Lead Generation | Lena Bjorna | Award Winning Online Marketer

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20 hot marketing tips that make THE difference in your business in 2011

Friday, January 14th, 2011

Here are some simple, tried-and-true tips that can help you boost your results in 2011. They are based on a list I put together for my own team members recently, but I modified it slightly and posted it here, hoping it could benefit others as well.

These ideas all spring from my own experiences of what has made the greatest difference in my success as an Internet marketer.

I recommended you pick a handful of them and start implementing them in your business today. Let me know which ones you commit to: feel free to leave me a comment below!

1. Connect with two or three people on your team or perhaps in some online networking community that you belong to: touch base often, hold each other accountable. Staying in close connection with other like-minded individuals can make ALL the difference during challenging times in your business.

2. Plan your marketing budget (however big or small) for the next 6 months and stick with it no matter what: What are you going to be spending on your marketing per month for the next 6 months to build your business to momentum?

This marketing budget is not based on whether or not you make sales in your business – it’s funding coming from other income sources. But any profits your make in your business should be added to this budget.

3. Opt in to the email list of one or two successful leaders in the industry that you feel you resonate with: Follow them closely, see how they market themselves as leaders, and model yourself after them (-model, not copy).

4. Bookmark CopyBlogger.com and use it whenever you need inspiration for headlines, subject lines for emails, and other copy. It’s free, and it’s a fabulous place to start learning some basic copy writing.

5. Mark your calendar for your company’s next marketing event and commit to being there. There is simply no substitute for live events, and you can’t even begin to grasp what I mean until you actually attend one. You come back as a changed person, and when you change, your business changes.

6. Add one more hour to your workday: That’s six extra hours a week; 24 extra hours per month. Then, ask yourself what sacrifices you need to make in order for this to happen.

7. Become more deliberate about how you spend your time: Plan your weekly schedule – I recommend using an online calendar and writing down specifically what you will be working on each and every day of the week, blocking out 1,2 or 3 hour blocks of time.

8. Become more consistent about “working your list”, using promos, free offers & bonuses, conducting online webinars for your subscribers, etc, as a way of giving value, building trust & credibility and prompting your prospects to take action more quickly.

9. Learn to leverage & recycle all your content: Here is a youtube video I did where I explain how to do this.

10. Start personalizing your email auto responders. You’ll find some helpful training tutorials for this as well on my youtube channel.

11. Pick one direct response marketing strategy and master it to perfection: focus on that one strategy only; learn everything there is to learn about it.

12. Unsubscribe to all those email lists that you never should have gotten on in the first place, which are doing nothing but filling up your inbox.

13. Start calling your leads. NOT calling your leads is a right you have to earn, and unless you’re generating 30 or more leads a day consistently and/or making $10K a month, you haven’t earned that right yet.

14. Commit to doing keyword research for everything you write and publish: if you aren’t using keywords properly in all your online marketing, you are going to get buried in the Internet graveyard where no one will find you.

15. Become crystal clear on your “why”. Why do you do what you do? Where are you going? If you don’t know where you are going, why would anyone else want to follow you?

16. Every day, focus on profit producing activities. There are only 2 of them: Marketing, and talking to people. In other words, driving and converting traffic.

17. Consider getting a screen capture software such as Camtasia, and start shooting video tutorials where you teach and train on specific marketing strategies.

Post these to your youtube channel, and also, use a video distribution tool such as Traffic Geyser to blast your videos all over the net. Video tutorials are incredibly effective in attracting high quality prospects. They make you look like an expert in the eyes of your viewers, too.

18. It is never too soon to start creating your own unique offer: an ebook, a video series, a live webinar course, a pdf file or another type of report… There’s probably nothing more powerful you can do as a marketer in order to establish yourself as an authority and to build your brand.

Plus, with your own offer 100% of the profits go back into your pocket!

19. Become consistent about tracking your traffic. Because how can you know what marketing strategies are working for you if you don’t know what traffic sources are producing for you and which are not?

20. Consider outsourcing some of your work: Use odesk.com, guru.com, or the warriorforum, to hire some helping hands – whether it is to write articles, create banners, build a blog, or whatever.

Outsourcing – which does not have to be expensive by the way – can be a life line during those times when you feel especially overwhelmed. As a wise person said, “Do what you do best, then outsource the rest.”

PS: Let me know about your progress… Perhaps you have already implemented one or more of these strategies and have seen a big difference in your business and your life? If so, be sure to leave me a comment right below! Also, as always, if you think this post can be of help to others, feel free to retweet it.

Successfully,

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Tags: internet marketing, network marketing tips, network marketing training
Posted in Attraction marketing, Copywriting, Lead Generation, Leadership, List Building, Marketing Strategies, Mindset, Social Media Marketing, Sponsoring & Recruiting, Time Management | 2 Comments »

Got Leads?

Tuesday, August 10th, 2010

Everyone’s always complaining that they aren’t generating enough leads for their online businesses…

So am I taking issue with that? Isn’t lead generation important?

Well, of course it is. Leads, as all of us marketers know, are the fuel for our marketing engines.

However…lead generation means nothing if you don’t know how to convert those leads into customers and sales for your MLM business!

The Two Skill Sets You Must Master To Succeed With Internet Marketing

Successful online marketing is about TWO things.

1. Generate leads.

2. Get the leads to convert into sales.

Miss one of the two, and you’re DONE. You’ll soon find yourself buried in the Internet graveyard, with wasted time and ad dollars left as your only legacy.

Okay. So how do you best go about each of the two? 1. Generating MLM leads, and 2. Getting the leads to convert into sales?

Well, in order to generate sufficient leads for your online business, you’ll want to use some form of direct response marketing.

Examples of direct response strategies would be pay-per-click — either on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or (the very latest) Facebook PPC.

Another example would be paid media. My favorite paid media method is banner ads, which by the way, you can do quite inexpensively and generate heaps of leads with very quickly.

How To Get A Flood Of Targeted Leads For Your MLM Business

We call the above methods “direct response” because you are simply responding to your prospective customers’ needs.

They are already out there actively looking for you. Not by name, obviously, but they are typing in actual keywords that pertain to your offer. Or at the very least they are on a web site reading about something pertinent to your offer.

And voila, there you are with your banner or text ad, announcing that “Here it is. Here is the answer to all your troubles.”

Do you see how powerful that is? You are simply placing yourself in front of those who are already looking for what you have to offer!

And the following you can write down in red, highlight and underline: As a new marketer, you must have some sort of direct response marketing strategy in place to produce sufficient leads for your internet marketing business.

Social media marketing or content advertising just ain’t gonna do it. You aren’t consistently going to generate 30+ leads a day for your online business writing articles or press releases, shooting videos, or interacting with people on Twitter.

(Sorry if I’m stepping on someone’s toes here, but I’m just saying it as it is.)

And 30 highly targeted MLM leads per day is the very least that you require in order to see consistent growth in your business.

Are You Just Wasting Your Time With Social Media? Here’s How To Do It Right…

So, then, is there any use at all in social media? In shooting videos, and writing articles and blog posts?

Much in every way. But it’s probably not what you have been led to believe.

What these strategies are primarily meant to do, is help convert your traffic into customers and reps/members for your MLM business.

When your prospects google your name (which people do, believe me!), you’ll want them to actually find something. Something of value. Some content that you have created (or outsourced), which helps builds trust and establish you as an expert. A leader.

Because – and this really is Attraction Marketing 101 – we all prefer to buy from and work with those that we like, trust, and whose opinions we value.

And your task is to make your prospects feel that way about you!

If You Don’t Want To Wait Months To Make Money In Your MLM…

The added benefit of content advertising and social media marketing (although not their main purpose) is that they, over time, also serve to generate quality traffic for your MLM or internet marketing business.

But yes, it does take time. “Time” as in, well…likely several months.

And my guess is that you probably don’t want to wait months to make money in network marketing!

Therefore, my advice to you is to pick a direct response marketing strategy that fits your budget and your overall marketing plan, so that you can get the lead flow you need from early on.

And at the same time, start to work on building trust and establishing credibility through your online presence by consistently publishing new content and making yourself known on the social networks.

Successfully,

More here:

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PS: If you enjoyed this post, feel free to re-tweet it and/or to leave me a comment below!

Tags: internet marketing, mlm business, mlm leads, network marketing, online business, online marketing
Posted in Lead Generation, List Building, Marketing Strategies, Marketing Systems, Social Media Marketing, Sponsoring & Recruiting | 1 Comment »

Who’s business are you building anyway?

Friday, August 6th, 2010

Most of the time, when a person unsubscribes from one of my email-lists, their reason for doing so, (as stated in the “comment” section of the unsubscribe email) is usually, “not interested”, “not relevant”, “too many emails”, or “no time”…or something similar.

But the other day I received an “unsubscribe” comment, which was, if not unusual, at least a little different. And it inspired me to write this blog post.

This particular subscriber decided to opt out from receiving any more information because, as she herself put it, it “breaches {name of MLM company}’s policies”.

Now, I’m obviously not writing this to promote my own business, or to argue the fact that the training, system and tools that I offer are generic and should therefore be able to be used to market any MLM opportunity, without significant issues.

Although true, that is not my point here…

Here is the real issue… And it’s actually best addressed with a question:

“Who’s business are you building anyway?”

You may think you are building your business but if your leadership restricts you from using a generic marketing system to promote your MLM – a system that does not only NOT hurt your company’s brand in any way, shape or form, but has in fact the potential to rapidly grow your current business and boost your sales…

…if your company’s policies have it that you may only use their training, their methods, and their tools – well, then I want to argue that you don’t actually own your business AT ALL: You are an employee of your company, catering to their will, however unreasonable it may be.

And that’s the problem, I think, with so many MLM distributors today… Because they haven’t been taught to market properly (not their fault, may I add), they have no real skills, no value in and of themselves. They are expendable.

And of course the leadership knows this. One distributor comes, another goes. Big deal.

If you do something – heaven forbid – that your leadership disapproves of…if you, even unknowingly, breach one of their policies, and they decide to kick you out (which I’ve seen happen on more than one occasion), well, then you have to start all over again, from scratch.

You’ll have to start with a new MLM company, new products, a new compensation plan, and building an entirely new customer base.

In fact, you can’t even take your leads, customers or members – considered you have some left – with you to your new company! Do you realize how much money that means leaving on the table?!

It is my conviction that most MLM distributors are led to believe that they are business owners when they really aren’t.

Most people grow up with such a herd mentality and are so accustomed to following rules and taking orders that they mistake the little bit of freedom they acquire as MLM distributors for full business ownership.

Which, of course, it is not.

You only own your business when you have value in and of yourself, as a marketer. When you have acquired skills that are in demand in the market place – which makes people seek you out and want to work with you.

And that means you know:

1.) how to generate traffic to your web sites at will, and

2.) how to convert that traffic into sales at increasingly higher profits (ROI).

When you have learned these skills, you will be in demand.

Then you won’t have to rely on someone else to supply you with leads (the life blood of your business). Because you’ll be able to produce them yourself. Which means you are, in fact, in control.

And then you can take your expertise, your know-how, anywhere at any time, and create results. For yourself, and for others.

Now you are independent.

Now, suddenly, you are indispensable.

So, then…what do you do if you find that using a generic marketing system, tools and training to build your MLM business “breaches” your current company’s policies?

Easy.

You resign. You go learn the skills that will make YOU sought after in the market place. So that you can set your own rules…and write your own pay check. For life.

And then you’ll truly be working for yourself and building your own business, not that of someone else.

Successfully,

More here:

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PS: Agree? Disagree? Feel free to re-tweet this post and/or to leave me a comment below!

Tags: mlm leads, mlm success, mlm success tips, mlm tips, mlm training
Posted in Lead Generation, Leadership, List Building, Marketing Strategies, Marketing Systems, Mindset | No Comments »

The dangers of social media marketing

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

I remember how some years back — I was working a traditional MLM business at the time — I heard a fellow distributor recount his activities for the day on a team call (a daily routine instituted by the leadership to further accountability)….

I remember how taken aback I was to hear how this particular distributor – let’s call him Nick – had gotten into talking with a lead he called for the purpose of getting a product sample out to the person, and that the chat had (get this) turned into a 1 hour long dialogue…

A conversation about sports and travels, and goodness knows what else — anything BUT Nick’s business or products. As the phone call came to a close, the prospect agreed to take the sample pack, but, as Nick himself admitted to us, the guy likely did it only because he felt he owed it to Nick after taking so much of his time.

Even Nick realized how completely wasted that hour was. He could have made ten other calls to prospects during that time and gotten a whole bunch of sample packs out. Instead — thinking that if he just did a real good job of befriending the guy, he would want the product — he got caught in a conversational trap he couldn’t get out of.

And…yes, you guessed it…in spite of Nick’s unsurpassed amicability, they prospect did NOT become a paying customer.

This was a few years back, and I’ve since made the transition to online marketing. Now, as Internet marketers we don’t dial for dollars, and so we don’t need to worry about getting stuck with prospects who aren’t right for our business. Or do we…?

Well. Just because we do a large part of our marketing online and spend less time on the phone, it doesn’t make us immune to vampires of our time.

And social networking sites can be dangerous that way: You log onto a place like Facebook to check your messages for a few minutes, and lo and behold, “pop” – that tiny pop-up window appears, and one of your many (way too many) Facebook “friends” demands your attention.

You don’t want to be rude to your “friend”, so you politely reply…and before you know it you’re dialoging about the weather, about what an amazing movie Avatar was, and about whether Tiger Woods deserves a second chance.

You may even be sharing ideas about marketing, crossing your fingers and hoping the dialogue will lead the other person to ask you about your business so that you can direct them to your website…

But, of course, nine out of ten times that doesn’t happen.

Don’t get me wrong…I love social networking. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, LinkdIn…all are powerful marketing tools for us online entrepreneurs — if used correctly.

Five minutes here and five minutes there…before you know it, you’ve spent an hour in unproductive dialogue. And just like Nick could have spent his hour getting bunches of sample packs out, you could have spent your hour, too, on REVENUE producing activities.

So what are revenue producing activities? Two things: marketing and talking to people. Which means that if you are engaging in conversations with people online, you are in fact doing something right!

You’ve just got to make sure you get your message across to as many individuals in your target market as possible, all at once, and don’t get sucked into lengthy discussions one-on-one with people who may or may not be looking for what you have to offer.

In all your marketing, be it pay-per-click, article marketing, social media marketing, or anything else that you use to drive traffic to your websites — you’ve got to think VIRAL.

Fortunately for us Internet marketers, there’s a whole bunch of tools we can use for that purpose: automated Twitter tools, video distribution tools, article submission software, and the list goes on.

Think MASS communication. Successful marketing has always been and always will be about numbers. And social media marketing is no different.

Successfully,

More here:

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PS: Agree? Disagree? Feel free to re-tweet this post and/or to leave me a comment below!

Posted in Lead Generation, Marketing Strategies, Social Media Marketing, Sponsoring & Recruiting, Time Management | 7 Comments »

What’s in a domain name?

Monday, December 7th, 2009

A lot actually…

Your domain is part of your ad copy. Your domain is the welcome mat that invites the “browser” to click on your ad and become a “reader” so that they can become a “subscriber”…which of course is why you want them to click on your ad in the first place!

Although a terrific domain probably can’t heal a poorly worded ad, a dull, or worse, mismatched domain can most definitely ruin an otherwise well-crafted ad.

Just like the rest of your ad, your domain should hold the promise of a benefit or solution to a problem. If you’re advertising a business, you’ll want to communicate this with your domain. If you’re promoting marketing training, then, likewise, your domain should convey this.

So that you can get a better feel for what I mean, here are some examples of effective domains that either I or my consultants are using:

www.TopProducerTraining.com

www.AttractionMarketingPower.com

www.MLMstressRelief.com

www.FinalMLMWarning.com

www.MyInsideScoop.com

You get the idea.

Also, I recommend using a “.com” domain (as opposed to “.net”, “.info”, “.biz” etc.) Although this is not a rule written in stone, “.com” — which of course is short for “commercial” — is what is preferred in our industry.

What about using your own personal name, then?

For a landing page that advertises your business opportunity, I don’t recommend you use your own name. Let me explain why.

As mentioned earlier, getting your reader to opt in and become a subscriber is the sole purpose of your landing page.

And to get your reader to opt in, there needs to be congruency between your ad and your landing page. If the domain displayed in your ad is JoeSmith.com, it creates an expectation in the person that when they click on your ad they will meet Joe Smith on the webpage.

And if the page has nothing to do with Joe Smith, but instead talks about some business opportunity or marketing system, then you don’t have congruency; rather you have a disconnect.

To get great conversions, that is, to get as many of your readers as possible to opt in to your website and become, if not customers instantly, at least subscribers (and likely customers down the road), it is essential that you meet the expectations of your website visitor.

When they land on your page, you must give them exactly what they expected to find.

When it comes to your own name, you’ll want to use it for your blog or your personal web page — in fact, this is a vital part of promoting yourself as a leader and building your brand. You can use JoeSmith.com, WhoIsJoeSmith.com, MeetJoeSmith.com, TheRealJoeSmith.com, JoeSmithsBlog.com, or variations of these.

Because your home page or blog obviously is about you, primarily, and much less (if at all) about your business. Using your own name in this case only makes sense.

It really isn’t rocket science. When trying to decide on a domain name, simply ask yourself the following: What benefit or solution can I convey with my domain that my web page/landing page will easily be able to deliver on?

As long as you can answer that question, you’ll be fine.

Successfully,

More here:

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PS: Feel free to re-tweet this post and/or to leave me a comment below!

Tags: Copywriting, Lead Generation, mlm leads, mlm success, mlm success tips, mlm tips, mlm training, network marketing success, network marketing tips, network marketing training, success in mlm, success in network marketing
Posted in Copywriting, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategies | No Comments »

Are YOU under the entrepreneurial curse?

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

I just got off one my bi-weekly team trainings where one of the things I do is I review and answer questions that I’ve received from my downline members over the course of the previous week.

Today, several of my new consultants had similar questions: “Where do I focus my time and energy? There are so many marketing methods, so many programs out there, and they all promise the moon — how do I know where to start?”

And: “I’ve been doing article marketing for several weeks, I’ve done videos and press releases, but I’m not getting enough traffic. What am I doing wrong?”

Well, they are not doing anything “wrong”. And the answer to both the person just starting out and the one who’s already been marketing for a few weeks or months, is the same. The answer is focus. Focus combined with patience and massive action.

As entrepreneurs we naturally have lots of creative energy…that’s just part of our genetic makeup. That’s why we’re entrepreneurs, right — we need an outlet for all our creativity! And having the ability to create and to enjoy that process is, of course, a blessing.

But the blessing can become a curse if we’re “all over the place”, trying to do everything all at once, never giving any of our marketing strategies enough time to bear fruit before ditching it for some new idea or method. That we are constantly being bombarded with offers that carry the promise of “faster” and “easier” doesn’t help either.

I’ll be the first to admit that patience isn’t one of my strong sides, and I suspect you’re in the same boat. Otherwise you -like I- would probably be working a traditional 9-5 job, diligently putting aside money for your kids’ college education, not looking for new ways to leverage the internet to create instant cash flow.

But focused patience, together with massive action, is exactly what it takes to become successful in network marketing. Without it, you’ll just be all over the map, trying to move in every direction at once.

In marketing, because it’s so competitive, they key is to specialize – to get exceptionally good at one particular skill set. And the way to do this is to learn one thing at a time. Generally, it takes at least 90 days to master a new marketing strategy. Focus on too many methods at once and you’ll end up becoming only mediocre at them all.

So here’s my advice to you who feel like you may be under the entrepreneurial curse – and it’s the exact same thing I tell my own marketing consultants: unsubscribe from all those offers that continue to flood your email inbox each and every day, constantly drawing your attention away from the task at hand.

Stop looking for the secret sauce, the one trick, tip or technique that’s going to make you a millionaire overnight. Because there is no such thing.

Instead, absorb yourself in –in fact, get obsessed with– ONE marketing strategy, and set out to learn everything there is to know about that particular method. Decide that you are going to become the best of the best in that particular area or niche, and then be willing to do whatever it takes to make your goal a reality.

The “secret” to truly becoming excellent at marketing, and to becoming profitable, is this: Determine what’s working. Then continue to do MORE of it.

Simple, isn’t it? And I suspect it is exactly because it’s so simple that it is so often missed…

Successfully,

More here:

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PS: Feel free to re-tweet this post and/or to leave me a comment below!

Tags: entrepreneur, free leads, free mlm leads, internet entrepreneur, internet marketing, Lead Generation, Lena Bjorna, mlm leads, network marketing success, network marketing tips, network marketing training, success in network marketing
Posted in Lead Generation, Marketing Strategies, Mindset | 1 Comment »