Converting Traffic Into Sales Part 1: Generating Leads

In Spreading The Word: Turbocharge Your Traffic, I discussed about the different ways of driving more traffic to your Internet business using social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Once you have an increased amount of traffic to your website, what do you do next? In today’s post I will be talking about how to convert this traffic into leads which will be part one of a three part series of Converting Traffic Into Sales.

For reference, I will be using the term “sales funnel” instead of “converting traffic into sales” for simplicity.

To understand how the sales funnel works we look will look at it from a systematic process, starting at where your prospects come from, to how we will pro-actively guide them through the sales process and become a long-term client. Before any of this can happen, we need to look at how to capture these prospects into a database using some creative flair.

Generating Leads From Traffic
Generating Leads is the most challenging, though fun aspect of the sales funnel. It requires constant testing and monitoring using endless proven methods, which are only limited by your resources and imagination. Where we capture all of this information is from the front-end, or the face of your business on the Internet. As soon as a prospect is interested in a product or service you may offer, we want to qualify and encourage them to opt-in on your website. When this occurs, it starts the first step of the sales funnel and begins to transform an everyday web surfer into a lead showing their interest in receiving more information.

There are many ways for a person to opt-in on your website and it’s crucial to have these mechanisms set up to begin generating leads. Here are some examples of how other Internet businesses capture leads:

• Subscribing to a blog via RSS subscription
• Signing up for a Free Report such as my Internet Business Blueprint located in the column on the right
• Registering for a free online service, for example MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr.
• Ticking a box to receive further information when purchasing an product or service from another site. For example, telephone companies such as Telstra always has a little tick box allowing you to opt-in to receive further marketing material whenever you complete a transaction with them.

When a potential prospect opts-in to your website, then they are agreeing to receive information from you. This is called permission marketing and it was first coined by Seth Godin. If you haven’t read his book Permission Marketing, you can get grab a copy of it on his website or buy it at any book store.

Now I must point out, some Internet marketers have been very successful in selling their products straight off the front-end and have made a lot of money doing so. Though you have to see what type of authority they have in the market and the systems they have in place to do this. I can assure you it has taken them many years and lots of resources to set this up and it’s not an overnight get rich story. Rich Schefren is a classic example of this and has extremely refined front-end and back-end systems that help him continue to generate profits even if his not working. My point here is, not to start selling any products to your new leads but to offer them value through content and building strong rapport with them first. The front-end is a mechanism to generate and qualify leads for your Internet business and is probably the least profitable.

In the next Converting Traffic Into Sales article I’ll go into more detail about how the back-end process works together with front-end and you will realise that the front-end are mostly ways to generate leads and are not necessarily profit centers. You will also learn why the back-end process will be the most important aspect for the long term growth of your Internet business and how it will outlast your competition.

Continue to Converting Traffic Into Sales Part 2: Profiting From The Back-End

Tyrone Shum
Lead Generator

Plan Or Not To Plan?

I just couldn’t sleep last night having so many ideas running through my head so I decided to stay up writing down my thoughts. I formulated a 2 month plan of how to implement these ideas and I am very proud of what I have laid down as a foundation. So you must be wondering what I wrote down? I can’t quite tell you in detail of what the grand plan is but I will give you details on the strategy I used and how it can be applied to any business.

Brainstorming Your Thoughts On Paper

The first thing I always do when I get ideas is to write them down. I would grab a large sheet of paper, something like the butcher’s paper or A2 size. Then in the middle of the page I would write down the name of my business and then start jotting down my ideas around them. It doesn’t have to be in any sequential order as long as you can get your ideas down on paper and I wouldn’t worry about how neat it is.

Once I have written down all my ideas, I will start to circle the ones that I think would be profitable for the business and then choose and prioritise 5 of the ideas. Why only 5, when I may have like 20+ ideas written down? Most of the time by having too many ideas can be overwhelming so I choose 5 to start researching and doing due diligence on. By taking baby steps it helps me to focus on the tasks leading to the big picture. I will come back to the other ideas once these ideas have been implemented.

Connecting The Ideas To Formulate A Plan

The fun part is now connecting the dots just like the ones you see in a puzzle book. Let me show you how I do it. Once you have the 5 ideas prioritised from 1 to 5 then you are able to use this to start doing your research and gathering the information required to turn your idea into reality. Start with the first one and in my case my first idea was to gather subscribers to the blog and ask them to sign up for my weekly Hot Business tips. Most readers on the Internet don’t just subscribe unless there is an appealing Free gift. Therefore coming up with this eBook that you can get here and giving it away for Free is one of the ways of asking a reader to subscribe. I have spent hours creating this eBook to provide value to my audience and hopefully they will come back to this website because they see the information I offer useful and practical. In turn I can build an audience of subscribers who will be able to take the information I provide for FREE and apply it to their business.

So you ask, where do I get the information to write this eBook and what information to include that will provide value to your audience? The first thing is to know what target market you are speaking to. Then research what they want and write about it with your opinions and your story. Most people don’t want to read about facts but want to relate to your story and how you did it.

Therefore take your first idea and begin researching what you need to turn it into reality and remember to take baby steps to achieve your goal. Once you’ve implemented your first idea then move onto the next one and so forth.

Planning to Win

At the end of the day when you have written down your ideas, prioritised, researched and taken action to turn this idea into reality, we want to see results. In this case we are talking about the bottom line, which is MONEY. So when you do your research you need to definite a clear dollar value of how much the idea will result in. That way you have a set goal allowing you to lay a path of “how to” achieve this result. As in my example of gathering subscribers, I have a goal to introduce 10,000 subscribers by December 2009. Through a group of selected subscribers I will offer an opportunity to be part of my coaching program and this program will generate $100,000. As you can see I have a defined goal from the idea I prioritised and this is how we plan to win!

Tyrone Shum
Strategising To Win