only way to generate marketing leads - it is absolutely possible to generate leads via other methods such as:
• LinkedIn ads
• Facebook Ads
• Newsletter
• Blogs/Journals/Content (blogs, articles, blog posts)
• Email Marketing (Email Marketing)
• Press Releases
• Content Marketing (blogs, articles, blog posts) The key thing about lead generation is that it should not be done for the sake of generating leads but to support your business goals and objectives. For example: You have an idea for a new product and you need sales lead generation support with that new product idea. Using Lead Generation means that you will be able to identify who your prospective customers are which means you can target them with the right marketing communications so they will respond positively and help you achieve your goal of selling more products or services. It also means that lead generation will be something which will be visible within your company in order to help drive business growth. The next step after identifying your target market is creating targeted marketing communications based on their interest level in different products or services - this action should be accompanied by a social media campaign aiming to get more people talking about that particular idea or product - this part may also involve some technical development so it would require some research as well so that you can use these methods effectively for maximum benefit for the company as a whole. For example: You have an idea for a new product and you need sales lead generation support with that new product idea. Using Lead Generation means that you will be able to identify who your prospective customers are which means you can target them with the right marketing communications so they will respond positively and help you achieve your goal of selling more products or services. It also means that lead generation will be something which will be visible within your company in order to help drive business growth. The next step after identifying your target market is creating targeted marketing communications based on their interest level in different products or services - this action should be accompanied by a social media campaign aiming to get more people talking about that particular idea or product - this part may also involve some technical development so it would require some research as well so that you can use these methods effectively
4. Case study: how I generated leads from Linkedin
A lot of entrepreneurs will ask me what I do to generate leads. I love this question.
Industry and customer insights are pretty easy to come by, but they are not the same thing. Look at any marketing funnel, or a chart of customer acquisition, and you’ll find that some streaks are higher on one side than others. They’re often there because your product is more popular or useful than your competition. That’s not always true: sometimes it is just that people are more likely to purchase from you (or someone else). But in general, if you look at your most popular products or services , you may find that they’re often the ones that people don’t go looking for.
Don’t get me wrong: there is nothing wrong with building a product to be popular. In fact, that may be a great way to find customers due to their strong need for something new and exciting; but how often do you think about how much money you spend on marketing and advertising (in terms of direct sales) over the course of a year?
A big part of the problem here is that most companies don’t have enough data about their most popular products so who knows where it comes from? One simple way is through lead generation via email — which can come in many forms (email-based surveys, surveys via email blast programs, etc.). However, lead generation via email isn’t as good as lead generation through social media channels like Facebook or Twitter; so if you have a heavy-duty email marketing program (or have been using one for years), including social media channels could be a good way to get extra exposure.
5. Conclusion
I’m not going to try and make the case for LinkedIn. But it is one of the applications that has had a huge impact on my own career. For me, I didn’t start out wanting to be a professional developer, I started out wanting to be an entrepreneur. And LinkedIn has helped me do that, by providing a network for people who are also entrepreneurs…
I think about that every day because it seems like the reason I am doing what I do is because of the connections I make on LinkedIn. Without those connections, I wouldn’t have been able to get my first job as a developer, or get featured on Hacker News or talk about my startup at conferences like Velocity and XebiaCon. Without those connections, I wouldn’t have been able to sell my first product at Velocity or meet any of the amazing people who have been in my life .
So while you may not need LinkedIn to be successful in your business, if you want to create new opportunities for yourself and others (or even just improve your business), you should definitely make time for it — just don’t expect its magic wand powers will work miracles in all situations.

Keyword Research

 
1. Introduction

Nowadays, we are all used to the process of keyword research. For example, most people just search Google for “best laptop” and see what comes up. That is a very effective way of finding out what you want to do and what you need to do it well. However, searching for “best laptop” is not the best way of finding out what people think they need.

Instead, you should use a keyword research tool (which I will discuss in detail in a future tutorial) and look for phrases that are meaningful to your product or service. For example, if your product helps mobile developers organize their projects and make them easier to deal with from an admin perspective, you might want to focus on phrases like “mobile app” or “mobile development environment.”
You can find some helpful keywords here .

2. Why Should You Do Keyword Research?
There are no easy answers to the question “What are your target keywords?”.
That is because the factors which influence a keyword’s popularity vary greatly from one market to another, and from technology industry to technology industry. The same goes for seo: there are no simple answers.
In this article I will present some of the factors which determine whether or not it makes sense to do seo in my specific case, and provide some guidelines along the way.
I have identified two key factors as critical:

1)  (what people search for) and relate that to (what words they use). This means that we need to uncover what people look for before we can understand why they use our services (we can learn a lot by looking at comparable terms). 2)   (what words they use). This means that we need to look at terms in more detailed detail than merely "seo" when we do keyword research. This is why I remind readers that keywords aren't just short strings of letters or numbers.
In this article I will present three examples of how each of these factors affects what people search for, why they search for it, and how those things relate, in a way which is meaningful for me personally and my field of expertise.
#2 - What People Search For: Friend Finder / Facebook Page / Craigslist / Google Places / Twitter / Yahoo Places / Bing Places #1 - What Words People Use: Friend Finder/Facebook/Craigslist/Twitter/Yahoo/Bing #3 - How Those Things Relate: My Location / My Address / My Phone Number #2 - What People Search For: Friend Finder/Facebook Page/Craigslist/Twitter/Yahoo Places/Bing #1 - What Words People Use: Friend Finder/Facebook Page-Craigslist-Twitter-Yahoo-Bing

3. Keyword Research in Google Adwords
If you want to improve your positioning in Google Adwords, you need a good keyword research tool. Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner is the best, but it’s more expensive than simply buying keywords and trying them out in your account.
In this post I will show you how to use several free keyword research tools for a variety of keywords, and why it is worth investing in the right tools for your application.
a) Finding the Right Keywords in Google Trends

There is a lot of competition out there in the SEO world, and it’s not just the general public. Google is fighting back hard to keep its rankings intact and users happy. A well-researched search engine is vital for any business or person trying to tell their story.
Keywords are just one piece of a puzzle, but they provide an excellent starting point for your SEO strategy. The best way to start using keywords as part of your SEO strategy, as you will see below, is by taking a look at Google Trends (which includes a lot more than just keywords).
In this post I’m going to give you a brief overview of the basic tools you can use to help identify and mine keywords from Google Trends data (which shows how people search across all different aspects of their lives). At the end of the article I’ll show you how to start using them in conjunction with Google Analytics so that you can start hunting for new keywords that might help your business find more customers.
First off, let’s take an overview of what Google Trends looks like:
So now let's take a look at what it means when we say "Search traffic" on Google Trends:
So what numbers do these trends show? Well they show that searches result in many different types of traffic. Some are short-term spikes (e.g — if someone searches "flipkart", there will be long term spikes on those terms), some are long term trends (e.g — if someone searches "seo services" over time), some have low traffic levels and tend not to appear for days or weeks at a time and some have high levels of traffic (and tend not to show up unless someone specifically searches for them, e.g — if someone searches "seo services in Delhi" over time, then there will be short term spikes).
To get started with keyword research, you first need to know which metrics work best with which words:
As you can see there are many metrics available from which you can choose from when looking at trends:
In reality though, most companies use all three types: long-term trends (to see what kind of traffic should be expected over multiple months), short-term spikes (to spot spikes that last only a few hours or days) or low traffic levels (to spot market share losses and other changes within months). This is why it's so important to use all three
b) Finding the Right Keywords in Google Suggestions & Related Questions
As a search engine optimisation (SEO) company, we know that keywords are probably the single most important thing you can do to improve your rankings. But if you’re new to SEO, you might be wondering what keywords to adopt and how to do it. In this article, we’ll explain why “keywords” are not what you think they are and show you how to set up an effective keyword research tool in Google Suggestions & related questions.
The reason that it is important for beginners is because when we ask them to find keywords in Google Suggestions or related questions, many people don’t know what they mean. Most people think of keywords as short phrases like “love your product” or “make money online”; but even though these are the most commonly used ones on the internet, there are many others which can get you more search engine traffic.
Another good reason for beginners is because it can be very hard to come up with a good keyword list without any previous experience — so if you want the best results from your keyword research activity, then it helps if you have a list of keywords which already work well for you.

4. How to Find the Right Keywords for Your Blog Post
Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO. No matter how well you do on a search engine optimization (SEO) page, it is impossible to guarantee that your site would rank in the top ten, because the number of sites on the web is so large. Keyword research has become even more important as it’s become easier and easier to find niche keywords through Google. The best way to extend your reach is to do keyword research that allows you to identify possible competitors and highlight your strengths.
Keywords are words that people use in search engines when they are trying to find information about a product or service. We can use this information when we are building our product pages for our website or in other ways like blog posts and social media posts.

a) Applied Examples
The first step of any keyword research is to understand what you want to target and how you want to target it. To do this, we will be setting up a little spreadsheet with the following information:
• The keyword we want
• The date that we want it to appear
• The URL for the key phrase (which you can find in your target keywords list)
• The number of articles we want to rank for (1 means 1 article maximum)
• How many times per day we want the article(s) on the list (1 means 1 time per day). If multiple times per day you need to rank, then increment by one. Then, if you are using multiple URLs in your keywords list, add “*” after your number of articles. Example: if I’m targeting shoes and I have “shoes” as my keyword, I would add “*shoes” after my number of articles. If I used both “shoes” and “shoe” in my keywords list, I would add “*shoes+shoe” after my number of articles.
• How many pages do we want to rank? There are two general approaches here: page-level or page-by-page. Page-level is often used for long tail keywords (e.g., "travel brochures") whereas page-by-page is usually used for short tail keywords like "cruise ships" or "car rentals". However, most businesses will tend to use a combination of both approaches as long as they can tell which approach accomplishes their goal better or more quickly than other approaches. You can find out which approach works best by using a simple search engine optimization tool like Google's Keyword Planner tool or Bing's Keyword Tool . If you use both methods at once and get no results at all, perhaps one method is better than the other but it still may be worth experimenting with when deciding which method is best suited for your business.
Once you have decided on which method you will be using and what will be the outcome of each method (e.g., ranking), add up all results from all methods that are relevant/convenient/reasonable (e.g., 500 articles out of 500). This process should yield a handy table with a total number of relevant pages per method.

More info:

Social Media Marketing


 1. Intro
Social media marketing is not easy, but the more you understand it, the easier it becomes.
Social media marketing is a lot different from traditional marketing. It’s about understanding the audience and about creating an experience that will engage them in your brand’s direction.
No social media strategy without social media itself - your audience can only be reached with real engagement. As such, you need to own your brand’s social channels. You have to be there first and people will follow if they like what you have to offer first and foremost - they won’t follow if they don’t know who you are first or if they aren’t engaged with you first.

2. Crafting a social media marketing strategy
Social media is a great tool for driving sales, but it can also be a bit more difficult to use than you might think. The best way to get started with social media is to get some basic rules and tips down.

You want to make sure your social media marketing strategy is executed properly from the start — this includes setting up and organizing your accounts, so people can find them (and create those accounts) easily. It’s also about making sure you have a presence on multiple platforms and channels. If a customer searches for something specific (like “led phone lights”), you want them to be able to find your product on all of your channels.

Sometimes that means building new campaigns, or creating content specifically for social media channels. When people are searching for something specific, they tend to share things they like or are interested in online — that’s why Pinterest has such a large community of pins centered around crafts, cooking, and other hobbies.
If you’re starting out with social media marketing, don’t rush into it! A lot of the time it will take time and practice before you develop the skills necessary to use it effectively in your business — if you need help getting there, let us know!
3. How to create the perfect post for each of your social networks
Creating the perfect post for each of your networks is a lot easier than you may think. Just follow these few simple steps:
1. Find the post that you want to be featured on. You can do this by searching for it, or by posting it yourself.
2. Search for relevant words in the title of the post (like “social media,” “linkedin”, “pinterest”) and paste them into a code within a comment, tag or with any other tool you can find online (like Google Sheets).
3. Search again for similar posts on these same networks (using keywords), and copy them into an image or video file that can be used as an example.
4. Upload the file with a link directing people to your post and voila! Follow those steps in your social media account now & keep posting!
5. Keep in mind that social media posts are a different beast from blog posts — don't expect instant results, especially if you've only been using one network for a few weeks — but they're great to get people acquainted with your brand and/or product(s)  and keep them scrolling through your network until you decide to make changes!

4. Optimizing a post for maximum reach and engagement
Social media marketing is an area that many startup founders are still not fully aware of, because it’s not a “thing” that they have been asked to do. As the saying goes:
You don’t need to know how Facebook works in order to use it, but you do need to know how to optimize your post so that people see it. And while there are plenty of tools out there for this (and you can find them on almost any social media platform), nothing beats a good ol’ finger on the ‘share buttonengagement .’

After all, this is the one thing that should come down to: everyone wants share buttons on their Facebook posts, right? And if you don’t have one, get one. Searching for “share buttons” on Google will show you dozens of free ones everywhere from startups all the way up to big publishers like Forbes and Business Insider.

The key point here is to be up in front with your customers and give them what they want with what you can provide (as opposed to optimizing for clicks vs shares). You may also want to check out some of our other posts about optimizing content for social media in general.
5. Measuring Your Strategy's Success
Social media is an ever-evolving frontier and the tools that help you achieve the best possible results are constantly evolving. There are too many tools to list here, but you need to measure your strategy's success before and after launch to determine how it performed.
It can be hard to know what measurement even is, as every single piece of data can be useful and all examples fall into different buckets. But knowing what marketing metric to use is key because of the varying goals of social media marketing:
On one end, we want to gather as much data as possible about people’s experience with our product so that we can improve it and make it more user-friendly. On the other end, we want our customers to notice us and tell their friends about us so that we can get more sales.
The goal is a goal: measuring success or failure in social media marketing should have a clear meaning for you — a means by which you will be able to define success. Especially if you are trying something new, like social media marketing for your product — it is important that you understand the metrics that tell you if your efforts were worth it.
6. Conclusion
In the end, I think it’s always a good idea to put together a short outline of your goals, a list of your accomplishments, and some key takeaways. You can then use this outline as the basis for your marketing strategy.
As I mentioned in the first part of this post, there are some key things you should keep in mind:
• Make sure you have a clear value proposition, something that you believe is worth sharing across space.
• Make sure you have a strong story that informs and excites people about the product. If it’s too vague, people will be less likely to share and more likely to send a negative review/review somewhere else (e.g., reddit). If it’s too specific and detailed, it’ll get lost in the sea of content (e.g., LinkedIn).
• Make sure that whatever content you share is aligned with your valence (see below).
• Create content that engages new audiences, not just existing ones (and remember: “engage new audiences” means “inform existing audiences”).
I hope these tips help you get started on your journey towards marketing success!