How Lead Generation Works

The Internet is a vast wealth of resources that serves different purposes. Whether you browse for leisure or to earn a living, there is so much potential from the web where you can tap different niches for a profit. While social media marketing is a hot topic right now in the business world and being exploited by just about anyone, the first thing that can make or break any marketing efforts online is generating leads.

Lead generation is the act or process of determining and cultivating a possible target market for specific goods or services. A classic example of not making use of lead generation is the annoying cold-calling phone telemarketers who disrupt our day or night with their monotonous pitches. Other times these telemarketers directly call businesses and reach out to a qualifying point of contact, which is very much different from cold calling where you just dial a number and try your luck after speaking with the person. In lead generation, although you are calling people out of the blue, their names and information have been supplied to you after some surveys or such where these people expressed interest in a category where your business fits in.

The ultimate success of any business to business (B2B) marketing strategy or program revolves around lead generation. How many new qualified leads resulted from your marketing efforts? How much did it cost to generate each new qualified lead?

Qualified means the prospect is genuinely interested in your business, wants more information on your solutions and expects to make a purchase soon.

Every B2B marketer continually looks for innovative, lead generation approaches. The challenge comes from finding the right combination of campaigns that produce the greatest number of qualified leads at the lowest cost.

And when you ask the experts what strategy in generating leads works best, these are the answers:

Which Lead Generation Strategies Work Best?

In multiple studies, these inbound strategies consistently rank near the top regarding generating quality B2B leads:

• Email Marketing

• Content Marketing

• Search Marketing

• Social Marketing

(Via: http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2017/04/06/lead-generation-tips-from-a-pro.html)

So, what are the elements that constitute a great lead generation? After all, you should have some sort of a plan before doing anything else, right?

To understand lead generation, it’s important to first understand the mechanics of the lead generation process. The best lead generation campaigns contain either one or all of the following components. From a tactical perspective, a marketer needs four crucial elements to make inbound lead generation happen.

These components include an offer, a call-to-action, a landing page and a form.

An offer

Firstly, you need something of high value to offer your audience. Your offer needs to be not only informative but of interest to your specific audience; you need them to want to download it.

A call-to-action

A call-to-action (CTA) can be text, an image or a button linking directly to a landing page for people to easily find and download your offer. 

A Landing page

A landing page is different to your other web pages. A landing page is a specialised page that contains information about one particular offer and includes a form for the user to fill in to access the offer itself. 

A form

As we’ve mentioned above, your form will sit on your landing page. The information you’re asking for in your form should reflect the perceived value of the download. Try and keep the form as short as possible.

(Via: https://www.hitsearchlimited.com/news/what-are-the-4-elements-of-lead-generation-id0530)

Now that you have a plan in place, how can you ensure that you’ll be able to generate successful leads that can elevate your business and your profits?

Make a plan. Every lasting change begins with a plan, and a plan is often the result of a vision. When you visualize your success and the life you want to lead, you can outline your plan and set yourself up for success.

Track your activities. Tracking holds you accountable and allows you to stay consistent. When you work to regularly track your activities—whether it’s in your CRM or on your calendar—it’ll eventually become second nature. 

Change takes time, so be patient and keep working toward adopting this successful habit.

(Via: http://rismedia.com/2017/04/06/secret-successful-lead-generation/#close)

Businesses make use of lead generation in various ways and they have all been proven to deliver varying levels of success depending on how well you executed your plan. And the best thing about this is that you need not do the actual generation yourself because many companies offer to do it for you at a set price depending on how much data you want and the extent of lead generation involved. If you haven’t tried it yet, give it a try and realize your business’ fullest potential that you won’t be able to achieve if you just rely on your product or service to speak for itself.

The post How Lead Generation Works is available on https://www.allsystemsgomarketing.com

source https://www.allsystemsgomarketing.com/content-marketing/how-lead-generation-works

Traveling Made Easy With Google Maps

Traveling has never been easier than it is now, with technology to save you from every possible mishap along the ways. From planning to your actual travel and until you get back home, you can do your research online without even requiring the services of a professional travel agent. You can book your plane flight online, or perhaps a cruise ship tour, a train ride, etc., you can do it all from the comfort and convenience of your smart gadget. Even booking your hotel or Airbnb accommodation can be done in a snap. As a result, you get to save lots of money you can spend on something else.

One of the most popular travel buddies right now is Google Maps since you can easily travel foreign countries with its help. Wherever you are in the world, you can count on Google Maps to help you get to your destination in the fastest and safest manner. This web-mapping service offered by no other than Google makes way for faster and easier navigation. It features streets maps, satellite imagery, and even 360° panoramic view of streets so you know exactly what to look for when you get to your destination.

Perhaps more than any other innovation-in-your-pocket, Google Maps has changed the way people travel. As long as you're connected to the Internet (and, with a little forethought, even if you aren't) you can't get lost anywhere, and loads of people use the review feature to find bars, restaurants, or shops to explore. But what happens when you zoom out—like waaay out? Well, the feature still works, even on the continental level. That's right, you can review and rate all 17.2 million square miles of Asia, if you please. And plenty of people have. Here are some of the most entertaining reviews of all seven continents.

(Via: http://www.cntraveler.com/story/google-maps-reviews-of-entire-continents-are-bizarre-and-hilarious)

Google maps first came to be as a tool to help people navigate the world especially busy city streets and even the suburbs to rural areas. But today, you can even review oceans and continents with its help.

You can find virtually anything on Google, and it appears that now includes reviews for Earth’s continents and oceans.

Ever wondered what the internet thinks about the entire continent of Europe? North America? What about the Atlantic Ocean?

Well if you look up these locations on Google Maps you can now find some helpful reviews and star ratings. I use the term “helpful” somewhat loosely, because users are having more fun with this bizarre feature than anything.

(Via: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-maps-now-lets-review-continents-oceans/193511/)

However, the threat of coming across fake businesses and get scammed is possible as the discovery was made that Google Maps contain fake listings. Although the number is not that high, there is still a slim possibility that you end up with these fake listings and get hurt or scammed in the process. Why does Google allow this thing to happen, if indeed proven true?

Google announced last week that they had recently conducted a study to research the actors behind fake listings on Google Maps.

The study points out that “geographic proximity is the coin of the emerging localized-search realm,” which matches what I observed with the Possum update in 2016. This major algorithm update was responsible for making proximity to the searcher the #1 ranking factor for local search. This drives up the incentive for companies to create fake listings, since they need more “locations” in order to monopolize the search results and maximize exposure.

There were some things I saw in the study that were very helpful to know:

• Most of the listings that got suspended were in India and the United States (74 percent of all the listings observed in this study).
• 40.3 percent of the listings were in industries that are on-call, like plumbers, locksmiths and electricians.
• 54 percent of the suspensions in the United States were in the following six states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois and New Jersey, while these states only account for 39.9 percent of the population.

The study also looked at listings that were suspended due to marketing companies abusing the verification process and obtaining ownership of the listing without the consent of the business owner. This happens a lot in the restaurant industry, where marketing companies will create a copy of the business website and put a booking/ordering link on it, then charge the business owner for all orders placed via their system. They then take ownership of the listing via Google My Business, and the business owner is stuck paying for transactions from any customer finding their local listing on Google.

(Via: http://searchengineland.com/google-really-keeping-fake-listings-off-google-maps-272913)

The statistics from this research is somewhat dubious considering Google only looked at suspended listings and haven’t gotten to the bottom of it yet. The best thing one can do is exercise extra caution when using Google Maps especially when looking up a particular restaurant since most fake listings concentrated on this industry. But this is a serious concern that Google need to look into deeper along with representatives from the restaurant business who are often the victim here. Technology is supposed to make our lives easier and not expose us to unnecessary threats we are not yet ready to deal with. Knowing Google, they will do their best to settle this issue once and for all and bring back the lost trust of the people that were already affected.

Meanwhile, you can still rely on good old Google map to take you places without the fear of every getting lost again. Go to uncharted places and discover new towns and cities you've only heard about in books or seen on TV. Experience life first hand and reward yourself with the gift of travel and all those memorable experiences that will last you a lifetime.

Traveling Made Easy With Google Maps is republished from All Systems Go Marketing

source https://www.allsystemsgomarketing.com/social-media/traveling-made-easy-with-google-maps