Building your own free lead generation website is not hard.  Promoting your lead generation site to the point that you get fantastic results is not as easy.  First I am going to let you in on the secrets of building a lead generation website and then this article will give you some of the details that you will need to consider to get fantastic results.

Building that free lead generation website is going to take a couple of steps, but anyone can do it.  To begin with, you need to download the free lead generation software that contains lead generation videos and a free WordPress lead generation template that you can use to optimize the open source WordPress software to build your own lead generation engine.

But before you worry about the lead generation software and website, you need to do some keyword research on the key phrases that your target market is searching for.  The videos walk you through this process, but it is essential.  If you have not taken the time to identify key phrases that get steady traffic and have lower levels of competition, you are not going to develop a site that targets profitable key phrases that have a positive return on investment.

Next you want to build a lead generation site in WordPress that is optimized for search engine ranking as well as for lead generation.  This is easy with the WordPress lead generation templates that are available for free and in premium sites.  These themes combine SEO and clear calls to action to make your WordPress Lead Generation Blog produce more leads for you.

Lastly you want to understand why your site will get results.  It is a combination on regular, fresh articles that use your keywords plus links back to your site with the anchor text with the keywords and the testing of your call to action once you reach a good number of visitors, to assess which call to action produces a higher percentage of leads.

If it seems to simple, it is.  But what stops people is that it takes consistent effort over time.  You have to ask yourself if targeted lead generation is worth the effort for you.

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.

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.

First off, I am not casting any stones here.  If I write a post on one of my blogs and there are not mistakes or typos in it, it is the exception, not the norm.  I enjoy writing and I enjoy teaching, but I have never been a natural good speller.  When my book went to print, I found a misspelling on the cover and had to pay to have it reloaded.  And I was being careful that time.

I get the question all the time when doing blog speeches.  How careful should I be with my writing standards?

Well, I just came from reading a news article on CNN and it had several obvious mistakes in it.

I do not care.  I understand it is breaking news.  I respect that they are putting out new stuff all the time.  But it did make me realize that it is not just us bloggers that are guilty of lower editorial standards.  The web moves fast and more content (if it has value) is better than less.

So Should You Worry About typos?

The answer is that it depends on what you want to achieve.  With typos, some companies have very high standards because of protecting their image.  If I was a lawyer or an accountant, I would not want to be sloppy because I am in a field that requires attention to detail.  If I sell writing services, then I would also not want to have typos because one typo will jump out at people and kill sales.

Ultimately, it depends on your audience and your desired outcome.  I am fine with typos in breaking news, other people will rant and rave about lower journalistic standards.  How important is it that you make everyone happy?

If you live in Akron Ohio and are looking for a Marketing Firm, do not start out looking for someone selling themselves as a marketing firm.

Instead, understand what you want and find a specialist in that area.  For example, there are some great Akron Ohio Marketing Firms that do many things very well.  But a marketing firm that does everything is either going to be looking for big clients with big budgets – or they are not going to be good at everything that they do.

That is why knowing what you want to achieve is important before you start shopping around for a marketing firm.  If you are looking for a web and SEO expert, then Buzzoodle is the best choice.  If you are looking for lead generation via the web, Buzzoodle is the best choice.

If you are looking for a specialist in Direct mail or print, Buzzoodle is a terrribe choice.

It is good to work with someone locally.  In fact, I am writing this post just ten minutes before running off to see one of my local, Akron based clients.

But before you pick a local marketing firm, make sure you know what you want and make the firm prove to you that they have the skills and expertise to get the outcome you desire.

Did you know that the Buzzoodle Inbound Marketing tool actually has three levels, and the upper two levels include a blog writing service?

While inbound marketing is probably the most effective and profitable marketing that I have ever seen, it is also one that does not always pay off – usually because the business thinks it can write articles regularly, but they fail to make it a priority and end up with little in the way of lead generation.

That is why we added the blog writing service to the program.  It does not mean that you will not want to do any of the writing yourself, but it means that if you get busy for a while, you can be sure that someone is writing on your business blog and getting you results, even if you are focusing on something else.

If you buy a content marketing/inbound marketing solution from anyone, remember that it is not the software or the website that gets results, it is the regular production of high quality content that your target market will find valuable.

A blog writing service is essential to make sure you have the consistency and focus to produce your blog articles that will generate leads for you.

WordPress is the best content management system in the world. Not because it has the most features, but because it is easy to set up, has great plugins, is open source (free), flexible, customizable and gets great search engine results.

Here are several ways to make money with WordPress.

1. Build a WordPress Lead Generation Empire.
2. Affiliate Sales – You can sell affiliate products via your WordPress blog.
3. Membership Site – Make Money with a WordPress Membership Site
4. AdSense – You may not make a fortune, but over time you can make money with Google Adsense.
5. Sell MLM Products – You can use the WordPress site to generate leads for any product.
6. Product Sales – WordPress gets the search engine results and you can sell products on the side.
7. Advertising – People do pay for advertising once you have a decent page rank and traffic.
8. Ebay – Make Money with your WordPress blog by promoting anything that you are selling in another place, like eBay or Craigslist.
9. WordPress Design and Hosting – Once you become talented at WordPress, you can use your skills to host and design wordpress sites for businesses. Since you start with a good template, you do not need to be a designer from scratch.

There are many other ways to make money with wordpress. Only a few short years ago it seemed irresponsible to tell clients to use Open Source.  Now I think it is irresponsible to NOT use open source, like WordPress, unless you have a very special need.

People set up business blogs thinking that somehow the blog will help them with their business.

However, it is important to remember that business blogging software is only a software system to manage your articles.  You need to write regularly around topics that are important to your target audience.

If you do this well, then you will experience some traffic to your business blog.

But traffic does not make you money.

You need to have a strategy to either make money via affiliates and advertising, or you need to do lead generation for your business.

A lot has been written about how to generate affiliate income in this way.  But what is less often written about is how to create real leads for your business from a business blog.

Here are some ways to do lead generation.

1. Download a white paper – Offer free white papers or reports to visitors in exchange for their contact information.
2. Autoresponders – You can use autoreponder tools to create automatic email courses or sales funnels.
3. CRM Integration – If you use a good CRM, it will have web forms.  You can use these forms on your business blog to invite people to schedule a free consultation or demo.
4. Social Media – Make following you in Twitter, FaceBook or LinkedIn easy.  These people will keep getting regular messages from you if you use the tools, and some may become leads eventually.
5. Webinars – Invite people to sign up for your webinar or teleseminar.
6. Video Download – Very common now – people will happily add an email to a form to watch a video with a great tip or secret in it.

There are many more ways to do lead generation with your business blog software, but these are some of the most common.  Just remember, when you get a business blog set up, that is your starting point for lead generation and writing.  It is not the final product.

If you are a small busines you may be thinking about doing some business blogging.

Do you want a free blog, a traditional blog you host yourself or do you want to invest in corporate blogging software?

Before you even start thinking about your corporate blogging platform, you will want to consider what goals you want to accomplish with your business blog.

The mistake people make with new media tools is that they hear they should have a business blog, they should use twitter or facebook, they should – they should.

It certainly does not hurt to go set up a facebook and twitter account.  I would even suggest setting up a free blog or two, depending on your time.  However, you need to really have a strategy around these things if you are going to use them for business purposes.

And a clear goal.  By goal, I do not mean the number of followers you have.

I mean the actual amount of money you will make and how your social media strategy will funnel the right people to the right products and make income for you.

This is important.  If you are not expecting anything from it up front, why would you invest in corporate blogging software solution?  Just go with a free business blogging option.  Probably more than half your visitors will not know the difference.

But did you want to make money with your blog?

If you expect to get something out of your corporate blog you are going to need to set up a blog and use it with specific goals in mind.  Or, you can hire a professional business blogging company that will set up and host your corporate blogging software and set specific goals as well as help you measure your results.  When you approach it as a real marketing effort instead of a thing you heard you should do, the entire experience changes.

Now you start out doing keyword research and targeting customers.  Then you buy a corportate blogging solution that will build a virtual keyword blog targeting each keyword.  Then you make a clear call to action that drives targeted visitors to your corporate blog to become a sales lead for you.

Blogging is exactly like normal websites.  You can set up a free website, you can set up a basic business website with no goals, or you can spend some money and time and set up a money engine that will pump your sales funnel full of targeted sales leads.

The most importat thing is to know what you want to achieve before you begin looking at corporate blogging software and other options.

Business Blogging Software can be one of the best investments your business will ever make.

Sure, there are great free blogging tools out there, but real business blog software has some important differences.

1. Business Blogging Software is optimized for search engine results.
2. Business Blog Software measures traffic, SERP and ultimately will demonstrate a strong blog ROI.
3. Business Blogging Software is going to really focus on conversion. Conversion could be direct sales from the blog or it could be lead generation. Blogs are great tools when used by businesses to generate targeted leads on the web.
4. A Corporate Blog is going to have multiple authors. Many of the free blog tools on the market are nice but do not allow multiple users.

In addition to these four business blogging software points, if you hire a company that hosts your business blog for you they should provide support, guidance and a dependable hosting environment for your business blog. Just try to back up your business blog on one of the free sites and you will quickly see how much time you are wasting.

Demo Business Blogging Software

Schedule a demo of great business blogging software today.

What you will find in the blog software demo is very little in the way of features. That is because the entire search engine optimization process is automated and businesses only have to worry about writing occasionally and following up with the leads that the business blog is generating.

Keys to Success with your Business Blog

• Target Niche Keywords that do not have extensive competition
• Use business blog software that builds a virtual blog for every keyword you are targeting.
• Focus on lead generation with your business blog.
• Do not distract visitors with options that are outside of your business goals.
• Work with a company that has been generating leads for years with business blogs.

Anyone can set up a business blog, but unless they fully understand how to optimize the business blog software to target niche keywords by building virtual blogs for each keyword, you are not going to get as good of an ROI on your business blog.

Also, your plan must include inbound link building. A blog, business or otherwise, that never gets any links will not rank well and will not produce leads. The business blog software and regular writing with no supporting strategy is not going to be in your businesses best interest.