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How You Can Generate Sales Leads Using Inbound Marketing in 30 Days

When you ask someone with a successful social media presence how to build your own audience, the answer most often is, “Write a blog post, Tweet it to your following, and share it on Facebook and LinkedIn.” But what if you do not have many followers on Twitter or Facebook Fans?

A few weeks ago, my company decided to start a process to answer the question: “How can a business that does not have many hits on their website, has no followers on Twitter, and no Fans on Facebook, generate sales leads using inbound marketing in only 30 days?”



lead generation with social media
Catching leads on social media ain't easy without a plan (image credit)


Our goal is to get people to sign up for a webinar where we will share this marketing plan.

Below is how we are getting webinar attendees:


Create a Story


The web is a crowded space and you are in constant competition to earn your target audience’s attention. We have come to realize that your competition does not just reside in your industry, but is everywhere. Think about what you read – whether it pertains to your business or not. What stories resonate with you the most? It can be a blog post on how to grow your business, or news relating to your favorite football team, or the heartfelt story of a mother reunited with her child. All content producers are competing for your time, and no matter how you spend it, you only have 24 hours a day.

Before writing a blog post, and before building your social media plan, you first need a story that will resonate with your ideal customer. At Cloud Marketing Labs, we want to be known as the firm who can deliver sales leads in 30 days using Social Media. We feel this is something our audience can wrap their hands around, and will help us stand out from some of our marketing firm competitors.


Focus


You cannot join every network and be successful at all of them in 30 days. You need to focus all of your time and energy on 2 or 3 platforms. We chose blogging, public relations and Pay Per Click (PPC).


Blogging


After writing great content pertaining to your story, you need an audience to read it. In order to grow our audience, we would share our most helpful posts with friends and customers by emailing them a link to the post and asking them to share it with their friends. The key here is not to abuse your contacts. Only send a few posts, otherwise, you risk becoming a bit of a spammer and annoying. Even if you do not have a large following on Facebook, Twitter, etc., chances are someone who you are in regular contact with does, and will be happy to share helpful information with their network.


Public Relations


We found many blogs, such as the E-Biz Booster Blog, looking for guest posters and fresh content. If your story is compelling and unique, chances are they will allow you to leverage their network and help you grow your audience and expand your reach.

By pitching our “Sales Leads in 30 Days Using Social Media” story to various blogs and friends, we have been able to set up a few guest posts over the course of these 30 days. We get the benefit of expanded reach, and they get the benefit of new voices.

We are also going to submit a news release announcing a webinar where we will share this story with small and mid-sized business owners. However, instead of emailing the news release to journalists, we are going to use the online distribution service PRWeb. This will help with our search rankings and increase the visibility of our story as it gets picked up by various news aggregation sites.


Pay Per Click


Our final focus is on PPC advertising. However, instead of using Adwords, we decided to use Facebook’s advertising platform. There are two main reasons for this. First, it is cheaper. We are in a competitive space, and Adwords clicks would be well over $1.00 per click to get onto the first page. Second, Facebook ads will help you develop your buyer persona. You have visibility on things like age, gender, likes, and job titles that you are unable to see using Google Adwords. This will help us target our ads more precisely, increasing the efficiency of our campaign.

__________
Greg Digneo
Greg Digneo,
founder of Cloud Marketing Labs gets you leads.
Greg Digneo is founder of Cloud Marketing Labs, a marketing service that helps small and midsized businesses generate sales leads in 30 days using inbound marketing. He is hosting the webinar “How to generate sales leads in 30 days using social media” (offer has expired), is co-author of the Cloud Marketing Labs blog, and guest author on the reputable site Copyblogger.

Image source: Lasso, ©2007 by williac/flickr. - Some rights reserved. - CC-BY 2.0.



Build A Big List For Free Using Social Media

Not only that you can do that—build a big list—you will make money at the same time.

Of course you have to know what you are doing or you’ll end up with nothing else but a huge waste of your time. I recently have discovered Ryan Deiss just has released some great content.

Update:


Ryan Deiss will be hosting a killer FREE Webinar on Wednesday. The webinar is over, but you can check out the following:

“Underground Listbuilding Course by Ryan Deiss”


This will be awesome. Even though they say this will be the largest Webinar in Internet history—they plan for more than 5,000 people—seats will be going very fast. They have more than 25,000 people already on their special interest email list.

⇒ Underground Listbuilding Course by Ryan Deiss (↑)

Hurry, it's FREE!
(And they have a surprise for you … was a no-brainer for me.)




I have checked out the material and it is definitely the right way to use social networks and media to build your business. Besides that I saw a presentation from Ryan in front of 500 business owners and answering their questions as well. It's attested he knows what he is talking about. Period.


⇒ Undercover Listbuilding with Ryan Deiss (↑)


And enjoy your weekend by the way.

Yours
John W. Furst

How Businesses Use Social Media - A Report

Social Media Report
March 2009

Michael Stelzner just published his brand new Social Media Marketing Industry Report

The question answered in this report is “How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses”.

He set out to uncover the “who, what, where, when and why” of social media marketing with this report. Nearly 900 of his peers provided the kind of insight that previously has not existed. In this report you'll find:
  • The top social media marketing questions marketers want answered
  • How much time marketers are investing in social media
  • The benefits of social media
  • How time invested impacts results
  • The top social media tools
  • And much more!

If you're pondering starting social media marketing, these findings will help push you over the edge. If you're already onboard, feel free to examine what the really experienced marketers are doing (and use this study to persuade others).

Check out the details and download the report for yourself, I finished reading it a couple of minutes ago, and found it worthy to spread the message.





Enjoy.

Yours
John W. Furst