Lead Generation in the UK

Getting the most out of lead generation....

It's been a bit of a trumpet blowing session on the blog recently but there is just so much stuff going in at LeadPoint that we can't help spreading the word! We are excited to announce a partnership with leading online reputation management company LookupPage to offer every LeadPoint customer a free webpage.

According to research, 72% of sole traders are not online* and 32% of consumers search for professionals online before employing them**.

If you don't have a website then you are missing out and if you do then you can use your LookupPage to improve your online presence.

With LeadPoint, when a consumer submits their information online requesting to be contacted they will see a thank you page showing them who is going to contact them. With this partnership, any lead buyer who doesn't have a website can now upload their LookUpPage address so that it appears on the thank you page.

Consumers can click on this link to see more information about the person or company that is going to contact them. This will help build a relationship with the customer from the start and ultimately will help to convert more leads into business.

To see an example of a LookupPage visit the page of LeadPoint UK's Head of Marketing at www.justinrees.net.

* London Metro
**PCP Nov 07

How do you build a successful lead generation company?

The answer is simple, hire the right people!

Over the last few years I have had a number of dot com experiences, in the main the companies have been very early in their development.  It is absolutely vital to establish a team of people as quickly as possible who have the ability and personality to drive the business from nothing to something.

If you  have the best technology in the world, but average people the company will not succeed.  On the flip side if you have great (an often over used word) people, but average technology/products you can still be very successful.  Luckily at LeadPoint we have a combination of "great" people and in my opinion the most robust, easy to use, transparent lead platform in the world.

Technology can be built, fixed, programmed, tested, replaced fairly easily but hiring people takes much more effort and time. The biggest challenge is how to grow the business and recruit great people at the same time. It’s the classic chicken and egg scenario. You need great people to grow the business but you need to grow the business to hire great people!

The key is to know how to prioritise your time and spot the right candidates at an early stage. Over the years, I have conducted many interviews.  At every single one I make it clear to the candidate that the interview process is a two way street. I am not going to sell the job/opportunity to you.  I want the candidate to ask questions, I want the candidate to dig deeper than what their recruiter has told them.  I also want them to be 100% sure that the opening is right for them.  Experience has shown me people do not tell the truth in interview situations, they are fooling themselves and focus on what the interviewer wants to hear rather than establishing if the job is right for them.  The interview should be as much an opportunity for the candidate to interview me and LeadPoint!

One will always make mistakes when hiring so it is important to learn from these experiences. It is probably the hardest part of building a business but by spending the time to get the right people is the most important thing you can do. If your core team is in it together, you will be successful whatever happens.

Nick Chapman

The 5 Worst Lead Generation Conversation Openers

I came across this interesting article this morning which outlines some classic mistakes that lead buyers make when contacting consumers. The way you start a conversation is fundamental to your chances of closing the sale yet the same mistakes are made by the majority of people. The article outlines the 5 particular opening phrases that should be avoided at all cost. If you want to read the piece in it's original form then click here, otherwise read the extract below:

1.    How are you today?
2.    I am not selling anything.
3.    Do you have a few minutes?
4.    I know you’re busy but…
5.    You don’t know me but…

So, what’s wrong with them?

"How are you today" only works once you know the person, but if you haven’t introduced yourself, the prospect will be wondering who you are.

"I am not selling anything" is a classic sales line that everyone knows is a lie. Sure, you may not be selling anything then, but you are selling the prospect on why they should trust you and the prospect knows that anyone who says "I am not selling anything" will eventually try to sell them something.

"Do you have a few minutes?" might be okay once you have a fantastic relationship with the customer and you’ve proven to them that you have their best interests at heart. But don’t use it too early because no busy person has a few minutes. (And beware of those who do have a few minutes). The same is true with "I know you’re busy but…" – they are busy and you’re interrupting them and this line simply highlights that fact and will not sit well with them.

"You don’t know me but…" is simply stating the obvious. You might as well say "I’m a salesperson and I plan on selling you something."

If these are the opening lines you’re using, it’s time to develop new ones. Your goal should be to not sound insincere, staged or robotic. Instead, open the conversation with a natural "real life" conversation.

Justin - justin.rees@leadpoint.com

The importance of Networking

There are thousands of blog posts and articles about how to monetise social networking and various other zeitgeist new media tools. Many companies have tried to find ways of making money from facebook and its competitors but nobody has really managed to do it. There is however a company in the UK that seems to have found a way to apply the principles of social networking and web 2.0 to the finance industry to create a platform with real benefits for its users.  IntroducerUK.com markets itself as the first free B2B networking community for businesses in the UK finance industry.

By registering with introducerUK you get access to thousands of other business partners within the finance industry across the UK; each of which is categorised by the products in which they specialise in, and all of whom can be contacted direct online. This makes perfect sense for the finance industry as there are so many businesses that would benefit greatly by making connections with companies providing complementary services. Traditionally, only the biggest companies have been able to quickly make these connections with the right people.

With the networking opportunities that the site offers small businesses can now get those benefits too. As the name suggests, businesses big and small can now become introducers and potentially increase their revenues by referring business to those companies in their networks

Justin - justin.rees@leadpoint.com

Working together to beat the credit crunch

No matter what industry you are in, when the market gets tough, like minded companies should stick together to help eachother and their customers.

Without wanting to blow our own trumpets, LeadPoint are pleased to announce a major partnership with one of the UK's leading finance companies - Trigold.

If you want to read about the partnership then please click on the following links:

Mortgage Strategy - LeadPoint launches Trigold Partnership

Mortgage Solutions - Trigold Unveils LeadPoint Partnership

Best Advice - Trigold in Partnership with LeadPoint

FT Adviser - Trigold teams with LeadPoint

Money Marketing - Trigold joins forces with LeadPoint

Lead Generation for Dummies!

Leaving a world that was fairly straight forward to understand (Public Relations) and entering an industry shrouded in mystery (Lead Generation) a lot of my friends are at loss to understand what it is that I actually do. I’ve had many noisy pub conversations trying to explain the intricacies of Affiliate Marketing, the potential of Lead Generation and the world of new media – but these tend to be met with confusion, so I simply settle for ‘online marketing’ and move onto to the next pint.

With a big family dinner on the horizon I realised that as well as Lead Generation I was also going to have to explain what the Internet was and so decided to sit down and devise a simple, dummies explanation to Lead Generation:

Imagine you had 10 restaurants in a small town and 5 of those restaurants used traditional advertising and 5 recognised that more people search the internet than read newspapers and so wanted to use online advertising to generate new business.

What Lead Generation effectively does is split the cost of online advertising between a number of companies and delivers consumers who are actually interested in your product, in this instance, someone looking for a meal out.

Whilst a newspaper advert will be shown to anyone and everyone with no specific targeting ( and is very expensive), Lead Generation latches onto search terms from search engines like Google and offers the consumer relevant marketing. So for example if a consumer typed ‘eating out in Cambridge’, they could then click on a sponsored link (e.g. For the best restaurants in Cambridge, click here) that would take them to an enquiry form where they would enter in the sort of restaurant they were looking for and their requirements. A romantic dinner for two at 7pm, a hot curry, tapas and so on and so forth.

Each of the ‘restaurant type’ options on the form would connect to each of our 5 restaurants which means by the time the consumer receives a phone call from the relevant restaurant , the restaurant knows that this specific person is looking for their type of cuisine, they know how many people they are brining and at what time. They are also only paying for valid leads rather than a wasteful newspaper advert.

The consumer gets what they want and the restaurant gets new business whilst effectively splitting the marketing costs with five other restaurants.

Make sense?

Good.

Alain – alain.desmier@leadpoint.com

If you want to learn more about lead generation then watch our Lead Generation Webinar

Lead Generation Webinar

Lead Generation is often touted as the next big thing in the marketing world. So if you want to learn about Lead Generation, how it works and how it can benefit your business then you might want to watch the LeadPoint Lead Generation Webinar. We have teamed up with our good friends at Knexus to bring you a one hour long Webinar on the Lead Generation Industry.

If you want to learn more about Lead Generation or any other area of Digital Marketing then visit Knexus for more information.