Online Sales Leads – A Social Media Campaign that Makes Money

Social media is all about the conversation.  Sharing, educating, and interacting are the highlights of social networks and blogs, which are great places to build awareness and gain credibility.  Social media strategies are also relatively inexpensive, so they are very attractive to small business owners with limited marketing budgets.

Money isn’t the only reason why social media strategies are so appealing to small business owners.  It’s becoming very common knowledge that search engines prefer blogs over static websites.  For small business owners who haven’t been able to afford a website, free blogs are a way to get an online presence.  Other small business owners may have websites that are ineffective from a search engine optimization (SEO) standpoint, and adding a free blog is an inexpensive way to gain presence on search engines and drive traffic back to the website.

Needless to say, small business owners have been flocking to social media.  What many are finding, is that they are spending all of this time writing blog posts and conversing in social network forums, but they aren’t getting any business.  And, they’re confused and frustrated.  If social media is the place to be, then why aren’t they seeing results in sales and revenue?  The problem is that social media by itself is not optimized for sales.  Online sales leads are only generated indirectly.

Let’s equate it to a more traditional sales activity – meeting with a prospect.  You’re having lunch and telling the prospect everything you know about your area of expertise and they are impressed with your depth of knowledge.  You ask interesting and probing questions to get the prospect to think about their situation in new ways.  You get to know each other’s personality and enjoy spending time with them.  You both agree that a professional relationship is mutually valuable, say good-bye and part ways.  What didn’t happen?  You never asked for the business!

It’s actually not completely your fault that you haven’t been asking for the business in social media venues.  You have to walk a careful line in the mainstream social media channels because there is little gray area between tasteful self promotion and blatant sales tactics.  You will quickly find yourself shunned and blocked from participation for bad etiquette – not the way to improve your business!

So, is there a way to benefit from all that is good about social media and generate sales?  Yes, but it requires an advanced and diverse skill set that is rarely found in one person.  First, the technical skills to identify key phrases with opportunities to rank high on search engines and to design a blog that is highly focused in subject matter and optimized for those key phrases.  Second, the skill to write blog posts that are both educational and key phrase optimized.  Third, the ability to create and promote an incentive that will compel people to voluntarily identify themselves as interested in your products and services.  And finally, have the traditional sales skills to take these leads out of the “virtual world” and convert them into hard core sales.

It sounds pretty complex!  If you try to build it from scratch on your own, definitely.  However, the Online Sales Leads program that I offer does everything for you but close the sale.  This social media campaign is perfect for sales people and business owners who just want people to contact to make the sale.  It’s a system that marries the best of SEO and blogging to put names and contact information directly into your customer database.  If you’re interested in learning more about how the Online Sales Leads program can help make you money, send me an email message.