Whether you are growing a major business or just getting an Internet business going from the couch, WordPress is the weapon of choice to generate valuable, targeted leads for you.

The beauty of this is that it levels the playing field.  WordPress itself is Opensource and fr.ee.  Hosting on a host like Bluehost is less than $6 per month.  Writing is often easier for the solopreneur because the major corporations have such strict compliance issues.

The blogging software itself performs better in search engines than anything you can buy if you spend a few minutes configuring some plugins and settings.  It generates leads through ranking higher in search than other types of websites.

What people do not realise is that most blogs do not have many repeat visitors.  In fact, more than 75% of a blogs visitors are via search on any given day and they will only visit once and never return.

This means if you do not convert them to a lead, you have lost them.

It also means that they are not reading your posts every day.  It is fine if you write on the same topic regularly, because no one will read the back articles anyway.

WordPress also has some built in features you will never see, but none the less they are working for you.  RSS and Pinging are letting other sites know what your site is doing and it lets search engines know that you are ready to have them come and index the site again – pumping up that traffic.

Tagging is another powerful feature.  When you tag with keywords you have identified as high value, you will rank higher for those keywords.

And finally, if you integrate a good call to action or lead capture strategy, a decent number of people are going to give you their information and become a lead for you.

You can use WordPress to develop your personal brand, sell affiliate products, build your list or generate leads for your CRM.  It works great with any of these.  If you want to get videos and tools to help you do this better joing Buzzoodle.com and jump start your success with WordPress.

A recent client of Buzzoodle.com was getting such good traffic to their WordPress business blog that they wanted to delete it.

Why?  Well watch this video and see how their logic went. As a side note, this is what happens when a programmer is asked why the main website is not performing well – they blame the other site on stealing. Not cool.

I meet people every day that say their niche is small and mid sized businesses.  In fact, the same could be said for me as my lead generation software is ideal for the small and mid sized businesses.  But this niche is a mistake, because a business is not someone that you build a relationship with, and in today’s online marketing world, relationship is everything.

Let me give you an example of how targeting people is better than targeting organizations, at least for the online marketing group.

If I target small business, I might want to sell the small business owner on a particular service or product that will help their business grow.  The problem is that the small business owner is often frustrated that things have not gone as well as they had hoped when they started the job and they are jumping from thing to thing trying to figure out what works best to simplify their business.

On the other hand, if I target the frustrated small business owner as a person, I might offer them something entirely different.  They know the ups and downs of business and they are now ready to build multiple revenue streams.  They invest in their own personal development and would welcome information on how to expand what they are involved in.

This is a much stronger connection because I am talking to the person.  I am tapping into their hopes, dreams and frustrations.  I am helping them get closer to the ideal image they have of themselves.

They might take the knowledge or product and put it to work in their small business, but they also may launch something else to create multiple streams of revenue.  And they are less likely to give up on the product or service because it becomes part of their identity, not just a tactic they are using to see if it works.

So if you are one of the countless people targeting the “niche” of small business, rethink how you can connect to people and grow your business.

I just posted a free lead generation report.

It is a fairly detailed summary of seven of the most common online lead generation strategies.

Also, it has a FaceBook discussion at the bottom so that we can learn from each other about what works when it comes to online lead generation.

If you have a moment, visit the page and let me know what you think.  Also, please like the page as that helps us build the discussion and attract more people that are interested in online lead generation.

I look forward to meeting you in the lead generation discussion.

Great secret to email marketing – the more times you send valuable stuff to your email list the more money you make. Duh. But I think we all hold back and that means we are not making money with email marketing as well as we could. Video below is how I learned about this.

I was on the phone with a network marketer yesterday talking about lead generation for network marketing.

She knew what she was doing, but was frustrated at the speed of filling her down line.

There was only one glaring flaw I noticed in her strategy. She was too focused on her product and now focused enough on building her community.

What I mean is this. She was driving her network marketing leads to her network marketing landing page instead of getting them on a list and then offering them a variety of options.

By building the list, you will be able to offer different network marketing products to people and let them by into the one that appeals to them the most.

You can also make money offering your network of people various tools to help them market their network marketing business.  This could really boost your income.

When you are doing lead generation for your network marketing produce, add the extra step in your lead generation system to add them to an email list and build a relationship with them that will be far more profitable down the road.

I am a huge fan of marketing experiments.

I have tested different price points for Buzzoodle Lead Generation in the past, and found that the $67 is more profitable than the $47 pricing model, for example.

However, I have never tested a truly low (below $10 per month) price and I have decided to run a short experiment on that.  So head on over if you would like a complex system of blogging tools, SERP reporting and link building built into one software package.

Now this price is only going to last two weeks and then I will move it back up to $67 most likely.  However, those that join during this special will keep the lower price.

I know more people will join, but what I am measuring is the number of people that stay in the program and actually use it.

Because our lead generation system does take some effort and takes time to build up, many people give up within a month or two.  However, by minimizing the monthly investment I want to see if they stick to the system longer to the point where it becomes wildly profitable for them.

I am posting this in March 2011 and if you are reading this later on, chances are the pricing special is gone but go over and see what we decided to make it.

Hiring a blog writer is a great investment if you have a sound strategy and you are using blogging tools to target lead generation.

But blog writers are as diverse as graphic designers.  Some are super, but expensive.  And some cheap blog writers are not worth their cheap wage.

But this is not a situation where there is a right and a wrong.  It depends on your site, the quality of the blog posts you want and your tolerances for less quality blog posts.

Keeping a well targeted blog fresh by posting light articles regularly is important.  But if you are using your blog to be an industry expert, you cannot just hire anyone to do that.

If you are not in the Internet Marketing industry, you may not be aware that there are blog writing software tools that grab content from other sites and let you lightly rewrite it and post it as original. That might be OK if you do not care about quality and accuracy, but it is not appropriate for quality blogs.

So if you are trying to build a good blog site, how do you hire blog writers that will do a good job for you?

You can begin by running ads in trade magazines or spending time in industry forums.  Decide what a good article is worth to you and pay a flat fee per article and hire a few people to write for your blog.

This is not the cheapest way to get content, but it is very effective at getting quality blog content at a manageable price.   And you will be surprised how many people are out there looking for a side blog writer job.

Everything is a funnel.  When you are promoting your business or product you are out casting a net and bringing people that are interested or meet certain criteria into a funneling process.

I see a lot of small businesses fail because they are focused on building a better marketing funnel when they have not defined and refined their sales funnel yet.

Things that can be included in your sales funnel are:

CRM – I have used many CRM’s and they are critical to building a good sales funnel.  There are free CRM systems and higher priced ones with more features.

Productize – Even if you are a service company, create products for your services.  Give them names and definitions so you can talk about them and explain them in a way that is clear and easy in the sales process.

Templates – You have to have great templates, because once people are in the sales process they will start asking for more information on parts, and being able to quickly send them things is essential.

Case Studies – In many cases you want to have case studies you can use in your sales funnel.

There are more thing as well, but this is a good start.  Think about the process of selling and everything you might need along that path.  Find ways to illustrate your value and make the sale easier.  Keep refining your sales funnel all the time.

Then, once you get your sales funnel fully defined and running well, that is the time to start building your marketing funnels.  Internet Marketing will be one marketing funnel, but you should look at where your ideal prospects are and build multiple marketing funnels and measure things like lead generation, revenue, profitability, cost per lead, etc.  These will help you identify your best source of leads in your marketing funnels and focus on them, increasing profitability.

Too often the small business owner thinks of this as all one big funnel.  You can never identify your best marketing funnels unless you define each one separately.

While primarily a marketing guy now, my background is in technology.  But what does technology mean and how has is changed?

Honestly, if used to be frustrating because people would call me to fix their computer – and I was a coder.  I enjoyed troubleshooting a computer as much as I enjoy changing the oil on my car.

But most people did not realize that a person that codes is not the same person that fixes computers, although they may be able to help you with the basics.

Then in the coding world, there were several camps.  There were the hard core coders, game developers and then there were the software developers in two camps.  Enterprise Tools such as MicroSoft and Open Source Software such as WordPress, Sugar CRM and others.

But today I look around and I feel a bit sad.  I would love to work on the many devices that are out there but software development has become so fractured that it is impossible to do everything.  You have to specialize in certain technologies or you cannot be good at them.  For example, do you want someone building an app for your car that was just building a kitten website last week?

In many ways it has gotten easier to pick up the languages and tools – but because there are so many different things, including different devices, it is very hard to manage all the issues with all of them.

For your project, do not hire someone to help you because they are technical.  You need the technology specialization that comes with your particular project.  And the idea that one firm has those people on staff for every different possible option is not realistic.  Outsourcing to specialists is now required.