The evolution of the internet has changed the way that people prospect for new finance clients. Gone are the days of just buying stale leads off mailing list providers. There is now a better way of cultivating high-quality leads that allow you to achieve greater conversions.
That involves establishing on online brand and using attraction marketing to build your list of hot buyers. In this article, I will discuss how to get finance leads online.
The first thing that you are going to need is a website. You can do business from just a free Web 2.0 account or social media properties like Facebook. However, it is better to create you own brand and dedicated website where you solely control the content and can integrate a lot high converting technologies such as light boxes that are not likely going to be allowed on sites that you do not own. Try to come up with a catchy and easy to remember brand name for your business and find a matching available domain.
Once you have found and registered a good domain, you will need to set up a reliable hosting account and a website. The easiest and most flexible way of doing this is to use the WordPress content management system. If you purchased a decent hosting plan there should be a WordPress auto installer on the hosting control panel. Simply use that to install the software and login to being publishing content.
You will use your web page as a lead accumulation engine. The general strategy is to drive people to your web page from a variety of traffic sources. They will come to view the valuable content that you present there in terms of your blog posts, videos, or anything else you might find useful.
You need to know your potential audience well and consider materials that they will find interesting and valuable at the same time. This will allow you to establish authority so that when you capture the lead, it will be much more likely to convert than if you were coming in on a cold sell.
Once you get people to your site, the principle goal will be to get them to sign up for your mailing list. Now, do not expect people to just be clamoring to give you their email address because you have a bunch of interesting blog posts. People are very protective of their contact information and will likely need to be given an ethical bribe. So you should consider an important problem that your ideal audience likely has and write up a short report teaching them how to solve it.
The report needs to be high quality because it is in a sense a first impression. You will offer this report in exchange for an email and other information. Just remember the more information you ask for, the fewer people will sign up for the free report.
This is usually accomplished by setting up what is called a “squeeze page.” Typically you will have a big compelling headline that describes the benefit of the report. It could be something like “Learn the Three Most Important Factors To Getting the Bank To Approve Your Business Loan.” You can also put in bullet points highlighting three to five benefits. Then you want a strong call to action statement with a large button using a headline such as “Free Instant Access!” A professional mockup of an ebook cover can help conversions as well.
If you are not an expert at putting up pages such as this, do not worry. There are plenty of software suites that can help you to put up these pages. Optimize Press and LeadPages are two of the best-known solutions to help generate good converting squeeze pages relatively easily. My favorite WordPress plugin for this is Thrive Leads.
This comes as part of the Thrive Themes membership that also includes many well-designed themes for your WordPress installation. What is particularly nice about it is that it not only generates squeeze pages, it also generates high converting light boxes that can pop up at various points on the screen. So as people are reading a post on your blog, the light box offering the free report can pop right up without the user needing to even go to a squeeze page. This trick can drastically increase the number of leads you generate.
The final component that you will need to make this work is an autoresponder. This is an email delivery service to handle the sign-up process and deliver automated messages to people getting your report. You can set up the autoresponder to generate a series of prewritten messages first to build up a relationship with your new leads and then to strategically pitch them on your service. AWeber, GetResponse, and SendReach are some of best autoresponders used by marketers.
Once you have your website and lead generation system set up, you need to market your website. There are many different ways to do this. The first is by content marketing. This is by finding other online communities related to your niche and posting useful comments or guest posts leading people back to your site. It can take some time to gain traction using this method; however, it is also a great way to build authority for your site.
If you have some money to spend and are less patient, you can drive leads using paid advertising. Facebook is one of the best ways of getting leads fast. Simplify use the Facebook Insights tool to help develop a highly targeted audience that is likely to be a prime customer for your services. Then target that audience with a highly engaging ad that leads them to your squeeze page. You might need to split test several audiences and ads until you find the one that gets the most conversions.
Getting finance leads online has never been easier. You are no longer just limited to those people you meet in person; the entire world is now your potential market. If you are not gathering leads using your own website, then you are leaving money on the table in your business.
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