Saturday, June 14, 2008

Leads

Leads - The Power of Not Advertising
By Butch Hamilton

In this day and age of computers, the internet, technology and advertising, its easy to discover that there are people who simply are trying to peddle their goods and services. This brings me to the story of Hafid in "The Greatest Salesman in the World." If you have read the story, you know that Hafid was a humble camel boy who had visions and dreams of becoming the greatest salesman in the world. His journey was rocky and very non-effective. In fact, he decided to go back to his job of being just a camel boy.

Does this sound familiar to you? Can you relate to Hafid in some ways? If you are marketing goods and services online, you must be aware that effective writing is your best answer to the way people are searching for information on Google. You spend the time honing your writing skills, and you are miles ahead of the pack on the internet. The mentality of today online is nothing more than merchants shouting buy this latest greatest widget. Its better than everyone else's widget. Its even a free widget. Get it? What distinguishes your product from everyone else's product? Absolutely nothing. This is precisely why this technique is not effective.

Take the category of leads on Google. This is a highly searched market. The Wall Street Journal came to my attention by an article by Bill Brine, noted leads specialist. This is a billion dollar industry. The selling of people's private information is a huge market. People involved in online marketing are scrambling and paying for every lead they can muster. They need to "sell" their product. These leads are sold by these million dollar companies with the point that people are waiting in line like pond raised fish in a lake waiting for their daily dose of nutrition. In all actuality, this is nothing more than fabrication.

No one is waiting for anything. People are looking for relevant information posted to them online by the best copy writers. Remember the movie, "The Field of Dreams?" If you build is they will come? Precisely my point with copy writing. If you write the best copy for online presentations on Google, people will ultimately find your information and be drawn to what you are saying. The leads category is no exception People are hungry for ways to make money online. Most are not making money and this is proven that 95% of online marketers today make very little, if any, money. Why is this? They simply peddle their wares. They shout like Hafid at the merchant square. Those that shout the loudest, win the prize right? Wrong!

If you show people how to produce their own, never bought and sold, brand new, fresh prospect leads, they will beat a path to your internet marketing door. There is only one way to accomplish this feat. You must be willing to become a writer. You must dig deep into the leads category. You must give people solutions to lead generation, benefits of lead automation and show them why everything they are doing is simply wrong in the area of buying leads. If and when you are able to grasp that one thought, you will then be in a position that very few seo masters online today are able to do. You will be able to inform, motivate, inspire, mentor and guide those people into the wonderful world of internet success.

Aren't excuses wonderful tools? You can simply say that you really don't have the time to become proficient in what you are trying to accomplish. You could simply fall into the mindset that buying pay-per-clicks on Google is the best way in the world to advertise, while your online competition is clicking on your ads and spending your money. You could also simply post classified ads to Craigslist, hoping and praying that someone, somewhere will find you information and buy your stuff. With that mentality you will be doing what everyone else does, just advertise. Maybe you can get to a point online that you actually do shout louder than the millions trying to outshout you. Who knows the answer to the riddle of marketing on Google? Just a simple change of attitude and commitment is all it takes.

Using classified advertising on Google is like simply hoping and praying that someone will see your information and give you a call.  Buying leads is also the wrong path to approach.  Leads brokers pray on unwary home business owners who have not a clue as to how to really build a substantial business on the net.  As a matter of fact, most of the leads brokers that I know, really know nothing about this either.  They are simply buying leads from across Google, and then repackaging them and selling them at a premium price.  Leads brokers are unethical, and in my professional opinion, immoral, in their approach to getting money from people.

Its time for you, the SOHO business owner of today, to come full circle and realize that education is your only ticket to having success online.  Unless you are willing to take the time, and expend the effort of doing that, you will simply be flailing around on the search engines, and posting your classified ads to Craigslist, thinking that you are really working hard to build your business.

Leads

All About Leads

Butch Hamilton-SEO Master

No comments: