Frequently people want to buy a lead generation tool.  What they do not often understand is that it takes more than one tool to build an effective lead generation strategy.

And it is not the same for everyone.  If you want B2B lead generation you are going to invest in a great CRM that is going to help you follow your sales process from initial lead to final close of the sale.  And that could take years to happen.

On the other hand, you may just want to grow your email list and sell affiliate products to those people.  Getting people on your email list is lead generation as well, but does not require the same tools.  In that case, a simple autoresponder will do and will make you money.

What other tools can you use for lead generation?  You can build a lead generation website and use it to attract people that are doing searches and convert them to leads.

You can do keyword research with a great keyword research tool.

And you could use social media and other tools to attract more people into your pipeline of lead generation and sales.

Then there are many specialty products.  Simple things link WordPress plugins and custom tools and exit scripts that can all contribute to successful lead generation if they are made part of the strategy.

I like to tell people that it is never done.  Even if one site becomes a finely tuned lead generation producer, then it is time to set up another site with a slightly different niche market.  There are a lot of tools you can use that can help but do not feel like you need them all at once.

Please note that the offer mentioned in this may or may not be valid at the time you read it.

Yesterday I bought Traffic Zombie – See the LIVE DEMO to get your 50% off Coupon Code

I’d avoided even looking at it because I hate the name.  But something caught my eye and I thought I would take a look.

It did a very good job of getting me to buy – after all it is a small one time fee and a lifetime membership.

But the question is, does it work?  Like most things, it all depends on if you use it properly.

I just launched a fantastic $1 for 60 day lead generation membership trail offer with it – you should take a look and see how it looks in action.

Personally, I do not like to promote something until I have tried it.  However, I set this up in a way that the visitor can pay full price with a 30 day money back offer or they can get 60 days for one dollar if they do two small things to promote us.  Either way I want there to be no (significant) risk to a buyer’s choice.

Results will take a bit of time to see, I am sure.  However, I like the thing so far and if it produces new clients and new links – how can I go wrong?

You can check out Traffic Zombie and our $1 Offer via Traffic Zombie software and see what you think.

Video on Business Blogging Software Benefits for the Buzzoodle System.

You can review the pricing and additional features at the Lead Generation site.

This post will cover some WordPress lead generation ideas for you.

Most of these tips can be used in conjunction with our lead generation program.

1. To generate leads with WordPress you need to think like a first time visitor and make a clear and compelling call to action that is on EVERY page in the WordPress site.
2. You can get more organic lead generation if you target specific lead oriented keywords in your writing.  I suggest you try the free market samurai tool to find out what those are.
3. Lead generation with WordPress is much easier if you write every day or two.  Look at outsourcing or repurpose your writing to keep your WordPress site fresh and full of good content.  Freshness is a big factor in how you get ranked.
4. Use autoreponders to quickly follow up with leads that opt into your list.  I use aWeber as an affordable way to caputre and follow up with leads that visit our WordPress lead websites.
5. If you want phone calls, make sure you put the phone number in the top right where people can see it.  If you are not sure you want calls, use Google voice to set up a number and have it email you the text of messages left for you.
6. Look at plugings – some plugins may not be called lead generation plugins but they can be used for lead genetion outcomes.

These are just a few of the obvious WordPress lead generation ideas that you can use to generate leads with a WordPress site.

Come on!  Really?  I get people landing on our sites all the time looking for free lead generation.

Partially that is because we offer free lead generation software and training as a lead generation strategy for our advanced lead program.  Our system works well, so we rank well (usually #1) for that term.

But really I am surprised when I see the search terms we get.  Would you really want someone to hand you free leads?  They would be crap.  I mean CRAP.

Our free lead generation strategy does take work, which is why so many people land on the page but more than half do not take advantage of it.  Free is still too hard.  They just want the leads list, I am guessing.

Here are reasons you would not want a list of free leads even if they were handed to you:

1. The person giving them to you is an idiot because they could sell them to someone else if they were any good.
2. The person handing out free leads could find an affiliate program and make money himself.
3. The leads are probably so bad that the phone book from 1984 would be a better source of leads.
4. How many other people got their hands on those free leads first?

You get my point.  If you want to generate leads, do what every real business does.  Advertise.  Network.  Pay Per Click.  Buy a lead generation system.  But don’t expect to get something great for nothing.

OK, this is kind of funny and kind of annoying at the same time.

It seems there is a new product on the market called Fuzzoodle.  A Fuzzoodle is a fuzzy noodle that can be bent and made into things like animals and such.

Buzzoodle is my company that has been around for a long time doing things in Internet Marketing, Buzz Marketing, Online Lead Generation and more.

When you search on Fuzzoodle in Google, I am better known at this point, so it asks, “Do you mean Buzzoodle?” and it has a link to my website.

I am not complaining – It is great to see a bump in traffic.  However, I cannot help but feel that people are a bit disappointed about the site they land on.

They are probably saying to themselves, “No, I do not want to build my own lead generation website – I want to make fun fluffy animals with Fuzzoodles.”

Sorry people.  Maybe I should offer a free fuzzoodle with every Buzzoodle purchase. 

I was chatting with my wife today and noted that we know about most of the public parks in about a 25 mile radius because of word of mouth.  I actually drive to the next city over for one park my 5 year old likes, and in the opposite direction we go about the same distance to another park frequently.  There are several good one’s close by too.

Then there are the hiking trails.  People have told us about those too.  There are several you can find us walking on or running on regularly.

And there are also some great nature parks with hiking trails, cliffs and more.

Again – I doubt I found a single one via anything but Word of Mouth.  I guess that is the nature of a great free resource that has no marketing budget.

It makes me wonder how busy these places would be with a little bit of marketing.  Maybe it is better that it doesn’t happen so I can keep them more to myself.

What is Lead Generation?

Some people will say that lead generation is referrals.  In fact, even an Internet Marketing guy like me agrees that for many businesses, referrals and word of mouth are the best lead generation strategy.

But who said you have to pick just one?

The fact is, you should build several lead generation systems and measure their effectiveness.  For example, document your referral and word of mouth lead generation strategy.  Does it include thank you letters?  Does it include affiliate payouts?  Do you know who is recommending the most leads to you?

Next, look at your advertising and promotions options.  Yellow Page advertising used to be a necessity, but now I see well crafted lead generation websites getting much better returns for much smaller expenses, because many people turn to the search engines to find a company to help them with their problem.  Am I saying not to do lead generation with Yellow Page ads?  Absolutely not.  If your industry gets leads that way in the past, then keep doing it but track it carefully.  How much profit are you making on the leads that come from that source?  Is it covering the marketing costs?  Every year these returns keep getting weaker in many cases so you cannot blindly assume that because it was a profitable lead generation source it will continue to be one in the future.

Of course, advertising in magazines, newspapers, on websites and in email newsletters are all ways to do lead generation that can be effective.  You must test and measure to find which ones are worth continuing to do.  Remember that there are diamonds in the rought.  I know someone that pays $50 per year for a banner advertisement that produced 6 figures in sales per year.  Those things are out there but they are hard to find.

Lastly, continue building a lead generation website for your business.  This is not something that usually produces results the first week, but over time it can become your most valuable asset to your business.  A good lead generation website can be set up for a fraction of the cost of other marketing efforts and often produces much higher results once the site started getting noticed and ranked well in search engines.

The reason that a lead generation website, separate from your traditional business website, is important is that it does not mess up your other marketing and it is able to focus on one clear, measurable goal.  One of the strongest selling points to what we help people do is that we are not touching their existing website.

Lead generation results can be developed and increased if a business is willing to go through the process and build out the strategy.  It is the same techniques that lead generation companies use to collect and sell leads, but you build the site for yourself and the lead generation is exclusive to you.

One thing that I frequently refer people to is the option to set up a free online database to capture leads, track hours, build simple small business database program solutions and more.  I had one client looking at buying Oracle because they wanted to put up a web page to have people report hours.

In that case, I referred them to Google Spreadsheets because Google does not have a Google Database.  They loved it and it saved them $10,000 or more trying to set up some crazy big enterprise database system for a simple problem they had.

A while back, I started working with a company that does even better than Google spreadsheets.  They let you build Free online relational databases that can be more complex and more useful.  Unfortunately, that company did not make it but another one has been strong for a lot of years - Zoho has many free online database tools.

Having been a database administrator in a past life, I can tell you that it is so nice to point people to a simple custom small business database solution like this and let them solve their own simple database problems with a friendly interface that is easy to use.

They even have free database templates you can install that do inventory tracking, lead generation tracking, project management and more.

And the best part for me is that I can refer to them as an excellent way to put a free HTML lead capture form on a website.  Of course, I recommend aWeber if you want to add email autoresponders, but if you just want capture leads and data from visitors and you do not need the email autoresponder, you should check out the Zoho site.

Not all website keyword research is created equal. One of the programs I offer charges for keyword research and sometime people ask me why. After all, many SEO people will do free keyword research and then try to sell their services after the fact.

Ultimately you need to know that you are getting what you pay for. I could also use software that would look at your existing website and figure out what keywords are important to you based on your existing text. However, how valuable is this really? Think about it. Do you really think that you have naturally written and targeted the best industry keywords with high traffic and low competition? Do you think you are using the exact phrases that you prospecive buyers are searching for? Probably not.

Recently I worked with a client that already had traditional SEO services and he had the report that the SEO specialist had produced for him. I told him if he wanted to reduce the fee we could use those keywords, but could not assure him of any particular results.

Even he knew that the SEO person had really not done any serious research. The list of 1,300 prespective keywords we gave him also had a filtered list of keywords we thought were better for his product and ultimately had a third list of the 100 or so best keywords to target for his industry.

The little bit he spent with us gave him a real look at what his buyers were looking for as well as an idea of the competition for those keyword phrases so he could target the low hanging fruit.

Buyer Beware: Not all keyword research is created equal.