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Web Marketing and Lead Generation In an Economic Downturn

By Duncan Wierman

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 17Oct2009 Word count: 904 Viewed: 935 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

Economic downturns don't have to mean for you what they usually mean for every other business. They don't have to mean that you start cutting your sales and marketing department. You need sales and marketing more than ever during an economic downturn because prospects are going to be fewer. You need lead generation techniques during these times that will get you the flow of business that will sustain you can keep you prosperous. You should not follow the herd and start slashing the very bread and butter of your business, which once again is lead generation.

But there's the problem of falling revenues when an economic downturn hits. So the first thing that businesses are tempted to cut is sales and marketing. These are seen as the least necessary parts of the business. The problem with this thinking is, it's just not true. Without sales and marketing, how are you going to get people into your door to buy the things you produce? If you can't get those people to you, how will you pay your overhead and your other employees' salaries? It just doesn't make any sense. Yet, the hard reality is that during an economic downturn you're losing business as more people try to save more money. How can you maintain your marketing and lead generation activities under these conditions?

The answer now is by turning to the Internet. Web marketing is so powerful and gives you such a great return on investment (ROI) that you should be using a lot of it already if you're not. Using the Internet for lead generation is the one of the smartest things that any business can do today. The advantages of Web marketing for lead generation are many:

*Web marketing is inexpensive compared to other forms of marketing. *Web marketing is the most efficient method of marketing. It allows you to more precisely target niche markets than any other form of marketing. *Web marketing causes far, far less wasted marketing dollars. *Web marketing methods only bring interested people to your business. *Selling on the Internet can be done 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays. *You have vaster and faster outreach on the Internet than you do through any other medium. *Selling on the Internet does not involve cold-calling or hard sales. This means you waste less time and anger fewer people. *Sales and marketing on the Internet can be a lot of fun.

Internet marketing should involve the use of social networking. Business is all about creating new relationships and making new friends. Once you have created new relationships, the people involved in them with you want to do business with you. They become interested in who you are as a person and this makes them interested in what you have to offer them.

Successful salesmen have always used networking to increase and sustain their business, but with social networking on the Internet that capability is greatly enhanced. What gets published to the Web stays there forever, and anyone can come by and read it and respond to it at their convenience. The salesman doesn't have to be physically present. And he can have his content read, watched, or listened to by thousands and thousands of people all at once, and they can pause, rewind, or fast forward as they need to.

What are some of the leading methods of Internet social networking for lead generation?

*Using forums. By posting at forums that relate to your business and taking on the role and reputation of a helpful friend, you will build relationships and peak people's interest. They are at the forum to talk about things of interest to them, and if your business offers them something that relates to that interest, and if you don't hard sell but instead act as a helpful friend and leave your contact information for them to choose to use, you will find some very hot leads at these pleases.

*Use Yahoo Answers. This is an online community that was created by Yahoo to allow people to ask questions and get other regular people to answer them. This is similar to a forum but it has a looser structure. You sign up for a free Yahoo Answers account, create a profile, then look up topics that relate to your business. Once you are in these topics, you look for Open Questions, and you start answering them. Approximately 10% of the time, when you answer you also include a link to your company's website. (You can't do it every time or else you'll be nailed as a community spammer and get banned.)

Also, the more questions you answer here, and the more "Best Answers" you give, the more points you are awarded. Once you earn enough points you earn the badge Top Contributor for all to see. Again, as a helpful member of the community, you will attract business.

*Using Digg, Stumble Upon, and Yahoo Buzz. The strategy here is to write free articles and publish them online, then socially bookmark them at these sites. You can create groups of friends and have influence over driving traffic to read your articles and want to contact you.

Social networking is just one of the great Internet lead generation marketing techniques that you can use. There are also things like article writing, video production, blogging, and using PPC ads. Use the Internet to keep your marketing hot during economic downturns.

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