Lewis Howes released a pretty fine product called LinkedInfluence.

In it, he covers how LinkedIn, which is basically a free tool, can be HYPER efficient as a lead-generation tool.

Click for my full Linked Influence review, or keep reading for the potted summary:

Linked Influence from Lewis Howes

Linked Influence is a step-by-step guide to using LinkedIn as a highly effective lead generation tool. It will show you how to increase your mailing list, position yourself as an authority, connect with people you thought were out of reach and pretty much eliminate the need for cold-calling.

Delivery is professional, clean, and in bite-size chunks.

As a direct result of implementing the strategies in Linked Influence, I have MASSIVELY increased my, er, influence on LinkedIn. I am connected to a ton more relevant people, have grown my email list and am using it to drive traffic to my site daily.

When I owned a recruitment company, LinkedIn was considered hot. I attended many training sessions on the best use of it. They cost multiples of Lewis’s training and taught only a fraction of what he shares here.

This product will make you money. Get it here.

Or read the whole review of Linked Influence

The excellent Social Media Examiner has a piece entitled:

“26 Ways To Use Social Media for Lead Generation“.

While it doesn’t talk specifically about lead generation techniques, or integration with broadcast email services, or similar, it does look at some of the loftier lead generation concepts behind using social media to reinforce, specifically, brand value.

The writer, Debbie Hemley, does a fine (and well researched) job of showcasing ways in which social media – when used properly – can improve your business’s perception in the eyes of potential customers – or leads.

It’s been put together as an A-Z, which is cute, but doesn’t add to the article.

BUT. Well worth checking out.

Broadcast email services allow you to communicate with dozens, hundreds or thousands of people at the same time.

Using a broadcast email service IS NOT the same as using the CC or the BCC function.

Which is a BAD idea.

If you use a dedicated service, you

• Bypass spam filters
• Measure stats (who opened, who clicked, how many complaints, unsubscribes etc)
• Line up messages for future sending

The HUGE advantage of a broadcast email service is the “autoresponder” sequence.

That means, you – the brilliant copywriter – write all your emails only ONCE.

If I sign up to get your newsletter, then I receive those pre-written emails in a pre-ordered sequence, according to the delay that you determine.

Once your recipients have got the first five, or ten, or twenty emails that you have pre-written, then you can send them a “broadcast email”.

These are useful for timely events or announcements, or stuff that’s relevant TODAY but might not be relevant next week.

For example, if you’re running a sale, and you want to let everybody on your newsletter know that you’ve got some great discounts in place for a limited time only, then you can send out that email to your list at a time that’s convenient.

Of if you’re off on holiday, and you want to tell your paying copywriting clients that you’re not going to be around for a few weeks, then you take advantage of the “broadcast” feature.

HOT TIP:

You can also segment your list, so that you only send broadcasts out to certain people – people who have completed the autoresponder sequence, people who have clicked a link, people who have NOT opened a certain email of yours.

The money’s in the list, baby, the money’s in the list.

Get your service. Here are my recommendations:

Low End:

• Aweber
• GetResponse

High-End (bells and whistles)

• InfusionSoft
• Office Autopilot

PopUp Domination is a lead generation tool from Michael Dunlop.

Specifically, it makes creating pop-ups easy.

And why is this good for lead generation?

Because it works, plain and simple.

Although pop-ups have a REALLY bad reputation, and are associated with everything that is bad and scammy and yucky about using the internet, they are proven to increase click-throughs, which in turn, gets the visitors to your site doing what you want them to do.

PopUp Domination has been specifically designed as a lead gen tool. The options are, by default, to populate the popup with your mailing list software’s opt-in form.

The big challenge for most of us is how to use it without annoying your visitor.

This is where this particular product comes into its own.

(Brief aside – I know that tools like Aweber have a pop-up form builder – also called lightboxes and the such – but PopUp Domination has more advanced tools that we’re going to go into here.)

Installing PopUp Domination

It comes in two formats – one as a WordPress plugin and one for ANY website – standalone or otherwise. What that means – if you don’t know – is that it can be installed with two clicks onto your WordPress-powered website. If you don’t know how to upload plugins to your site, or you don’t use WordPress, don’t worry. People who can help you abound.

As I use WordPress, it was a simple question of adding the new plugin and then activating it. You need to enter your order number when you use it for the first time.

Sweet.

Customizing PopUp Domination

The next step is to play with the look and feel. The plugin comes with seven pre-loaded templates, four of which have an option for you to include a picture of your give-away or bribe.

In addition to the seven themes, there are fourteen different color schemes to choose from.

The templates are sweet and I hope they add more. My only worry at the moment is that the style of the templates is becoming a little ubiquitous as everybody and their cousin are implementing the plugin on their sites.

(By the way, do you need more proof that this works than the fact that everybody is using it?)

Entering your opt-in form code

This is the bit that gets tricky if you’re not technically inclined (although if you can follow instructions and know how to copy-paste, it shouldn’t be too difficult).

You need to create a new form in your mailing-list software. PopUp Domination supports “ANY email provider” (their words), including my favorites, Aweber and GetResponse.

Once you’ve created the form (it doesn’t matter what it looks like, but it must include both name and email address) then you copy the HTML version of that into the prompt-box on the PUD back-end.

One of the advantages here is that you don’t have to worry about styling at all, so it makes creating the form incredibly quick. In fact, if you’ve already got other forms created, you can just copy that form, rename it, and use the HTML version of the code. About 30 seconds work, I reckon.

Then, enter your text

The next step is to enter your title and prompts. Depending on the template you have used, you’ll either have a lot of space or not a lot of space. This is the place to announce your offer and introduce your call to action.

The next window, if applicable, allows you to introduce your bullet points. These are typically benefits or outcomes that your prospect will get for signing up to your list.

PopUp Domination does a good job of guiding you through this process and even suggests how many characters you should be using in each case for perfect layout, and you can always do a manual check on how things will end up looking by using the preview option.

Scheduling PopUp Domination

This is important. You now have to decide the schedule for your popups. Is PopUp Domination going to trigger for each and everyone of your visitors? Each and every one of your pageviews? Is it going to disappear for a certain number of days after it’s been shown to any one visitor?

You have to make your own decision, based on the traffic you’re getting and where that traffic is coming from. I use a seven day gap between showings per visitor (which will work so long as their cookies are playing nicely) and a delay of anywhere between no seconds and 30 seconds depending on where I have it installed. That’s because on some of my sites I like my visitors to stick around, and on others, they might not necessarily be there for very long, so I want them to get maximum, uninterrupted exposure to my offer.)

The scheduling options are pretty sophisticated, and you can configure exit-pops as well as lightboxes.

Affiliate options

PopUp Domination can be promoted by anybody with a Clickbank account and the commissions are generous. You can hardcode your affiliate ID into the plugin itself, which means that if you can convince two other people to buy it, then you will have made your money back. This is a nice touch that doesn’t involve any jumping through hoops.

And that’s it!

You’re good to go!

How much does PopUp Domination cost?

PopUp Domination currently costs $47. That’s a one-off fee with no membership options or monthly renewals.

Is it worth it?

How much is a lead worth to you? Installing this plugin will get you more subscribers. That’s for sure. It will prompt those who are hesitant about signing up to your list to go for it. You can’t lose, unless you scare them off with naff newsletter content or a freebie that sucks.

Many of your leads will become clients. If the total cost of acquisition of ONE lead is $47, then I reckon you’re laughing.

Is it worth it? It most certainly is. Get your copy now. Highly recommended.

You can increase your lead generation efforts dramatically within a couple of minutes and a little tinkering with your site.

A lot of lead generation efforts are costly and time-intensive, but there are a couple of techniques you can implement on your website immediately to vastly increase the amount of leads you’re getting with each day, as long as you’ve got a website.

Today, we’ll look at just one of these: The Hello Bar.

The Hello Bar is the small drop-down you see at the top of this site. It’s new-ish (at the time of writing) and has been implemented with huge success by various people:

• DIYThemes gained 1180 additional email subscribers in 30 days – read the report by Derek Halpern here.
• Chris Brogan suggests you use it to give your readers a gentle poke. (He uses it at the moment to promote his “Kitchen Table Companies” mailing list.)
• Andrew Warner calls it “the most effective marketing tool” he has used on Mixergy.
• … and see another eight awesome uses on the Digital Telepathy blog

Once you sign up they’ve made creating the Hello Bar a piece of cake.

You enter the brief text you want to appear in your header drop-down, choose your color-scheme and your call to action, and you’re ready to go.

The most difficult thing, I suppose, is deciding on the call to action. But if you’ve already got a newsletter you’re promoting, then start with that.

There’s no option for split-testing at the moment (although I’m sure you could combine it with Google Website Optimizer or similar to see which works best. You ARE able to create up to five different Hello Bars, and statistics are available once it’s installed that tell you how many times each one has appeared, and what the CTR (click-through rate) for each different bar is.

I’m using it on MatthewKimberley.com and also here – driving the traffic towards the sign-up page of my More Clients newsletter and free report (check it out if you’re interested.)

I’ll write next about another simple tool you can use and implement incredibly quickly – PopUp Domination – which is paid but offers similarly dramatic results.

Watch this space!

B2B leads are different to B2C leads. Applying a decent B2B lead generation strategy can reap dividends.

Search Engine Land has a two part article on B2B Lead Generation (primarily through search marketing, given that they are, Search Engine Land and not, say, Generic Lead Generation Land (that’s me, I think.)

Interesting insights, based on a Marketing Sherpa report, that says the continual problems with B2B lead generation are guaranteeing high volumes of leads, good quality leads and also a lengthening sales cycle.

There’s a shift, it seems, towards online marketing for B2B lead gen, which seems to make sense to me. There’s a shift towards online marketing for everything, so there’s no reason to think that businesses would be operating any differently.

The days of cold calling, after all, are dead, innit?

The second part of the article looks at the lengthening sales cycle – in B2B stuff the cycles were already long. Although it’s easy to spend money that isn’t yours, expenses have to be rubber stamped.

I would have thought that procurement divisions were making better use of technology to shorten their sales cycles, or perhaps they’re drowning in the noise like all of us …

Read more: B2B Lead Generation Via Search Marketing (Part I) and (Part II)

My preferred lead generation method is email marketing.

It’s a low-barrier to entry, no cost way for interested folk to sign up to your list.

Lead generation, in fact, doesn’t come much easier than driving traffic to your site and letting decent, qualified, leads decide if they’re interested in what you’re offering.

Email marketing can be profitable for your business, irrespective of what your offerings are. It’s much cheaper than other advertising techniques and allows you to build loyalty and trust with clients. As a result, they love you and you make more sales.

Get an account with either Aweber or GetResponse and start building a permission-based list.

Here are some Golden Rules to get you started.

1. Make sure your content doesn’t suck. Your subscribers have trusted you with their email addresses. Don’t let them down by filling their inboxes with shit.
2. Post your subscription form everywhere. All over your site. Make it pop. Put it more than once on a page.
3. Use social media for lead generation. You can stick a sign-up form on a Facebook page. Do it.
4. Ask for the bare minimum. This is about reducing the barriers to entry to your list. Do you really need their address and telephone number? Do you even need their name? I’ll give you ONE thing, I won’t give you two.
5. Got a privacy policy? You should do. You’re entering a sort of contract with your subscribers. Let them know what their rights are.
6. Tell them what they’re going to get. Give them a sample of the goodies. Once they’ve tasted it, they won’t want to let it go.
7. Archive your old newsletters. Aweber will give you the option to publish your newsletter online for posterity. Or stick it on your blog. Whatever. It’s either in the public domain or it’s not. Don’t play hard to get.
8. Make your freebie useful. Everybody likes something for free until it disappoints. Give them a goodie for signing up, and then keep giving them goodies throughout the year. Keep your subscribers hungry.
9. Tell ‘em to spread the word. Referral marketing rocks. Ask them to pass it along to friends. You’ll get new fans and generate new leads.
10. Syndicate. Let others reprint the info in your newsletter. This will generate more leads. Just make sure you get attribution for the stuff you’ve sweated blood over.
11. Include a “sign up” option in the newsletter itself. If it’s going to be passed on to their friends, they’ll want the option of signing up as well.
12. Implement a squeeze page. A squeeze page is a page on your site where the only two options are “sign up” or leave. That alone, along with your convincing copy, will be enough to turn a lot of visitors into hot leads.
13. Go mad with the testimonials. “Henry thought this was great” is a much better lead generation sentence than “we say this is great”.
14. Blog a lot. New content will keep folk coming back for more. Once they’re used to you, then they’ll decide if they like you. If they like you, you can get their email address. Simples.
15. Guest post. Cross pollinate your message to readers of other blogs. The more you write for other audiences, the more your own audience will grow and the more leads you’ll generate.

So what are you waiting for? Get started with Aweber or GetResponse now!

There are hundreds of lead generation tools for capturing emails and starting email marketing campaigns.

Aweber is an excellent starting point, and is recommended by internet marketers the world over.

“The money’s in the list” they all say, and they’re all right. If you’re not collecting email addresses of potential customers, then you’re losing a really valuable opportunity to connect with them on an ongoing basis.

I use Aweber because it’s cheap and easy to use. I also use it because everybody I know uses it. Social proof, right?

There’s a one dollar trial (at the time of writing) and if you can send an email, and can work your way around Gmail, or Outlook, or whatever it is you use, then you’ll be able to use this.

It works like this:

• You sign up for an account
• You create a “web form”, which you then publish on your site (if you’re not able to update your site yourself, then they have an inbuilt system for emailing the code to your webmaster or web developer).
• Visitors come to your site, like you, want to find out more about you, and give you their email address. They might do this in return for a bribe, or just because they value your content.
• You have the option of automatically sending your subscribers a sequence of emails that you’ve pre-written, or dropping them timely “broadcasts” (for example, about special events or promotions or sales that you’re running). You also have the option of doing both of those things – the first few emails being a “welcome on board” and “getting to know you” introductory series, and the rest being specific to whatever’s going on in your business.

There are a dozen reasons for not having an email list. But none of them are good.

Check out Aweber now and watch your lead generation activities go through the roof.

A lead management system is crucial if you’re not going to be floundering in the dark. Below is a list of CRM and lead-management tools for you to explore, in no particular order.

If you’re not using anything to manage your leads at the time being, then you’re losing out. If you’re using pen and paper, then it’s better than nothing. If you’ve configured Excel or – heaven help you – Microsoft Access for lead management, then you understand the need for a proper system.

Now do yourself a favor and invest a small amount in getting that sales pipeline exactly how you want it and need it.

Sales Nexus

Online CRM and email marketing system with a focus on sales automation and collaboration. A decent tool for lead management. Good looking, very reasonably priced, even for small businesses and a free trial is available without needing to enter your credit card details.

–> Click here for more details

Highrise CRM

What’s to be said about the sexiest CRM software on the planet? Highrise is made by 37Signals, who have made a point to make their lead management software sweet and easy to use. The down side of this is perhaps a little too much simplicity, but if you’re a one to three man company, or you’re just getting started, this is an excellent place to begin. Also comes with a thirty day free trial.

–> Click here for more details OR click here to see a brief video tutorial I put together.

Free CRM

FreeCRM is used by over 170.000 companies. It’s not entirely free, but it does have a limited free version for up to 50 users. It’s great for contract tracking, lead tracking, sales pipeline management, customer service and business management. Prices for the professional edition start at $14.95.

–> Click here for more details