Internet Marketing To Generate Leads
There are many ways to generate leads to your business outside of your website. These include social media, pay-per-click, yellow page directories, or classifieds.
Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising usually refers to search engines including Google, Yahoo & Bing. Businesses pay search engines for delivering a click to their website of the desired keyword term. What makes PPC so attractive is the ability to target users based on their location and the products or services they are searching for. Pay-per-click networks also extend to private websites that authorize these search engines to display ads on their pages in exchange for a small percentage of the cost of the click.
Social Media Advertising includes Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. What makes social media marketing so attractive is the ability to target users based on their age, sex, race, location, interests, or even items they search for. Social media campaigns use a similar platform as the search engine’s pay-per-click platform, however, instead of sending a user to a company website, a user will typically end up on a fan page to get more likes or a Twitter profile to generate more followers.
Directory Advertising such as YP, SuperPages, and Verizon has developed a very strong web presence as a result of the declining use of the yellow pages. What makes Yellow Pages attractive is that users who logon to these directories are usually ready to make a purchase. Typically, a person doesn’t go to the yellow pages just to look around. By the time they get to a yellow page they have decided that they need the service and are looking for the best vendor for that service.
Classified Advertising is the use of posting specials of products and services on classified directories such as Craigslist or Backpage. What makes classified ads so attractive is the fact that they are free and they reach a target audience of people who are looking for a deal. If you have a product or service that you know you have the best value for, classified ads can be a good source of free leads.
While each of the options above offers a unique selling proposition and returns on investment, none of them can compete with the results your site can generate. Think of it this way, each time you pay your bill with one of the companies above they invest that into their website. The problem comes when you decide that you would like to stop advertising with them and all of the ads that you have been paying for with them stop right away. This means you stop generating leads right away, while the money that you have paid for your advertising has been put into making their site stronger.
My recommendation is to maximize your business investment in your business website rather than making small investments in several different places and once you have exhausted your target market and service consider these other ways of generating leads. That way if you ever decide to stop your advertising, you still will receive residual leads as a result of your previous marketing efforts.
Hope this article helps you find more ways to generate leads from the internet besides search engine optimization While some of these solutions work better for different types of companies, it is important to find out about all of them to try to find the best fit for your business. Browse our website for more SEO SEM tips to find out the best questions to ask a website design company.
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