Use Your Web Site Properly Another way to maximize your ability to generate leads is to use your web site properly. The purpose of your web site is to generate leads. To maximize number of leads your web site generates make sure your site has information your prospects want, is easy to navigate and maximizes opportunity for your prospects to get in touch with you, either by calling you or by providing you with their contact information.

Clearly let your visitors know you’re there for them and they will be much more likely to reach out and get in touch, especially if your site’s content demonstrates that you understand and can solve their problems.

Cross Marketing Cross marketing is process of establishing marketing relationships with companies whose product or service complements what you sell. For example, a company that helps web site owners track traffic to and through their site would do well to develop relationships with web hosting companies. There is a natural symbiosis here – anyone who has a new web site needs to (or should) measure their site’s traffic so they can make well-informed decisions to guide evolution of their site and any web hosting company wants their clients’ business to succeed so they can keep them as a customer. Companies don’t need web sites if they’re out of business. It therefore makes sense for web hosting companies to promote web statistics companies and vice versa as each can benefit from other’s service.

What cross marketing tactics do you use to promote your business?

Ask Questions Regardless of your favorite marketing mechanism goal is same: to generate interest in your products or services. Whether you use a web site, a brochure or newspaper ads to generate leads first thing you must do is get your future prospects thinking about problem that you solve and they have. A great method for invoking this type of thought is to use questions in your marketing materials.

If you are a dentist, questions like, “Do you have tooth pain?” or “Are your teeth sensitive to heat or cold?” will do a much better job of drawing in your prospects that marketing materials that say, “Do you need a dentist?”

What questions can you ask to get your prospects thinking about problems that they have that you solve?

Move Your Marketing Forward Take some time to examine your marketing efforts with respect to notions outlined in this article. Is there room for you to improve your ability to generate leads? Most likely, there is.

Copyright 2005, Better Marketing Results and Jeremy Cohen. All rights reserved.

The author, Jeremy Cohen, helps small business owners and professional service providers attract more clients, grow their business and be more successful with his marketing guides and coaching service. Get his free marketing guide: Jumpstart Marketing: More Profits, Clients and Success at:

Not only does full color aspect of postcards attract more attention than all of envelopes in any given day’s stack of mail, but it will allow you to get your message across while recipients are making decision of what to read and what to throw away.

Let’s use this example:

You are sitting on subway and guy next to you leans over and says "I have something I would like to sell you and it’s under my trench coat, are you interested?" So as any sane person would do, you move to furthest seat from him so not to be bothered.

As you now sit in farthest seat from untrustworthy freak in trench coat you are approached by a smiling little Girl Scout who holds out a box of cookies and says "Would you like to buy a box of cookies? Everyone loves Thin-Mints!" So this time you pull out your wallet and plunk down $3 for a box of delicious cholesterol and sugar.

See difference? Don’t hide your message behind a trench coat. For all we know "untrustworthy freak", as I have affectionately named him, could have had a box of Thin-Mints under there.

We may never know, and neither will your customers if you don’t stop stuffing your promo into bland looking envelopes.

Now, make final step easy and take out hassle of direct mail.

It’s one thing to get postcards designed and printed. It’s another to get them into hands of recipients rapidly, efficiently, as inexpensively as possible and without too much hassle. You have choice of doing it yourself in house or getting someone to do it for you.

The apparent advantage of doing it yourself is that you don’t pay someone else what they charge to do it for you. The disadvantage of doing it yourself is that it’s going to cost you more in long run.

Why?

Normally your postage for a 4.25 x 6" postcard is 23¢. Direct mail companies can lease special software from USPS which reads addresses and barcodes them. The post office gives a significant discount for bar-coded mail. Updating this software often (every three months) ensures that addresses you are mailing to are good. If person is not longer at that address then it’s a waste of your money to mail to them.

Because of high tech equipment and software direct mail companies use, you can sometimes save as much as .04 cents per card. And you don’t have all hassle of getting mailing out yourself.

I call it a no-brainer: a technical term for saving money and hassle by getting someone else to do your mailing for you. If you have been doing it hard way, switch over to a direct mail marketing company. I am sure they will be glad to help you save money, time and trouble.