Lead generation is a critical step of the new business process, but it isn’t the end goal. At the end of the day you still need to convert these leads into sales for your business. Succeeding with B2B sales is a challenging task: Even the best salespeople don’t have a 100% success rate with converting business opportunity leads into customers. Sales is a numbers game to a certain extent and by following some best practices you can improve your odds and close more deals for your business.
Here are three tips to help you boost your sales conversion rate:
1. Understand the Problem before Selling the Solution
What would you think if you went into a doctor’s office and he prescribed medicine for you before taking the time to even ask about your symptoms or what was bothering you? Just as there is no “magic pill” which cures all medical conditions, there shouldn’t be a “magic” product or service that you sell to all your sales prospects as a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. Take the time to understand your prospect’s business, as well as their wants, needs, and pain points. Show your prospect that you care about their unique situation and are willing to provide a customized solution to meet their needs. Remember, the confused person in the hardware store doesn’t really want a drill bit, he wants a hole.
2. Think Outside the Box
There’s a great quote from Henry Ford: “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Sometimes, your sales prospects may have a rough idea of what they think they need but since they're not in your industry they don’t know all the options available to them. Show your value as a strategic partner by helping your leads to understand that you’re able to help them in innovative ways that they might not have thought of themselves. This all goes back to truly understanding their problem, and it can help differentiate you from your competitors that just focus on providing more typical or prescriptive solutions. Avoid showing up to a meeting with your prospect with a menu of your products or services in hand because it diminishes your true value as a partner.
3. Be Persistent, but Don’t Be Pushy
Just because you’re in a hurry to make a sale doesn’t mean your lead is in a hurry to open their checkbook. Quality customers sometimes take time to convert and nobody likes a pushy salesperson. Keep in mind that high-value services generally have a longer sales cycle because they're a bigger investment: Someone may be willing to buy a $4 box of Girl Scout cookies as an impulse buy, but they likely won’t do the same for a $100,000 consulting package. Don’t push them to buy before they're ready, but on the other hand just because they aren’t ready to buy from you now doesn’t mean they won’t ever be. Following up periodically will keep you top of mind with these leads as long as you don’t call them so much that you’re an annoyance. Consider using a CRM or an automated email lead nurturing campaign to simplify the process for yourself. We’ve had clients for our own business that have taken over a year from our first phone call until we finally got a signed contract, and some of these have turned out to be our most successful engagements.
What these tips all boil down to is the idea of providing good customer service. Nobody likes being sold to, so don’t treat your business opportunity leads like marks. Build an honest engagement with them around the principles of understanding, customized service, and value, and your prospects will come to see you as a partner worth doing business with.
Search engine optimization is one of the most affordable internet marketing strategies available for small businesses. Building a good SEO strategy for your website is far more cost effective than using paid alternatives (such as pay per click ads) and SEO also provides you with longer lasting results. The basic idea behind on-page SEO is simple: Identify some keywords relevant to your target audience, and incorporate those keywords into content on your website (such as blog posts) to make your site on search engines.
Finding the best keywords for your website can be a daunting task if you don’t have the right tools. Even Google’s excellent free AdWords Keyword Tool requires a lot of skill to master and can only suggest variations on keywords you’ve already identified. A much better approach to keyword research is a tool which suggests target keywords based on what people are actually using to find your website. This is where real-time SEO analytics tools such as HitTail can make the keyword research process a lot easier.
HitTail is an affordable keyword analytics service that offers plans starting at $10 per month for a basic version or $20 per month for the Pro version. Using it is a very simple process: Just install the tracking code on your website, and the software starts to monitor your incoming website traffic to identify which search terms are driving visitors to your site. Monitoring is done in real time and the software makes recommendations for search terms you should target based on their analysis of over 1.2 billion keywords. This analysis also includes a visual representation of the head and tail keywords, which is helpful for identifying what percentage of your traffic is coming from general vs. specific searches.
Another helpful feature in HitTail is the ability to see where the traffic for your website is coming from: The software automatically tracks the search engine where each search occurred. Additional features which are useful include the capability to export data to Excel, automatic email alerts, and one-click access to an article writing service based around your keywords.
We recommend this low cost service because it’s so easy to use and gets right to the point. There aren’t any unnecessary bells and whistles, just a simple, back-to-basics approach which quickly gets you what you need. Let’s face it: As powerful as the Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Google Analytics are, the learning curve can be a bit steep. Unless you have literally days to dedicate to learning them, you’re not going to get much out of them. HitTail is the exact opposite approach: It takes almost no effort to learn and it starts giving useful keyword suggestions after as few as 25 people have visited your site.
Getting the right keywords can be a difficult task for small businesses, but affordable solutions such as HitTail can make the process a lot easier. You just install the code and let the software monitor and analyze your traffic for you, then sit back and wait for the suggestions to start pouring in. It doesn’t get much easier than that!
It can be tough to keep track of your leads for new business opportunities if your business has a long sales cycle. Let’s face it: Closing the sale on professional services sometimes takes time. A lead may show interest in what your business has to offer, but they might not be ready to pull the trigger yet. This could be for any number of reasons: Maybe they’re locked in a contract with another company, maybe they need to wait a few months until next year’s budget is approved, or maybe they just need some more time to think about it before they’re convinced.
The worst thing you can do is to misinterpret an “I’m not ready yet” as a “No”. You’ve invested a lot of effort into getting these leads to the point where they’ve actually taken the time to talk to you about what you’ve got to offer. Don’t assume that their hesitation to buy from you right now is just a polite way of rejecting your services. Closing a deal on a long sales cycle takes persistence, so when they tell you to contact them again in a few months it’s important that you do.
Here are some tips for keeping these leads active in your business opportunity pipeline:
Mark Your Calendar
If someone says to follow up with them in two months, make sure you follow up with them in two months. It’s good practice to actually mark them down on your calendar. If you’re worried about getting your main calendar too cluttered with follow-up reminders, you can set up a Gmail account specifically for this purpose and use the calendar associated with that account for tracking business opportunity leads. Set the calendar reminders to forward to your main email address so you don’t miss anything. Another option is to use an email reminder service like FollowUpThen. It’s really easy to use: You just send an email with details on when you want the follow-up, and it sends that email back to you as a reminder at the specified date.
Keep Good Notes
Keeping good notes is critical, especially if you’ve got a lot of leads you’re managing. The last thing you want to do is to sound foolish by mistaking the details of one lead with another. One option is to keep a Word document for each lead with notes about your past conversations, where they are in the sales process, and details about their business. You can also track all your leads together in an Excel file. A slightly more sophisticated and organized option would be to use a notetaking tool such as Evernote, which lets you create a fully searchable set of notes that you can access from any computer or mobile device.
Use a Customer Relationship Management Tool
If a do-it-yourself approach to tracking business opportunity leads seems too complicated or cumbersome, it might be time to spring for a Customer Relationship Management tool, also known as a CRM. The most popular CRM tool is Salesforce, which offers a range of tiers going from a basic contact manager all the way to an enterprise-level CRM solution. There is also a basic CRM tool included as part of the HubSpot platform, which can be used to easily manage your leads with lead nurturing and marketing automation activities.
The best system is the one that works for you, and every business obviously has different needs. The most important thing is to keep track of follow-up for your business leads using something more organized than a pile of Post-It notes stuck to your desk. New business sales cycles can sometimes take 6 months or more to close the deal, and you want to make sure you’re still keeping in touch with them when they’re ready to make the purchase.
One of the biggest challenges for many new owners of professional service businesses is developing the right lead generation ideas for getting those first few clients. More established businesses have other tools at their disposal such as referrals from existing clients, but if you’re a startup then you need something fast that can work for you now. Successfully selling your services is one of the hardest parts of owning a business. Here are 5 suggestions for fast lead generation ideas to get you started:
1. Go Through Your Rolodex
Unless you have a non-compete agreement in place, going after old clients from your previous companies is fair game. Just whatever you do, don’t say anything too negative about your past employers or try to pull any sleazy tactics. Keep everything ethical and above board: You want to win this business by showing that you can offer them something better in terms of value, quality, or service. Look through your rolodex or contact list and start with the first names that catch your eye. Perhaps you were the primary point of contact for managing the relationship with some of those past clients and you made a good impression on them. Give them a call and see if there is anything you can do to help them now.
2. Attend a Networking Event
Most cities have networking events for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Often you’ll need to pay a nominal fee, like $20 or $30, but this cost is well worth it. Networking with other business owners will give you some insight into their tactics and will also open up some opportunities for you to share business with each other through referrals and partnerships. The people who attend these events tend to be very helpful. Even if you don’t end up selling your services to any of the other business owners at the event, the opportunity to network with them will likely lead to new business down the road.
3. Visit a Trade Show
Trade shows are a great place to target vertical markets for generating leads. Let’s say you’re an accountant who works primarily with professional service businesses. If you attend a trade show intended for lawyers, you’ll most likely meet some lawyers who own their firms and would be ideal prospects for you. You’ll probably also be the only accountant there, so your competition will be limited. People at trade shows are usually looking to network, so make sure to attend the cocktail hours to show the prospects there how your services can help their businesses.
4. Go On LinkedIn
LinkedIn, and especially LinkedIn Groups, is a great tool for networking with people. Take the same approach we recommend for the trade shows and focus your networking more within your clients’ industry groups as opposed to your own. Actively engage with the people you connect with and send an introductory message that says more than just “I want to add you to my network on LinkedIn”. Take this as an opportunity to show them how this can be a mutually beneficial relationship. As with all networking activities, focus more on being helpful as opposed to self-promotional. Nobody wants to do business with a walking advertisement.
5. Try Cold Calling
This is one of the hardest things to do, but we know from experience that this really works. This is only a permissible tactic for B2B businesses: It’s rude to give people unsolicited calls at their homes, and the Federal Do Not Call registry has made it illegal in many cases. Calling businesses directly is fair game though, but get ready to work hard and deal with a lot of rejection: We estimate that we made approximately 2,000 phone calls for each client we successfully signed on through cold calling. In order to save yourself a lot of wasted effort, do yourself a favor and pre-qualify prospects as much as possible before you call them. Either use a commercial sales database or do it yourself by using workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Even just eliminating prospects on the basis of size (because they’re too small to have the budget for your services or because they’re too big to work with a company as small as yours) can be a great method to cut your list down to a managable size.
Finding the most effective lead generation ideas for your business can be tough, so the best approach is to try as many tactics as possible to learn what works. Nothing in life that’s worth doing is easy, so keep at it!
WolfCom recently reached the #1 spot on the HubSpot Partner All Star Board. This list includes all the agencies offering inbound marketing services who are currently training on HubSpot’s software. Getting to the top of the All Star Board wasn’t an easy task for us: Many of the agencies on that list are much bigger than we are, so we had to work hard to be competitive.
So what was the point of this friendly competition for us? To make friends, of course! Reaching the top spot on the Partner All Star Board was a great conversation starter to help us reach out to other inbound marketing agencies. A small two-person agency like us can be easy to ignore. We wanted to show people that we’re serious about inbound marketing and that we’re capable of delivering results.
Many of the other HubSpot partner agencies have specialized knowledge in a variety of areas, including things like web development, graphic design, content writing, branding, and social media. Networking with these agencies means we’ll know who they are in the future and can work with them if any of our clients have needs that go beyond our own capabilities. We’re not afraid to outsource work if it means our clients get better results. We realize that one of the keys to long-term success as an agency is to put quality ahead of profits.
We’re actually quite surprised at how well this worked out for us. We were certainly expecting a few people to get back to us, but as of right now we have calls or in-person meetings scheduled with about 15 agencies and we’re still getting new responses each day from others who are interested. We’ve heard back from companies ranging in size from 1 person to over 300 employees, and from locations throughout the U.S. and Canada (and even one from Australia!)
HubSpot has done an amazing job at creating a real sense of community among their partner agencies. All the agencies may offer some overlapping services, but we view each other as friends instead of rivals. None of the agencies on the Partner All Star Board are any that we would ever see ourselves competing with directly for business. Everyone is focused on such a wide range of geographies, vertical markets, and specialty services that there is plenty of work to go around. Inbound marketing can benefit almost every business with an online presence, so there’s no shortage of clients for all of us.
This feeling of community among HubSpot’s partner agencies goes beyond just networking and collaborating on projects. HubSpot makes sure all of their agency partners are well-trained in all aspects of inbound marketing, and we participate in two or three training webinars each week. Some of these training sessions involve case studies from other agencies, and everyone gets a chance to learn from these agencies successes and challenges. Agencies routinely give advice to each other during these sessions and it’s really all about sharing and trying to help each other out.
Our decision to take the path to become a HubSpot Certified Partner has been nothing short of transformational for us. We’ve gotten tremendous support as we’ve transitioned to include inbound marketing services along with our traditional and digital PR offerings. On top of all that, we’ve been reaping the benefits of the inbound marketing process for our own business: We’ve seen a surge in website traffic and new leads which would have been inconceivable to us only 6 months ago.
In closing, if you’re an agency thinking of becoming a HubSpot partner then definitely go for it and take advantage of everything it has to offer. And if you’re a business thinking about ways to boost your online presence and drive sales, please contact us to see if we can help!
Local internet marketing requires a strategic approach that goes beyond just SEO. It’s not enough anymore just to optimize the content on your website for local search and hope for the best. All the major search engines have created ways to register your business listing with themand it’s essential that you take advantage of these resources.
Google is the most popular search engine so Google Places for Business is the top place you should register. This is a free service which has been largely integrated with Google+. Using Google Places offers some great benefits for your local internet marketing strategy and will allow you to easily add photos, update your address and hours, and coordinate your pay-per-click advertising with Google AdWords.
Google Places listings are given a prioritized position on the results pages for local searches done through Google, so you’re going to want to spend some time making sure your profile is in good shape. Google provides you with clear instructions on how to fill out your Places profile, but here are a few things you should keep in mind to maximize the benefits:
Complete Your Profile. Don’t just do the bare minimum or go through halfway and then quit. You should fill out all the information they request and add photos, videos, coupons and anything else you can. Don’t squander this free resource by leaving it incomplete. The more information you can include here, the more that Google will be able to offer to your potential customers who are doing local search queries.
Be Consistent. Make sure your Google Places profile matches the contact information on your website and any customer review sites around the web. This let’s Google know that you’re a legitimate local business and that the search results they give are providing accurate information.
Pay Attention to Citations. Citations are kind of like backlinks for your Google Places profile. A citation is basically a listing for your business on an external site and it helps validate your business information to give Google trust that you're legit. Focus on making sure external sites have an accurate name, address, phone number, and URL. A consistent listing on sites like Yelp, Citysearch, and Foursquare will go a long way towards boosting your Google Places profile.
Follow Directions. Make sure you put all the information in its appropriate place. For example, don’t list your URL in the “Business Name” field. Following the instructions as accurately as possible will make sure your business is indexed correctly. If you’re unclear about any of the directions, do a Google search to find out what you should do. Chances are if you don’t understand something, someone else has had the same problem before.
Register One Location per Profile. If your business has multiple locations, you should create a separate Google Places profile for each one. The phone number you list should be a local number to show that you really are in the area, and use the “verify listing by phone” option to add even more credibility to your profile.
Get Rated. Encourage customers to place reviews for your business on your profile, but don’t place fake reviews yourself. Positive reviews can raise your profile, but fake reviews are bad news if you get caught (and the people working at Google are pretty smart about figuring this out).
Focus on Trust. Remember that your Google Places profile is all about building trust for Google that you’re an actual business. Honesty is always a good policy for marketing, and your Google Places profile isn’t the place to be deceitful or to try to game the system. Be as honest and accurate as possible so your customers will know what to expect.
One of the most affordable internet marketing strategies you can use for your business is to build relationships on social media. Social media is free (except for your time) so it doesn’t get more affordable than that. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn have changed the way that people network and connect with each other, and this opens a lot of good marketing opportunities for business.
Before you dive in headfirst into social media marketing, here are some tips you should keep in mind:
It’s Not About How Many Followers You Have
We’d all like to have 100,000 Twitter followers, but that just isn’t going to happen. And it doesn’t need to. It doesn’t matter how many people you’re connected to on social media as long as you’re connected to the right people. It’s much better to have a smaller, more targeted, and more engaged audience that responds to you and retweets your message than a larger audience who follows you but doesn’t really care about what you have to say. A marketing message to an untargeted audience will ultimately fall on deaf ears.
Provide Knowledge Worth Sharing
Knowledge is the currency of social media. Nobody wants to pay attention to someone on Twitter who’s always shouting “look at me, I’m so great”. All the non-celebrities who have built large and loyal social media followings have done so by sharing useful knowledge that people care about. Your goal on social media should be to act as a helpful member of the community. Every link you share should ultimately be for the benefit of others. If you provide information that is exceptionally valuable, people might even share it with their own followers. That’s the basic idea of how things go viral: Truly useful and engaging content gets shared much more often than content that isn’t.
Be Conversational
The best part of social media is that it allows you to be social. It’s important not to think of social media as a soap box to broadcast your message but rather a place to have engaging conversations with people. Conversations allow you to provide people with useful information, proving yourself as a valuable contact for them to network with. Every time someone responds to one of your tweets, your Twitter handle basically gets mentioned to all of their followers. A large part of marketing is just getting your name out there, so being conversational is a great way to achieve this objective.
Make Sure People Can Find You
Even if you’ve got the most engaging message in the world, if people can’t find you then you might as well be talking to a brick wall. Make sure your social media profiles are all as complete as possible so that people can find you on search engines and include links to your social media accounts on your website. Also take advantage of the unique ways of being found on each social media platform you use, such as hashtags on Twitter and groups on LinkedIn.
Integrate Social Media with the Rest of Your Marketing
Social media isn’t a standalone marketing strategy. You need to make sure it is integrated with good website design, SEO, blogging, and lead capture strategies. Think of social media as a promotional tool for the rest of your internet marketing initiatives. It’s important that you have a lot of depth built up behind your company’s online presence before you go full speed ahead on social media marketing. Social media is a gateway for people to look into those deeper things about your business.
If you’re looking for an affordable internet marketing strategy for your business, social media should definitely not be overlooked. Just make sure you follow these best practices and have your end goal in mind as you get your name out there.
One of the reasons why blogging is such an effective on site SEO tool is because it’s a great way to keep adding fresh, keyword rich content to your website. If you want to reap the benefits of inbound B2B lead generation through your website, you definitely need to have a blog.
Just having a blog isn’t enough. Effective lead generation requires following some best practices to make sure the blog is successful at attracting and converting prospects.
Here are 7 tips to guide you in developing your blog:
1. Use Your Keywords. Each blog article should be written around a specific keyword. That keyword should appear within the title for each blog post, as well as throughout your article. However, make sure you avoid overuse (also known as “keyword stuffing”). A good rule of thumb is for your keyword to appear roughly 3 or 4 times within the body of a typical blog post.
2. Know Your Audience. You’re writing this blog for your sales prospects, not for people within your industry. Keep things simple enough so that they can be understood by your typical client or customer and avoid any industry jargon that might be over their head. One of the first rules of good B2B lead generation is to know your customer personas and to target their wants, needs, and fears.
3. Blog Frequently. Starting a blog is making a commitment. One of the worst things you can do is to start a blog, write articles for a few weeks, and then just stop because you’re too busy. This makes it look to your website visitors like you just gave up. Try to create new posts consistently at least twice a week, or even more often if possible. Make a topic calendar if necessary so you can stick to this schedule.
4. Include Images. Nowadays, people expect web content to be graphically rich. If your blog is all text, it will appear boring and prospects will lose interest. Pictures make your blog articles more likely to be read and shared, so it’s incredibly important to include a picture with each new blog entry.
5. Pay Attention to HTML Tags. There’s a lot going on in the HTML code behind the scenes of a webpage which is invisible to readers but visible to search engines. Take advantage of things like “meta” and “alt” tags, which provide additional opportunities for you to insert your keywords. If you don’t know HTML, don’t worry: these tags are often handled automatically by your blogging platform or content management system.
6. Be Social. Social media channels such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn provide opportunities to share and promote your blog content. Every time you make a new blog post, post a link to the article on your social media accounts. Each blog article should also include “social sharing” buttons right on the webpage to easily allow readers to share articles they like with their own friends and followers.
7. Include a Call to Action. Since the purpose of your blog is to drive new business leads, there needs to be something to entice the reader to seek more information. Every blog article should have a call to action somewhere on the page directing the prospect to a lead generation offer with a landing page.
Success with the B2B lead generation process depends on driving as much traffic as possible into your marketing funnel. Following these important tips will make sure that your blog is optimized for being found by your ideal sales prospects so you can get the targeted traffic you need to capture those qualified leads.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process where you make your website findable on search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing. SEO is an important aspect of your local internet marketing strategy and it shouldn’t be ignored. It includes both on-site activities based around keywords and off-site activities based around building links to your website.
Keywords are the search terms that local customers will use to find you. Think of these as the things they would type into Google if they were looking for your business, although it goes beyond just search engines. Using the right keywords throughout your website will make sure you are indexed properly for social media and customer review sites as well.
Understanding Long-Tail Keywords
In general, you want to look at what are known as “long-tail” keywords when you’re developing your keyword strategy. Think of these as the ultra-specific terms which apply to your business, and they are often variations of more general “head” keywords. Let’s look at some keyword examples and the number of Google results returned for each one:
| Head |
dry cleaner |
17,000,000 results |
| |
organic dry cleaner |
1,770,000 results |
| |
organic dry cleaner brooklyn |
752,000 results |
| Long-Tail |
organic dry cleaner park slope brooklyn |
53,500 results |
It’s clear that the more specific you get, the less competition you face. The great thing about long-tail keywords is that they also often contain head keywords within them, giving you an added benefit. For example, the long-tail keyword organic dry cleaner park slope brooklyn also contains the head keywords dry cleaner and organic dry cleaner within it. Including a location-based component in the keyword ensures that it’s optimized for local search.
Finding the Right Keywords
When developing keywords, think beyond just the descriptions of what services you offer and also consider keywords that describe the problems that you solve. Problem-based keywords can direct people to your website who may not have thought to directly search for you. Going back to the dry cleaner, an example of a relevant problem-based keyword could be how to get gravy stains out of a silk blouse.
The perfect keywords to target for your business are ones which are specific to describing what you do, have a reasonable number of people searching for them each month, and don’t have a lot of competition from other high-ranking websites. Finding these keywords takes a bit of effort, but the results are well worth the time. There are a wide range of tools available online to help you with the process of finding and evaluating keywords, including the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, Ubersuggest, and SEOmoz.
Bringing it All Together
Once you’ve picked the right keywords for your local internet marketing strategy, you need to use them. Make sure these words are incorporated throughout the main pages of your website and also make sure you regularly write informative blog articles using these keywords. Blogging is a great strategy to make sure you’re always adding fresh content to your site, and search engines love sites that are constantly being updated.
The most important thing when using keywords is to avoid “stuffing” your website with too many instances. You can’t trick Google into thinking you’re more relevant for that keyword just by using it more often, and excessive keyword stuffing can actually hurt you because the search engines may flag your site as web spam. Focus on a good experience for the end user and use good writing practices. What you write should sound natural and shouldn’t be repetitive. A good rule of thumb is to make sure your keywords make up between 0.5% and 1.5% of the content you are writing.
Online press releases can be pretty powerful tools. The major newswires carry a lot of credibility with search engines, so a press release can be a quick way to get your message to the top of the search engine results. Press releases have traditionally been used as a means for making corporate announcements such as new products, new employees, or company mergers. This is still a good use for press releases, but we’ve got another option to consider: With such a high level of visibility, press releases are an excellent tool for driving traffic into the lead generation process.
The Importance of Traffic
You could have the best landing page in the world with the best offer and it wouldn’t do you any good if nobody sees it. Lead generation is a numbers game, and while we do everything we can to improve our odds along the way (such as improving click through and conversion rates), at the end of the day it all depends on driving traffic into your sales funnel. A high-visibility tool such as a press release is a great way to get your message in front of a lot of eyes. With all else being equal, doubling your traffic should effectively double your leads.
Know Your Ideal Customer
Knowing your ideal customer is at the heart of the lead generation process. How can you target qualified leads if you don’t know who it is that you want to attract? Think of your perfect customer’s wants, needs, and fears and write your press release to address those issues. One approach is to think of a common question they might ask and develop your press release to answer it. Get inside your prospect’s head and think about what might motivate them to read your release.
Pick the Right Keywords
Think of writing a press release as a form of SEO. Just as with traditional SEO, writing an optimized press release should start with picking the right keywords. You want to pick long-tail keywords that have a reasonably high search volume and that don’t face a lot of competition. A press release will give you a huge edge in the search rankings, so we don’t want to waste that edge by picking a term that nobody is searching for. We also don’t want to waste that edge picking a term that is in such high competition that we can’t possibly rank near the top of the search engine results page.
Write Your Press Release Like an Article
We’ve all seen those poorly written press releases issued by companies that make bland announcements, include generic quotes from company executives, and are just basically painful to read. Avoid this pitfall by writing your press release more like an article than an announcement. Write it for the benefit of your reader to keep them engaged instead of for your own benefit. Give them a reason to read through to the end so you don’t lose their interest.
Drive Readers to Your Landing Page
Your lead generation press release should be written with one main goal: To deliver an effective call to action that drives readers to your landing page. Provide them with a compelling offer that ties into the main theme of the press release. Perhaps your press release provides some general information answering a common question asked by your sales prospects, and at the end you provide a link to download an eBook providing more detailed information on that topic. There should only be one link in your release and that should go to your landing page.
Press releases are a fantastic way to drive traffic into your lead generation process. Just keep these tips in mind and focus on good writing, and you can expect to see results fairly quickly.