How to Get Tons of Leads El Freebo

Jun 01 2009

Posted by: Cheryl Clausen in marketing, tags: increase sales, prospecting, sales leads

What’s one of the biggest challenges you face?

Well, if you’re like most business owners, entrepreneurs, and sales professionals one of your biggest challenges is getting enough prospects to talk to… aka leads. Plus you have little or no money allocated to or for developing those prospects. And that means your sales future looks pretty bleak.

photo credit: raulsantosdelacamara

Many find their sales funnel as barren as this desert!

Retailers have it so Easy…

Don’t you kind of envy retailers? After all they have ready buyers coming to them. Retailers get foot traffic from people who are either:

Looking to buy in the future
Ready to buy right now

They have real prospects walking right in their front door eager to whip out their wallets and SPEND. Man, if only you could have it that easy…

You can have it that Easy Too!

When do most people seek out what they want?

When they know what they want
When they understand what they get
When they know what getting that does for them
When they perceive the value of getting what they want as greater than the cost of getting it

When a potential buyer knows all those things they are a red hot can’t wait to drop my dime buyer. The secret to attracting those red hot buyers is matching your message to what they already want… to what they’re already looking for. When you do that you can create a steady stream of hot prospects beating a path to your door.

Newspapers are Dinosaurs and… What that Means for You

Now this might seem a little off track, but if you’ll bear with me here I’ll make it all crystal clear. Print newspapers are in big trouble. Their revenue is drying up.

Newspapers have never made their money from subscribers. Nope, subscribers are just a demographic head count. Newspapers make their money from advertisers. But advertisers won’t spend their advertising dollars in a medium that can’t produce a return on their investment.

Now I don’t just mean the regular ads you see throughout the paper. I also mean the dollars that come in from classified ads. Once upon a time those lowly classified ads generated over 20 billion dollars for the newspaper industry. But no more.

So where did all those classified ads go if they aren’t in print newspapers anymore? Those ads have relocated to online classified ads websites like Craigslist. There are two big reasons this information is important to you.

First, where are the people most likely to buy your stuff? Answer - one of the easiest no cost ways to help the right people find YOU is through online classified ads websites. Jacqui Cheng reports newspaper revenue from classified ads has been cut in half, yet online ads are on the rise.

Second, online classified ad websites are a great way for you to get no cost high quality leads coming directly to you. Plus it’s easy to do. Craigslist.org is the most popular classified ads website in the U.S. You can use this website to get local leads coming to you… and you can do it for free.

All you need to do is:

setup an account
pick your state
pick a city
pick a category to place an ad
write the ad
link back to your website
capture lead info in exchange for something they want

Before you go racing off to Craigslist or any other classified ads website though you need to get ready. Here are the things you need to do to prepare for success:

Read this report from the PEW Internet & American Life Project
Pick a demographic group most likely to buy your stuff
Write an ad that focuses on what they want
Include an offer they can’t refuse
Link back to your lead generation website

And that’s it!

A powerful way to get the people most likely to buy your stuff to contact you. A powerful way to develop a steady stream of qualified potential buyers connecting with you. A powerful way to keep your marketing and sale funnel full so you never have to wonder where you’ll find your next prospect.

For more information about how to get real prospects contacting you read here… TPISC Report.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.