Lead Generation is Hard

Unfortunately, generating good leads is easier said than done, with 50% of marketers saying it’s their single biggest challenge.

Effective Lead Generation Tactics

Email is advocated as the most effective lead generation tactic… much more effective than paid search and social media combined. But there’s an even better way to generate qualified leads, which we’ll get into further down…

Average Cost per B2B Lead

Leads don’t come cheap! An estimated 76% of marketers spend more than $50 per lead! For that kind of money, you want to make sure the leads you are getting are highly qualified so that you get a good return on your investment.

The infographic below illustrates some interesting facts around lead generation…

Using Surveys for Lead Generation

For a long time, it was enough to include a “Subscribe to Updates” form on your website to grow your audience and capture potential leads. This tactic however has been overused and is no longer enough to keep growing your business. These days, one of the best ways to capture qualified leads is to create a survey that is relevant to your target audience or that gives them something they really want as a reward for providing you with useful information you can use to improve your offer, and their personal details so you can send them offers they will really like.

Building & Managing Surveys

We’ve seen a growing demand for valuable customer data and qualified leads amongst our clients, so we set out to develop a powerful survey platform and service that enables our clients to build sophisticated surveys and giveaways in a matter of minutes.

With our cutting edge survey technology, you can now build and manage your own surveys, get access to important metrics and analytics and have your leads automatically added to your favourite Auto Responder email lists. For those who prefer not to get their hands dirty, we provide a full service package where we take care of the design, development and management of all your surveys and giveaways for you.

For more information, pricing and a demo, visit our Surveys and Giveaways page, or send us an enquiry to find out how we can help you generate more leads for your business.

If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments below.

The Best Way to Generate Leads for Your Business was published by inMotion Graphics.

I recently read a discussion on LinkedIn where local florists were discussing the losing battle they’re fighting against the powerful national online florists. These big national or international sites have huge marketing budgets and spend incredible amounts of money on SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which includes creating hundreds of city landing pages that rank very well for local searches, and siphon away web traffic from real local florists.

While this particular issue is specific to florists, I’m sure there are many other industries that face similar cannibalisation threats from big national retailers. So how does a small to medium business survive against these giants with massive marketing budgets?

The answer is quite simple really… create a strong Google Local Listing, or Google Places for Business as it’s also known. Now in case you are wondering what a Google Local Listing is and what it looks like, here’s a screenshot of it in the wild, as seen in a typical local business search for “Florists in Durban” (click to enlarge).

In a typical local business search on Google, you’ll usually see a block of up to 3 ads at the top, then a block of up to 3 organic search results which link straight to company websites, and then a block of up to 7 local listings. In the SEO world, this block of local listings is commonly referred to as the 7 pack. For some searches Google could return a 3 pack, and we’ve also seen the occasional 10 pack. At the end of the local results you’ll find a link that says: “See results for “your search phrase” on a map »”. Clicking this link will then take you to a list of all the local businesses Google has listings for in this particular industry, with their locations pinned on a map. The results that follow the block of local results are usually more organic search results.

Making Local Search Work for Your Business

Now you’re probably wondering how any of this can help your small business compete against the big boys. Well as it turns out, Google is particularly strict about awarding businesses with local listings. You have to have a legitimate address in the city you are creating your listing for, along with a local landline number, all of which Google will verify before displaying your listing in the search results. For this reason, unless the national online retailers have offices or shops in every town or city, they’ll only be able to claim one legitimate listing. This gives you the opportunity to create a good quality local listing that ranks within the first 7 results in the local listing block. As you can see from the screenshot above, this will put you front and centre on the first page of Google in position 4 – 10. Plus, if you’ve racked up 5 or more customer reviews, your listing will stand out from the rest of the crowd like our “Flowers for Africa” listing.

The best part is that it’s absolutely free and you don’t even need a website to feature on the first page of Google for a local search! Perfect for the local florist shop, plumber or restaurant around the corner… Of course, we do highly recommend that all businesses set up a website for many reasons, but we’ll leave that for another post… 😉

How to Create Your Own Local Listing

Anyone can create a “Places for Business Page” or “Google Local Listing”. You can either do it yourself at no cost at all, or you could pay a professional to do it. We offer this service ourselves, but we’re going to do our best to show you how to create your own high quality listing on your own… 😉

Now although we’ve been referring to “Google Local Listings” throughout this article, we should point out that Google has recently switched their local listings to “Google Plus Local Pages”. This is so that they can integrate local businesses into their Google+ social network. This enables you to enjoy all the benefits of a local listing, while being able to share updates and useful information with your customers and Google+ followers.

As to the detailed step by step process of setting up your Google+ Local Page, we’re not going to get into that here, as Google does a pretty good job of it here, plus we’ve included a video tutorial below. If you get stuck or have any questions about the process, post them in the comments below and we’ll happily assist you.

We will however give you a basic outline of the process to give you an idea of what you’re in for, and we’re going to provide you with plenty of tips on how to make your listing the best it can be…

Local business Listing Setup

1. Sign in to your Google Plus account. If you don’t have one yet, create one here: plus.google.com.
2. From your Google Plus profile, create a Google+ Local Business Page. Make sure you select the “Local Business or Place” category when creating your page.
3. Submit your information.
4. Verify your listing.
5. Wait for your listing to appear on Google.

Video: How to Create a Google Places Business Listing

If you are reading this article in an email or RSS feed, click here to watch the video.

Tips for Creating a Local Listing that Ranks Well

• To get your listing to perform well in the search results, you need to pay attention to a number of key factors that can influence local search rankings.
• Take the time to write an appropriate description for your business and include important keywords and phrases in a natural way. Do not keyword stuff!
• Do not add keywords to your business title, unless they are part of your business name.
• Carefully select up to 10 categories that most accurately describe your business or service. You need to select categories that Google suggests as you type, so you might not be able to find as many as 10. The first category you select will become your primary category, so this is the most important one.
• Try and make your listing as complete as possible by adding photos, videos (if you have), opening times and payment options.
• Encourage your customers to leave reviews, but make sure you abide by Google’s guidelines. Do NOT pay for reviews or bribe your customers etc.
• Add your business to good quality directories and relevant directories in your industry, and make sure you are consistent with your NAP formatting (Name, Address and Phone Number) across your website and all other websites and directories. These will count as full citations if the NAP matches your local page and Google will use them when evaluating the online authority of your business.
• Use a local landline number that includes the area code of the phone number, which should of course match the area code associated with your city of location. Avoid using 1800 numbers and other non area specific numbers at all costs! You can add these as additional numbers. Remember to keep the format of your phone number consistent across the entire web.
• Make sure you verify your Google listing… you need to be on the lookout for a postcard from Google with a verification PIN.
• Include your City and State in the title meta tag of the page you are linking to from your Google+ Local Page. This would usually be your homepage, but could be a city specific landing page if you service multiple cities.
• Work hard at building the domain authority of your website by “earning” links (rather than “building” links). We’ll cover ways of doing this in another post.

For a more in-depth look into local search ranking factors, we encourage you to read Moz.com’s Top 20 Local Search Ranking Factors.

Wrapping it Up

We hope by now you are convinced of the immense value in claiming your own local listing for your business if you don’t already have one. This is hands down the easiest and cheapest way of gaining some ground against the big national online retailers, and is bound to get the phone ringing. As the owners of a local florist with a strong online presence, we estimate as much as 60% of our local business from search originates from this listing.

If you have any questions or problems setting up your Google+ Local Page, please post them in the comments below. And if you already have a local listing, let us know how it’s working for you.

How to Create a Google Local Listing and Why Every Local Business Needs One was published by inMotion Graphics.

You can create your site either by doing it yourself, or hiring a professional to do it for you. Corporate sites need to be done by skilled and professional designers. These are people who are equipped with the skills necessary to handle a web development project from the onset to its completion. As the owner of the site, there are a number of benefits that come from hiring professional web development experts:

Strategy Development

One of the strengths that web developers come with is the ability to lay a strategic plan. In this plan, they focus on your business model and any future ambitions and goals. Should your long-term plan be to bring your whole business online, they will help you lay the bricks and chart the best way forward to ensure that your plan remains on course. Not all developers are up to the task when it comes to strategic planning, but professional web development companies’ see this as just another obvious tool to help you achieve your goals.

Quality Web Development

A website is the doorstep to your company and should make a good first impression on your visitors. With the advent of ecommerce and e-shop integrations, most transactions today happen directly on websites. Your website, therefore, needs to be of high quality, well-planned, and dynamic in order to serve the various tastes and preferences of the many clients who frequent such sites. An experienced development team knows how to build a results driven website that’s attractive and lively, and provides a great user experience.

Unique Content Development and Management

In web designing and development, content is king. In fact, a website without content is like a farm without crops; it is bare and serves no use. Content development is a skill that not everybody has, and as such, individual developers may fail to develop captivating content. Content needs to be unique, interesting and informative if it is to attract the target audience. Web development companies usually have various teams which are assigned to perform specific duties within the web development process. There are team members that deal solely with content development to ensure that the overall website is of high quality.

Search Engine Optimization

Simply making a glamorous website is not sufficient; it must be optimized so as to be visible to search engines. This is how it works: whenever you search for certain content on the web, some pages appear first, while others may appear many pages later in search engine results. The probability of the last pages being visited is almost nil, meaning they can lose sales as a result. Search engine optimization comes in to solve this problem, making your website rank either on the first page, or among the top pages. Professional web development companies usually have personnel who are skilled at promoting pages, making search engines such as Yahoo, Google, MSN and Bing, rank your webpage highly.

Web Analytics

Working with a well-established and professional website development company enables you to monitor your company website, as well as marketing methods, constantly. These professional companies have web analytic experts who are highly skilled in the use of web analytical tools to generate reports that will help companies to maximize on their strategies. In addition, the experts dig into data on the internet to get critical insights that will propel your company to greater heights of success and profitability.

Competitive Advantage

When you employ the services of a professional web development company, it will help you to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Well-established firms are always in sync with the latest technologies, as well as trends that they incorporate into their clients’ systems. This will help you a great deal in staying ahead of your competitors. Remember, highly skilled and experienced web developers are essential to propelling your business to success in the online platform.

These are just some of the advantages of hiring a professional web development company for your business. Ensure that you thoroughly research various web development companies before finalizing your decision, so that you can get the best within your budget.

Carole is a website design expert and blogger. She shares her skills and experience on corporate website design in her writings. She has over 11 years of experience in website development in Toronto.

Benefits of Hiring a Professional Web Development Company was published by inMotion Graphics.

Here at inMotion Graphics, we tend to wear the web designer and graphic designer’s hat (among many others as well), so we can certainly relate… in a way…

Coming up with unique designs that captivate and awe our audiences certainly requires some extraordinary dedication and resilience, but we wouldn’t trade the awesome feeling of accomplishment at the end of a hard day’s work for anything in the world.

If you want to know one of our own truths… since we’re being truthful and all…

We like to break the rules every now and then…

BTW: The asterisk in the original title refers to this statement by iStockphoto:

All of these “truths” are based on our own observations and opinions, but we think we can all agree nothing has ever been truer than a designer’s desire for a unicorn deathmatch.

Do you have any designer truths of your own? We’d love to hear them in the comments below.

Inside a Designers Mind was published by inMotion Graphics.