Growing Your Business by Generating Online Leads

Last week, the idea of establishing yourself as an authority in your field to generate new business and give yourself a competitive edge was addressed. If you read the letter (which should be available on the Chamber website) then you understand becoming an authority in your field may be easier and more simple than you think. Basically, it just comes down to making a choice and taking action. 

A yes to just one question: 

Am I willing to do a small amount of extra work that will do a lot of heavy lifting for me for a long time to come, 24 / 7 / 365? Making videos can accomplish that. 

Case and point - over the past 9 years, the decision to make simple youtube videos has yielded over 11.1 million views and 638.7K hours of viewtime for the videos we have published and promoted.

The business in question that we have posted videos for, (many of them rather low brow in quality) isn’t exciting. It's a national higher ticket item products based business. The videos either provided operational information, or device overviews and reviews. Carefully worded pre and post sales information. 

Let’s look at the numbers. This is where it gets interesting. First and foremost, those videos are always on demand, unless youtube goes down. On demand videos reduce support phone calls, in addition to driving sales. They are always there when a potential customer searches for them. 

If I were to pay someone $15 per hour to explain on demand what an interested or support seeking party has consumed in terms of watch time, that would have cost over $9.5 million. 

Instead, the videos themselves have generated over 50k in revenue from ads, and been an important component of a successful e-Commerce business, while simultaneously making me an authority in the field. Another way of thinking about it is the effort invested has paid for itself many times over. I make the video just once, then it gets viewed over and over again. The videos act as a genie in the bottle.  

Although I think it’s obvious that making videos was a great use of time, there’s a bit more that goes into disseminating emotionally compelling information than meets the eye. Some of the data driven points I will mention. Other emotionally driven factors will be presented in the form of questions. That way you can use the power of your own thoughts to understand what your current, potential and prospective customers are seeking, in order to take action steps that equate to prosperity. 

First, let’s assume that you have a website for your company. If you don’t, or don’t believe you need one, I urge you to consider otherwise. A website is a great way to organize the different types of media you have created or curated to drive your point - your why do business with me proposition home. In today’s business world, I believe a website is essential. 

Which brings up the next point.  

How does your website look on a mobile device? If you aren’t certain, now would be a great time to find out. Data has indicated approximately 90% or more of our visitors use mobile phones to view our website. About 3-5% are using tablets, and the rest, desktop or laptop computers. 

Yet, how is your website designed to appear? Many websites I’ve been asked to review for lead generation are built specifically to look how a web designer, not marketer, believes they should look on a desktop computer. I’ve come across countless websites that are clunky, or worse, lose functionality when viewed from a mobile device. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot …  

There are services, as in free services from Google (analytics) and Microsoft (clarity) that give you powerful insight into the nature of your traffic. Where they are from, how long they spend on your site, what pages they visit, where they click and much more. All of potent importance when it comes to understanding the behavior of your website visitors. 

With those tools alone, and a carefully observant eye, you can understand what is effective vs wastes time and money . Useful to know. Especially when your livelihood is on the line. 

In the medical world, for example, a potential patient may care more about the ease of scheduling and communication with your office than they do about where you went to school or how long you have been practicing medicine. Yes, of course being proficient and experienced is of utmost importance, but so is being seen, and doing so in a timely manner. 

The more basic information that can be provided on a splash page, in that example the better. Operating hours, automatic scheduling, benefits of the procedures, where the procedures take place, minimizing downtime and types of insurance accepted become bigger, more important questions than where the doctor was educated. 

So now I have to ask … 

Have you ever sat quietly and just thought of your clients / customers? Who are they? What feedback have they provided? Have you asked them why they chose you instead of a competitor? What is important - to them? 

If you haven’t taken the time to do that free mental exercise (remember, you can be the creator or the consumer of information) I encourage it. If you are anything like me, you’ll learn more than you may think, just by thinking about the needs and why of your customers. 

Personally, I’m neither here nor there about writing it down and making a list. Once I conceptualize something, it’s pretty simple to implement the idea and test it out. Especially with useful tools like analytics and clarity. The numbers don’t lie, right? 

Once you mentally place yourself in the position of your customer, it’s a great idea to simply look at your website, map listing, and other materials you are using for marketing and ask yourself - Does the message on the website, map, yelp etc align and convey with the emotions that drive your customers, patients or clients? Are you addressing their most important why’s?  

If not, adjusting, or adding content that does address the most important driving information can be simply implemented - so long as you decide investing a bit of effort is worth the reward. 

If you feel that you have done a great job at delivering a message that resonates with your target audience and you can substantiate that  with data, great job! Kudos to you. My next question would be are you delivering that message in a cost effective, locally or nationally targeted way? There are many specifically geo-targeted pay per click options available complete with the ability to control factors such as time of day and the per click maximum price you decide, and much more.  

That is what I will discuss next week. Until then, thank you for reading and I wish a great deal of prosperity for you. 

Sincerely, 

Paul Bunting 

paulb@markmedportal.com