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Blog lead generation is one of the best ways a business can develop targeted online leads. There are many advantages and some disadvantages, which I will cover in this blog lead generation article.

Lead Generation with Blogs Advantages

To begin with, blogs are essentially free.  Sure, you may need to set up the domain, a minor blog hosting cost and you may need to outsource the setup and customization, but these costs are all very minor compared to the potential benefit and also compared to the cost of other forms of advertising and lead generation.

Next, blogs will produce very targeted leads if you are writing with your prospect in mind.  While they typically do not produce a flood of leads, those that do come in are coming to you and are much more likely to buy.

Also, blogs for lead generation have great long term value.  The longer you do them as long as you continue to publish regularly, the stronger they will usually become.  This means that they become an asset in your business, which is not the case with most other forms of advertising.

Disadvantages of Lead Generation with Blogs

With those things in mind, you may wonder why everyone does not do blog lead generation.  There are some disadvantages.

First, they take months to typically become effective.  Search engines do not rank new sites well and it could take six months or more to really start seeing significant results.

Next, writing regularly is difficult for people to sustain.  They often give up regular writing before they begin to see good lead generation.

Finally, targeting can be hit or miss.  For example, if you target keywords that are too competitive, you might never be able to generate enough traffic to make the lead generation ROI worth while.  This is why we often tell people to set up multiple sites with multiple targets that are related to their industry.  This significantly increases the odds of success but makes getting started much more difficult.

Blogging is a great lead generation strategy but it is not for everyone because it does take a sustained effort.

Many businesses want to generate leads online.  Because Google has a lions share of the search traffic, it means that your lead generation strategy should start with SEO for Google.

Google Lead Generation is as simple as following some rules that search engine optimization strategists know.

1)  Content – To generate more Google lead generation results, be sure to produce at least 1-2 new pieces of origional content per week.

2) Inbound Links – Google lead generation depends on inbound links which add to the ranking of your search results.  Buzzoodle generates inbound links for you.

3) Social Media – Google search results are improved with social media.  Luckily, Buzzoodle integrates with Posterous which integrates with many social media sites, creating rich inbound social media links that are very helpful to your site ranking well.

These three simple things improve Google lead generation via higher ranking and more traffic that will get people to see your clear call to action.

If you are unsure of how these things work you should sign up for Buzzoodle and learn to build your own lead generation websites.

Here is a checklist of lead generation issues you want to consider.  This article assumes you would like to generate inbound marketing leads which is when people do a search and find your organization because it is ranked highly in search results.

1. Know Your Keywords – Do you know the keywords that will generate buyers to your site?  Do they have too much competition?
2. Write Frequently – Have a lead generation business blog that you can use to create frequent keyword rich articles.
3. Clear Call to Action – Make it obvious what you want the visitor to do on every page of your site.
4. Backlinks – You can use many backlink strategies to create more ways for people to find you, including Buzzoodle which generates backlinks for your site.
5. Phone Number – If you want calls, be certain your phone number is in the upper right of your site where people will look for it.
6. Get the basic search optimization done – with WordPress lead generation this is easy with some SEO plugins.
7. Be broad – Have multiple sites and do not give up too early.  This lead generation strategy takes months to really get going and some targets perform better than others, so set up multiple sites, multiple kinds of keyword targets and give it enough time to start working.

Online lead generation is not difficult.  However, you need to pay attention to all the details and be realistic about how quickly it is going to work.

Generating B2B Sales Leads is harder than generating consumer leads most of the time.  I say most of the time, because some things that are a common problem for all businesses can use the consumer lead generation model and be successful.

However, for the sake of this article lets assume you are selling a high end B2B product and you want to generate qualified B2B sales leads and each sale is very valuable to you.

I see this all the time and the problem here is that the business that wants to think like consumer sales leads and they get discouraged when they do not get a flood of sales leads for their consulting practice or their specialized software.

I think the first thing to say is that not all products and services are best sold on the web.  In nearly all cases, the web can contribute to the sales process and can generate the occasional lead, but it will not replace a good sales force and often for these services, the lead (no matter how you got it) need fast and good followup.

Next, if your leads are worth, say $10,000 over the lifetime of the customer and you are going to have to spend hours talking to them, helping them, etc. etc to earn that money, the last thing you want to do is generate 100 low quality leads every week.  In B2B Sales Leads generation, getting a couple of high quality sales leads that you can put into your B2B sales funnel is a great month.

So when a B2B client wants to generate B2B leads online, you have to look at what a good goal is.  Can you generate thousands of leads in a year or are you better off with generating 20 good leads in the year?  That really depends on what you are selling, but do not get confused and pursue the wrong B2B lead generation strategy because it will not be a winning situation for anyone.

Are you looking or online lead generation?  You are not alone.  Everyone thinks that online lead generation is the way to go, and it is.  However, because of the low costs of lead generation online as well as the ease of execution, you will find that you have a lot of competition in this areas in any industry.

But I have some good news for you as well.  Most people are trying to do it themselves and they think it should happen quickly.  That means that people will try one online lead generation strategy for a few weeks and then give up.  The people that have success online with lead generation are the people that have a long term lead generation stategy and they continue to execute it over time.

Because I work with many clients in this area, I can tell you this is the most important thing.  People will ask, “How long should it take” but it is not the correct question because it depends on the competition and a little bit of luck in your particlular industry.  I have seen people get results in week and other not get very good results even after six months, but it is not a question on the online lead generation strategy.  It is a question of commitment, industry and long term effort.

You can succeed with lead generation online but remember the winners are the people that keep at it and set goals and measure results.

How do you fail at lead generation?

Really the rules around how to succeed or fail at lead generation are the same rules as many other parts of life.  Here are some key rules that will influence your success or lack there of.

1. Giving Up Quickly – Life very rarely hands you success fast and easy.  If you pick a lead generation strategy, stick to it long enough to see if it is going to work.  Do not talk yourself out of it just because it is not instant.
2. Ask, Ask, Ask – You are only going to generate leads if you ask for the lead.  Make a clear call to action and give your audience something of value and they will not mind you (nicely) trying to sell them something in the future.
3. Refine – Just because you are getting some results does not mean you stop improving the process.  By refining your message and lead generation strategy you may get much better results later on.
4. Know what you want – Do not try to get a broad audience with broad services.  Avoid the “we do anything” mentality.  The more specific you are about what you do well and how you can help people, the more people understand you and want to buy from you.

Of course these are just four to get you started, but they are big ones.  Lead generation failure starts when you break those rules.