Vessel Media Blog

Formulating an Effective Lead Generation Strategy

Fri, 29 Jul 2011 18:27:00 -0400

Developing an effective lead management strategy for your business requires taking a look at how best to target your potential customers. For many businesses, this means drawing up a precise profile of what consumers you are pursuing. While it may seem rather elementary to determine who your ideal client is, doing so will allow you to choose lead generation services that line up with your company's specific needs, and enable you to choose an advertising platform that is the most likely to reach the largest number of potential clients possible.

Many companies have discovered that pay-per-call leads generated through traditional advertising avenues like print, television, and radio ads, as well as those originating from online ads or call centers, are remarkably fruitful at yielding new clients. These leads are not only well-targeted to the service or product at hand, but paying on a pay-per-call basis is also a compelling solution for businesses looking for impressive results without a massive initial investment. Furthermore, call centers that manage incoming lead quality allow you to ensure your advertising dollars are being spent productively, while reaping the rewards of an effective marketing strategy.

How To Generate Guaranteed Business With Verified Tax Leads

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:13:00 -0400

For many businesses, the recent economic struggles have resulted in significant budget cuts when it comes to marketing. When sales are low and time is of the essence, every effort to increase business has to hold the promise of being a warm contact. Standard advertising and word of mouth will only get you so far. Vessel Media has found that providing verified tax relief leads has not only helped build clientele bases for their clients, but also significantly increased ROI for marketing costs.

Setting Up For Success: How Tax Leads Boost ROI

Instead of spending hours or days making cold calls, and hoping for a 10% conversion rate, wouldn't it be amazing if every call you made or received was already verified to be a customer who needed your services? This is the difference that purchasing tax settlement leads could make for your company. Not only is it disheartening to have so few calls turn into new clientele, but it also spends a lot of your employees' time on an activity that doesn't provide significant new business.

With tax lead generation services, you pay per verified lead. This means that we take incoming calls, pre-screen them against a set of pre-determined criteria, and then provide you with a prospect that is ready to move forward with you. Time spent on marketing drastically decreases, because every dollar spent results in new business. In addition, you have much more control over the flow of your activities, as you can increase or staunch the flow of new leads according to staffing, holidays, or other projects.

Tax Relief Leads: Don't Chase Down Customers, Let Them Come To You

With outbound marketing techniques, you spend your time and money shouting into the wind and hoping someone hears you. While inbound marketing strategies appear to have a higher cost, they are also considerably more effective. In the tax relief industry, clients don't want to receive a call asking them if they have back taxes or owe money to the government; they much prefer reaching out when they are ready. Take this to heart, and instead of cold calling, work from a list of tax leads that have already established that they want your services.

Use Tax Leads To Launch A Business Relationship

For tax resolution services, tax relief leads can lead to cross-selling other services. Often, customers in need of a tax professional need other guidance with regard to tax planning, filing properly, advice regarding allowable deductions, personal tax issues, and audit questions. Despite the fact that tax leads may take several months to resolve, there is plenty of opportunity to further increase the ROI on these calls with other available services.

Vessel Media provides more than just tax leads. Other leads we offer on a pay-per-call/lead model include:

Call center transfers (verified against filters)
TV calls
Data leads (from call centers, online and mobile)
Mobile-generated calls
Online-generated calls
Radio calls
Directory leads and calls
Print ad leads and calls

Our marketing experts work to learn about you and your company's needs, and we tailor a custom strategy to work for your business.

Is Your Website a Lead Generation Machine? 10 Tips to Make it SO!

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:11:00 -0400

It’s amazing how many websites I run across that are no more than stagnant brochures. Often I find myself more confused after leaving these websites than when I first arrived. To make matters worse, many of them never even knew I was there. These companies are killing any ROI they could be gleaning from their web real estate. Your website shouldn’t be a stagnant brochure. Your website should be a living, breathing, and money making asset. One that delivers an ROI that can not only be measured, but continually improved. It should be a lead generation machine that educates your visitors and highlights your offer and value proposition. A website that captures visitors and converts them into sales leads for your business. Keep in mind that if your website is not making you money, it’s costing you money. Take heart if your site falls into this “stagnant” category. If you’re website is not a lead generation machine, I’d like to share with you 10 tips that can help make it so!

1) Content location is vital. Make sure your website content is structured so that it’s easy to find. Keep key information you want your visitors to see near the top fold of your site, so that it’s visible and requires no scrolling to access. First time visitors to your site may not know to scroll down your homepage to find that critical piece of information about your company.

2) Have conversion forms or “lead forms” on your home page along with other highly visited pages on your site. The conversion forms don’t have to be necessarily on the page itself. I rather prefer the use of a graphical offer that links off your home page to a landing page with a strong call-to-action. Entice your new visitors to provide their contact information in exchange for something they would find valuable. Make sure the lead form is short and to the point, only capturing relevant information you need. Longer forms may get abandoned before completion.

3) Make sure your landing page forms are up-to-date. Nothing is worse than having someone get an offer that’s expired, or that misrepresents your product/service because it's outdated.

4) Be sure to test your landing pages frequently to make sure they load and deliver lead information to the appropriate staff members. Leads lost in transit cost you money and may give your prospects the impression of poor service if no one replies.

5) Avoid using pop-ups all together. They are usually viewed as annoying by site visitors. Especially when they’re getting the same pop-up every time they come to your site.

6) Allow multiple ways for your visitors to become a “lead” on your website. Ex. online form, phone number, email, etc.

7) Make sure your content and website are built with your target customer(s) in mind. Ex. 8pt font for a website geared to reach seniors…bad idea. Your product or service should sell itself on your website based on research you’ve done to identify and communicate to your target prospects.

8) Is your website mobile friendly? More and more prospects are accessing information via mobile devices. If your site is not mobile friendly, you could be missing out on an opportunity to connect at just the right time.

9) In sales, I’m sure you’ve probably heard the acronym “ABC” (Always Be Closing). If I had to throw an acronym at you here, it would be “ABT” (Always Be Testing). Test your landing pages, offers, and call-to-action. Then test them again. The goal is consistent improvement in lead conversions.

10) Measure for Treasure. You can’t manage what you can’t measure. Make sure you have systems in place to analyze your lead generation campaign so you can make tweaks for continual improvement.

Inbound Marketing – Lead Generation DO or DIE

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 19:17:00 -0500

Over the past decade I’ve had the opportunity of assisting hundreds of companies with their lead generation and marketing efforts. One thing is for certain, marketing has dramatically evolved over the past 10 years. In today’s digital age, people are engaged online now more than ever. We now have communities, activities, group gatherings, and meetings happening in a parallel digital universe. We chat, meet, study, attend seminars, watch movies, find dates, take courses, work, and consult Google for all our questions. The ability to find and distribute information to your online audience has become incredible. For small to mid-sized companies with budget constraints, it’s crucial they take advantage of this opportunity. Otherwise, companies may find themselves resembling the picture in this post. More new digital technologies have evolved than ever before allowing small companies to compete with their larger rivals on an even playing field. This playing field “leveler” I’m speaking about has come about through strategic inbound marketing. Launching an inbound marketing campaign can literally create a lead generation machine for your company at a fraction of the cost of traditional outbound marketing such as radio, television, print and mail. It can also significantly reduce your pay-per-click and ad spends online by driving more leads to your company through organic search. Its crucial today more than ever before that your prospects “find you” online when looking to buy.

So how do you “get found” by these prospects? It just so happens “getting found” is the heart of inbound marketing. The most successful inbound marketing campaigns contain the following key elements:

Extraordinary content. You “get found” making great content available to your prospects online. This is done through blogs, news-releases, white-papers and awesome resources on your website that are of value to your prospects.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the next vital component. Keyword strategy and analysis is vital so you’re found by the top search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing.
Social Media is the key to increasing the power of your content to get maximum impact. Social media channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

All of this is great, but what happens once you “get found”? This is where inbound marketing really pays off by converting your new web traffic into actual leads. Lead conversion is the next crucial step in the inbound marketing process. This is done by:

Creating targeted landing pages. Let us help you with generating landing pages that will convert your visitors into leads.
Using a strong call to action in your offer. Without a strong call to action, you prospects will leave without a trace.

Finally, examine your campaign and repeat what’s working. There’s an age old truism “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Measuring results is crucial to your inbound marketing campaign. You do this by:

Making the best use of your time, money and resources by eliminating what doesn’t work.
Improving performance and ROI (return on investment)
Producing the high level reporting you need to inform your inbound marketing initiatives.

Remember, your prospective customers are getting hammered with advertising messages all day long and are becoming better and better at simply tuning them out. For today’s marketer, this makes it a daunting task to reach your target audience with your offer. Much less one that stands out. People today are watching commercial free TV using their TIVO/DVR's. They listen to Streaming or Satellite Radio to cut out the radio commercials. They are registered on the "Do Not Call" and "Do Not Mail" listings to stop receiving solicitations via both mail and phone. And phone books...who even uses those anymore? Not only are these traditional “outbound” mediums becoming more expensive, they are becoming less and less effective if not done correctly, as people grow weary from so many interruptions in their lives. Inbound Marketing has become a growing and very effective strategy to draw your prospects to you online and to convert them into a tangible new leads for your company. Is it currently a part of your marketing mix? If not, what are you waiting for?