The lifeblood of every new business is getting new prospects into their pipeline and subsequently converting them into buyers. Regardless of what a business sells and/or the way they market their company, new leads are needed to help a company to grow its profits.

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Competition with Other Businesses

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However, every company exists within a competitive environment. First, companies compete against other businesses that offer similar products. They engage in their battle using pricing, quality, features and value. They use some combination of these tools in order to win potential customers over to their products and services.

Marketing your business online is constantly changing. Much of the change has to do with the way that consumers are getting their information. As little as five years ago, you could depend on being able to reach a customer at their personal computer. The concerning issue was whether or not that customer was on a laptop or a desktop computer.

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All of that has now changed. As a rule, consumers are now using mobile devices. And while statistics may be helpful, it is fair to say that in the next five years most of those individuals who would be your customers will be using a mobile device and you will have to reach them there.

Most businesses have a standard website that displays their hours of operation and directions on where prospects can go to make purchases. While these websites are effective in getting people the information they need quickly, it's also prudent to use some of the space to generate leads.

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When a potential customers come to your website, you can get statistics on what they did when they visited. You can also find out what pages they were most interested in clicking on.

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Identifying Your Visitor

One a prospect comes to your website, you'll want them to give you their name and e-mail address. Whether you've set up a special capture page with forms for them to fill in or you've had a form designed for your corporate website, you'll want your site visitor to willingly give you their contact details when they come to your page.

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Therefore, the most important aspect of the lead generation process is the incentive that you provide the prospect to opt-in. If your company is a retail operation, your incentive is likely to be an introductory offer to purchase something at your location at a discount. You want to structure your discount so that it rewards their loyalty, but provides them an incentive to come and experience what your company is about.

When people in your local area have a need for specific products and services, they are often pressed for time.  They subsequently look for the easiest way to get the best possible information to find what they need.

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Often today, individuals are using a mobile device and are in their automobile looking for quick solutions. Those that do use mobile devices, are increasingly turning to voice search. This means that when they conduct their search they literally say or speak what it is that they are looking for, instead of typing it in. In this case, companies need to become the most logical choice for search engines to display information to users.

One of the most important aspects of your business is being able to use your financial statements in order to make decisions. Most of the time, business owners take a look at their financial position in order to make decisions about expenses that are needed, as well as new investments. In other cases, financial statements are used to determine new compensation points for key employees as well as planning for the near future.

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It's not common practice or is a commonly taught that business owners should be using their financial statements in order to make decisions about marketing. In fact, the way business is presented and taught, accounting/cash flow is as far away from marketing as it is from any other business discipline such as human resources. The two are simply not thought of together.

Depending on how long you have been marketing your business online, you may not know much about how the results of your efforts are calculated and where they might reside.

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If you are working with a marketing consultant, they are likely happy to make sure that you get website visitation data as well as insight on what matters and why you should/or should not be concerned. One of the things that business owners universally say about Google analytics is that the amount of data that it gives you can be overwhelming. Therefore, if you decide to delve deep into the numbers, consider working with someone that can provide context for what you're going to see.

One of the buzzwords today in small business marketing is "past customer reactivation". It is considered to be vital to a business because it is a method of promotion that does not require significant investments in cash.  Those companies that use e-mail marketing are positioned extremely well to undertake past customer reactivation.

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The Strategy

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The strategy assumes that a company already has in place a customer list that they contact routinely. It assumes that upon a customer making a purchase that the company collects the contact information of those individuals and places it in a separate database.

During the 1990s, marketing guru Jay Abraham captured a number of concepts for small business owners that have now become standard thought and practice. Abraham states that there are eight basic marketing principles that companies must follow and put into a system.  He states that the eight things apply in some way to all businesses in all niches.

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This system has been revamped and re-codified by a number of trainers and coaches to provide structure to what Abraham taught. Most of these trainers would agree that these eight principles are as follows: