As 2008 came upon us, we made our resolutions. By now, we have either made plans on how to achieve them, or maybe, discarded them this early. For businesses, "Where to find the next customer?" is a common problem. Some, if not most, small businesses simply rely on sheer luck, putting away their lead generation plans because they don’t have the budget that large corporations do.

An example of how one creative car dealer landed 200 clients in just one year is recounted here. Peter Martin, CEO of AskPatty.com, was in the most competitive market of all - car and car repair. So he targeted just one segment, women. He introduced a service to car dealers, including a training program that would give them a “Certified Female-Friendly Dealer” tag. But the challenge is, he does not have the budget to a full blown advertising campaign or pay salespeople to turn in clients.

To start a zero-budget campaign, they decided to do that by systematizing an email campaign. The content was based on two trends in the industry that they found out through a research:

• Women as a significant car-buying audience and
• Women confused or mistreated by car dealers.

Peter Martin’s team positioned their blog as a grassroots effort to offer women a better car-buying experience. They sent emails, tracked responses and effectively built a mailing list. The emails were personalized, timely and gave several ways for dealers to contact the company or learn more about their services

They leveraged the media and generated 300 articles in local and national outlets including The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Fox News and national public radio.

Peter Martin spent absolutely no money on advertising. According to him, “Our goal is to build a relationship with customers. Rather than really shooting in the dark, we used ongoing communication.”

What would best describe your lead generation strategy? Do you rely on traditional methods like brochures, post and Yellow Pages? Or do you use RSS, autoresponders and articles to communicate with your potential customers?

Lead generation is seen as an ongoing relationship, a dialogue between you and the customer. The conversation continues long after the sale is done. Following are some proven and time-tested strategies to build that "magic client list" that pops out money.

Most businesses today have made their presence online. Research shows that even local businesses can already compete with the large corporations by going online. There are more than 150 million Internet users in the United States alone. Below are for four strategic ways to attract potential customers who are actively searching for services or products online:

1. Pay per Click: Google Adwords and Yahoo dominate this space. Although some small businesses consider it too expensive, using this medium for a targeted campaign brings in more potential customers. This method can be leveraged to take advantage on the huge resources currently available on the Internet. Seen too technical and complicated to non-computer savvy business persons, using this method requires good guidance from experts.

2. Landing pages: Using pay per click and directing every user to a generic home page does not serve the purpose. A customer looking for a Sony webcam need not be directed to a page that has other electric goods like blenders, mixers and food processors. Understanding what the customer wants, and giving information based on that, is what sets apart a successful entrepreneur from a failing business.

Landing pages are designed specifically to the product or service advertised. Distractions that causes a user to click and go to another page or having links that take the user away from that page, will not serve the purpose. If a landing page is designed to capture a customer's email address or interest in a particular service that is all the information that needs to be given.

3. Directory Submissions: Directories are the Yellow Pages of the Internet. Directories not only act as an information guide, but serve an important role in building valuable one-way, non-reciprocal links that are approved by search engines. The more links you can get without paying, the better.

4. RSS: Does your website provide content and information in the form of blogs or articles? If so, here is an easy way for users to subscribe to your content without visiting your website often. RSS, which stands for "RDF Site Summary", is a kind of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. RDF is a metadata model specified by a consortium in the web from which RSS evolved. It is also known as "Really Simple Syndication" because it enables a website content to be used by other sites.

RSS is now a popular way of sharing information, and as such, it has a huge potential for your online business to tap.

Email is the most used application on the Internet. It is the most popular and quickest way to communicate without picking up the phone. Do you communicate with your customer after a sale? How about before a sale? There are innovative ways to maximize the use of emails.

5. Autoresponders: If you use one of the above ways, e.g., landing page or pay per click, you will find out that you are building a list of subscribers who signs up to view your content, white papers and demonstrations as well as discounts and product offers. Autoresponders enables a way to automatically communicate with hundreds of subscribers. It allows you to create emails in advance and time it so that it is sent on a specified time and date.

Using an autoresponder saves you time and money in printing, posting and packaging mails and would help you keep in touch with customers anytime. Popular ones in the market are Aweber and GetResponse.

The web is a universal resource for content sharing. Information is freely shared and the knowledge base is increasing drastically since the Internet was popularly used. Thus, this opportunity allows you to let everyone sharing and reading content about your own products and services.

6. Articles: Writing articles and sending them via email is another way to provide information to users interested in the industry you are in. There a many free ezines that looks for quality articles. These ezines have a subscriber base that run into many thousands and some ezines like GoArticles.com email the articles to these subscribers. Imagine thousands of people reading an article talking g about your business. They are your potential clients.

7. Press Releases. Normally, a news release, press release or press statement is directed at media practitioners to announce something claimed as having news value. It is commonly mailed, faxed or e-mailed to specific section editors of newspapers, magazines, radio stations or television networks. Commercial press-release distribution services are catering to companies who would want to distribute news releases about their new product.

The use of news releases is common in public relations. It is made to attract favorable media attention to the firm's client. In business terms, it is made to attract favorable media attention to products marketed by their clients. It requires a skill to prepare and execute your own press release. You would need to practice writing and test run it to learn the tricks. Take a cue from firms making money out of it, and you will get same results.

8. White Papers. Many white papers coming out today expose the benefits of particular technologies and products.  These types of white papers are considered forms of marketing communications. It could be used to discuss in more in-depth manner your products and services, as well as the position of your company to on-going and emerging public issues. Having one from your company circulating widely in the web is a status symbol. There are published books such as one written by Michael Stelzner titled Writing White Papers that could help you learn the trade.

We do not discount the fact that not everybody hangs around the web too often as the Internet savvy generation. We could attract this segment of the market by engaging in low-budget offline strategies.

9. Seminars. It mainly functions to bringing together small groups for recurring meetings wherein afterwards, everyone present is requested to actively participate on a particular endeavor, such as engaging in activities supportive of your business. Organizing one would give you a captive audience and the exclusive opportunity to promote your online activities. Your offline seminars could be transformed into web seminars later.

10. Workshops. A workshop has the same objectives as a seminar. It is also a gathering or training session which may be several days in length. It emphasizes solving problems, hands-on applications of knowledge and requires heavily the involvement of participants. A seminar becomes a workshop when practical demonstrations are added in the agenda.

You need not use all of the 10 strategies. Test one or several combinations and monitor results. This will start a whole new experience to boost your strategies and tactics to attract more lead for your business, without spending your money for a nice vacation.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Marketing SEM lead generation sem search engine marketing