Using Your Website for Lead Generation

Lead generation is a major concern for businesses, and your web site can play a major role in those efforts. Essentially, lead generation involves activities which allow you to identify potential new customers and/or clients. Once you've found these “leads,” your sales team can begin approaching them about becoming a buyer.

One of the most common ways you can use your web site for lead generation activities is by capturing email addresses. Capturing email addresses is not a bad thing. Basically, to do this you simply offer something to your site visitors that they will want and that they will be willing to provide their email addresses for. The most effective lead generation offers are free newsletters, reports, ebooks, memberships, autoresponder courses, etc. Remember that whatever you offer should be appropriate for what you are selling. There needs to be a connection. For example, if you were selling pet products, you might give away an ebook on potty training puppies.

In the best scenario, you'll have a database which maintains all of these email addresses for you. As part of your lead generation efforts, you should also find a way to track your sales efforts. For example, you should have a way of knowing what stage of the sales process you are in. First, you might send the free ebook on potty training, followed by an email message about a new product or an invitation to attend a teleseminar on dog behavior.

Lead generation using your website is particularly effective because you can be reaching new potential customers at any time of day in any part of the world. Plus, you'll be attracting targeted leads. In other lead generation methods, you usually purchase a list of contacts from a broker and only a small number of these contacts may actually be interested in what you are selling. That's definitely not the case with website lead generation.