Lead generation is essential for any business that expects to be around for a while and prosper. I want to offer a couple of ideas for lead generation for small business that are relatively low cost, but can be very effective in generating new business. These methods focus on underutilized methods to reach new customers and engage existing customers and if implemented properly will yield positive results rather quickly. The four methods that I would recommend are:

Coupons – Coupon sites are all the rage with the exponential growth of Groupon.com and other group buying sites over the last year. These group buying sites that can have massive amounts of traffic, but also squeeze the margins on your sales and require deep discounts, which is why it is important to realize there are other alternatives to distribute your coupons and generate leads. The best place to setup and distribute your coupons are through your Google Places account, formerly Google Local Business Center. After you have completed their setup process and verified you business, there is a tab for coupons. This tab allows you to setup multiple coupons for your business that will appear on Google Maps alongside your business. Even if the discount that you are offering is not that great, there should always be an active coupon in your account due to the extra exposure it generates on on Google Maps. It sets you apart from all of your competition that has not taken the time to setup a coupon for their business.

Coupons can also be distributed through Google using Google Coupon Feeds, but this process is only for merchants with large numbers of coupons. If only have a couple of coupons and a couple of locations, Google Places is much more efficient.

Craigslist – Generating leads from Craigslist is a topic that I covered here and here, but it is worth mentioning again because it is such an easy and effective method that is still underutilized. It really is as simple as adding a reoccurring event to your calendar every two days to update your Craigslist listing. It does not need to be unique every time although mixing it up from time to time will help. A quick review of the posts mentioned above will provide much more detail about using Craigslist effectively, but this is a simple reminder to say get something posted.

Facebook Fan Page – A few months ago, I would have likely said that Facebook was not an effective method for lead generation for small businesses due to the amount of time necessary to maintain a page. With the additions and social hooks that have been added by Facebook over the past few months that allow for greater integration into other websites and greater sharing within Facebook, I would now recommend Facebook as a lead generation tool for small businesses.

The key to using a Facebook fan page effectively is growing your number of fans and creating activities that causes them to engage on your page which will spread to their friends as basically referrals. For instance, post a sign in your business for your customers to join your Facebook fan page or offer some incentive or discount to your customers that join and then post offers on the page that they may “like” which their friends will see. You may also offer an incentive in which anyone that “likes” your post will have a special discount coupon mailed to their inbox. As your list continues to grow and creative methods of interaction are utilized, your Facebook Fan Page can become an effective lead generation.

Local Business Referrals – It is also important to remember that lead generation should still occur offline as well as online. I recently read this story about a car wash with 12 locations that is able to generate over $40 million per year in revenue by placing coupons on the counters of other local businesses without even the need to reciprocate placement for those businesses. They simply would regularly distribute their coupons to each business as a “gift” to their customers and this led to an amazing amount of sales for each location. That’s it. Simple, but very effective.

There are many other methods for generating leads like Google Adwords and traditional advertising, but I wanted to highlight a few methods that have much lower costs and are very easy to maintain. Once these methods are put in place, they are very easy to maintain which makes it much more cost effective. Set a plan to have each of these methods in action within a week and I am confident you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.

Living in the Midwest and paying close attention to business news, the reports are very clear that the economy and the employment situation are not very good. Although I recently questioned how these reports added to the situation, I know from real life interaction and the stories that I hear that people whom have lost jobs or that are out of work are having a very difficult time finding employment. This also creates a challenge for hiring managers as they are being overwhelmed with job applications and many of the applicants do not meet the requirement of the job description, but it is left to the hiring manager to weed them out. A good example is a recent listing for 250 jobs at Office Depot yielded 4,000 applications, which is now up to the human resources department to choose the best 250.

In most cases, hiring managers will take the natural course of reviewing resumes and determining who is the most fit based on an applicants work experience detailed in the resume. There are other processes that are sometimes employed like pre-application surveys and personality tests to determine how well a candidate may fit a job, but after all of those processes that are developed to weed out applicants are used, someone still has to make the decision on who is the best candidate to hire.

That makes me wonder if in these trying economic times, with the overwhelming number of resumes that are received, if it has created an environment that has caused hiring managers to make hiring decisions based solely on past work experience more than evaluating the person, their work experience, and their natural instinct to succeed in a position.

My guess is that although many companies are down-sizing, this is also a great opportunity for many companies to upgrade their talent as many talented people are now searching for employment. But if their work experience does not closely match the requirements, will they get the opportunity? For instance, if a person has a history of success with increasing responsibility in a variety of positions and has the natural instinct to handle direct reports, communicate with clients, successfully direct teams, effectively manage upwards, and quickly adjust to changing business needs, would that person even make it through the screening process of the many job applicants. My gut feeling says probably not.

I am not totally discounting experience because it is very important, but I have often seen successful people succeed in whatever situation they are placed mainly due to attitude, work ethic, effectiveness, and approach. Although there is a learning curve to their new task or position, they typically ramp up very quickly and excel by the way they approach the situation.

I really don’t know how to best solve this problem because the challenge for a hiring manager is always tough to select the right person even before the complexity of stacks of resumes were added. I just think that there are so many talented people who could probably improve the quality of a work team who will never get the opportunity because their career path does not exactly match the requirements. There has to be some value placed on a person’s natural business instinct and how they handle situations and when combined with work experiences and successes, that separates them for the rest. Companies should use this time not to just piggy-back the recession and down-size because it is acceptable, but to use this as opportunity to improve their workforce and set themselves that much further in front of their competitors when the economy does turn around. I can almost guarantee, that the companies that take advantage of this opportunity and focus on the level of talent that is available during the recession, will benefit ten-fold when economic times improve. It only requires going one step further in your evaluation and using the natural instinct to determine if a candidate can be successful outside of limiting the evaluation to the items listed on a resume.

Unfortunately, the United States is still in the middle of a recession/depression where depending on whose stats you listen to, between 10%-16% of adults can not find employment. Even at the low end, that is an alarming statistic that does not bode well for our national economy or the world economy. For our economy to do well, we need a larger percentage of people employed and contributing productivity.

But in the last week, three major companies released their quarterly earnings and based on the results, I have to wonder if the economy is really as bad as the media would have us believe or if there are parts of the economy that are doing well and that many of those that are unemployed are in industries that probably will not recover for a while or are supported by other industries.

Microsoft, Apple, and Google all released earning statements that far and away exceeded Wall Street expectations. What makes them important as I consider the real status of our economy is that for the most part they sell luxury items that in theory are not purchased as frequently during down times.

Microsoft reported revenue of over $19 billion and net income over $6 billion  as sales of personal computers and it’s new Windows 7 software saw strong sales. Consumers are buying computers at a record pace during a recession?

Apple, which sells primarily high- computers and phones, also had a record quarter and sold the most Iphones that they have in any quarter. Sales of their Mac computer were also up. What is also interesting is that their future forecast is even more rosy with many analysts predicting even better quarters with the introduction of the Ipad. Consumers are buying $2,000 laptops and $400 phones during a depression?

Google which generates over 90% of it’s revenue from advertising also had a record quarter with revenues increasing by 19%. They also have a rosy outlook as they expect growth in display and mobile advertising although the company does not make future predictions. So companies are advertising at a record pace during a recession?

There are other factors to consider with Google’s growth, like the decrease in traditional media spend could more than offset their gains, but what I find interesting is that it is typically believed that in tough economic times, advertising is the first budget to be cut. But it looks like companies are still advertising and doing a lot of it.

So maybe the economy is not as bad as projected and that it would even turn around more quickly if all the doom and gloom stories would stop. The people that are employed would feel more comfortable making purchases again which would stimulate the economy and create jobs. There is still much to be said about the jobs that are going overseas, the transition from manufacturing jobs to service jobs, and the increase of automation. All those things have an impact, but based on the earnings that have been released in the last week, there is money being spent, so there is some upside to the terrible economic stories that we are force fed on a daily basis. Let’s try to stimulate the economy by changing the messaging about the status of the economy and I would be willing to bet that would have an instant impact and increase the number of jobs. That’s just my hunch.

There has been more than enough hype over the last week as Apple introduced the Ipad. From most observers, the Ipad is little more than a larger version of the Ipod Touch and Iphone. The screen is about 10 inches and battery life is supposed to be 10 hours during active use and up to a month on standby. If that is true, then why is the battery life on the Iphone so terribly short. From my perspective, the importance of the Ipad is not the technology, but the increase in mobile device usage and what that means for marketers going forward.

As I detailed earlier this week, mobile data usage is exploding and will grow exponentially over the next few years as the introduction of more smartphones and other mobile devices drastically changes how and where we consume information. I believe this will lead to more accurate ways to target your market across any device that they are using. Within Google Adwords, there is already the option of targeting by device and phone carrier.

This system will become more intelligent and segmenting will become that more important. You will have the data to analyze the behavior of Iphone users versus Ipad users versus laptop users and adjust your ads, landing pages, and offers accordingly. No longer are the days of throwing ads out to the the wild and hoping for conversions. With the information and tracking that already available, targeting down to small user groups will be the determining factor on how to maximize ad spend as click costs increase.

Imagine that you can target Ipad users while they are on an airplane and give them an offer that appeals to most airline passengers during flight. You think that would help conversions? Undoubtedly. Or you know that a person in Florida is watching a Disney Movie and has visited sites pertaining to other Disney movies or child toys. You think you could find a way to put an ad in front of this person that appeals to their interests? Hope so.

We will soon walk that fine line between targeting and creepy as the intelligence of tracking improves. This will lead to better conversion rates if you are willing to invest the time and money into the technology and people to segment and target. If not, then you will probably waste a lot of unnecessary money hoping for conversions and not understanding why your visitors do not convert more frequently.

The mobile web has not been fully embraced by most businesses and for good reason because up until now the return and usage has not warranted the investment. Over the last few months, that has drastically changed and the outlook for the near future, next 12-18 months, is that your mobile web strategy should be your top priority as the way people are using mobile devices is changing rapidly.

Yesterday, Apple announced their quarterly earnings and worldwide sales of the Iphone have doubled to 8.7 million units in the quarter. This is significant because iphone users spend much more time with other functionality besides just phone calls. As you can see in the image below, iphone users spend much more time on their phone on average per day and also use their phones for search and visiting websites. A quick glance through your web analytics will probably show that some of the visitors to your website visited from a mobile device. This is a trend that will just continue to accelerate.

There are a number of events from the last month that indicate mobile phone usage is about to explode.

1. Iphone Sales – As I mentioned, Iphone sales set a record in the last quarter and Apple predicts strong growth going forward. Iphones in the United States are still limited to AT&T, but it is widely expected that the exclusivity will end with an announcement this week that the Iphone will soon be available on the Verizon network. Verizon is the largest carrier in the U.S. and by most opinions have a network that is far superior to AT&T in coverage and reliability. This will lead to a larger explosion of Iphones sales and possibly an exodus from AT&T for many Iphone users.

2. Nexus One – Google introduced their own phone, Nexus One, in the last few weeks and this will increase mobile usage. I don’t expect many people to move to the Nexus One right away because there is not much that differentiates the hone today, when Google completes the integration of several acquisitions over the next several months, I expect the functionality of the Nexus One to increase dramatically. This will include a number of applications that attempt to bypass the phone carrier networks and utilize the web more. This will include Google Voice and other VOIP applications that reduce the reliance on the phone carrier networks.

3. Android – The Android software from Google is a few years old now, but adoption of it is still picking up. Verizon introduced the Droid phone from Motorola over the last two months that has seen steady sales and there are a number of other handsets from other providers that will lead to further adoption. Much like the Nexus One, the handsets using the Android software will move more and more towards applications that don’t require phone carrier networks.

All of these phones have built-in search functionality that is very easy to use and are very heavily location focused. My guess is that the next 12-18 months will see an increase in mobile web usage that advances faster than estimates and in some cases will push the phone carrier networks to their limits. If you have not given some serious consideration to your mobile web strategy and how you can engage your visitors, now would be a good time. It is probably a good bet that your competitors are already doing so.

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Google Analytics is the web analytics software for over 70% of websites which clearly makes it the market leader. When Google Analytics originally launched, it lacked much of the functionality that some of the enterprise solutions offered, but the price was hard to beat because it was free. It still remains free today, but the functionality has increased dramatically and in many ways Google Analytics is as robust as most of the other solutions available.

Google Analytics and any other web analytics software really begins to get powerful when you get past the surface level and start to dive into some of the functionality and reports that uncover nuggets of data that can have huge impacts on your user engagement and conversions.

The most comprehensive training program for Google Analytics is Conversion University. This is a self-paced training program that takes you step-by-step through Google Analytics and gives details about each of those element. I had been using Google Analytics for a few years prior to conversion university, but after sitting through the course, there are a number of elements that I am now aware of that I did not know about prior to the university.

Here are three resources that are not owned by Google, but provide great insight and techniques for getting the most out of Google Analytics.

Avinash Kaushik’s Blog (Occam’s Razor) Google Analytics Evangelist

Justin Cutroni’s Blog Google Authorized Consultants

Site Scan GA Analytics Site Scanner

I would also recommend a book by Avinash Kaushik titled “Web Analytics: An Hour A Day.” Which is a great resource for learning Google Analytics. The book can be kind of wordy in parts and Avinash sometimes speaks at a level too high for the topic, but a book that is definitely worth reading if you are serious about improving your ability to dive deep into Google Analytics and truly realize the power of all the functionality.

I would also recommend “Advanced Web Analytics With Google Analytics” by Brian Clifton. This is also a good read, but covers the information in a different way than Avinash. The main difference is this book is written for less techy readers who are more concerned with the metrics than the coding that got you to this point.

Web Analytics will become increasingly more important for most organizations and the better your department can derive actionable data from the web analytics solution, the further in front of your competitor you will become.

Guest posting is a concept that was often used in the print media to create authority and enhance brand recognition. That same concept carried over into blogging where, in the past, you have often seen guest posts on some of the major blogs in a particular industry. Within blogging, guest posting has many benefits which include creating authority, branding, search engine optimization, and increases in traffic and subscribers just to name a few.

I am not sure what has changed, but over the last several months I have observed a significant decrease in the number of guest posts that are appearing on many of the strong authority sites across the web. My hunch is that this is due to the lack of original content that is created on the internet, so many of the topics have been exhausted where people can easily drafts guest posts without much time and research. I also think blogging has hit a point where we will start to see a lot of people give up blogging and it turn to just a handful of trusted sites that we review for our industry information. In my opinion, 2010 will be a year that sees a lot of consolidation.

Guest posting was already planned to be a large part of my 2010 strategy for increasing the readership of my blog and as luck would have it, I received an e-mail from Chris Garrett about his Guest Posting workbook that gives you all of the details that you need for making guest posting a part of your blog growth strategy and how to do it effectively.

The workbook is very practical in that it provides many simple steps that most of us already know, but we don’t put them all together into a well thought out plan to utilize guest posting on a regular basis. The workbook details how to approach other bloggers, topics to consider writing about, and mistakes to avoid when requesting guest posts.

There are also some other material included in addition to the workbook which include a mind mapping plan, a checklist, and several templates to guide you through every step of the way. Since I had already planned to use guest posting as a part of my blog growth plan, the information in this book was extremely helpful in helping to develop my guest posting strategy and making sure that I don’t make any missteps that negatively affect me over the long run.

If your goal is to increase you traffic and subscribers, I would definitely recommend downloading a copy of the Guest Posting Workbook by Chris Garrett and you will not be disappointed. Also, if you are in the search engine marketing niche, here are 10 blogs that are accepting guest posts right now. I expect more and more blogs to be open to guest posting as well, so now is prime time to increase your traffic and subscribers by guest posting.

The down turn in the economy has made selling products and services for every company more difficult. Businesses and consumers are more heavily scrutinizing their purchases and trying to ensure that they are receiving maximum value for their buying dollar. So it only makes sense that many companies will struggle and eventually fail as they are not able to persuade purchasers for their products and services. Much of the failure is not due to the down economy, but has much more to due with the lack of value and quality in the services that are being offered. Many companies that will fail will blame the down economy, never taking the moment to assess their value proposition and adjust their business accordingly.

The other side of the down economy is that there are still companies buying services, they are just looking for value. This is the same buying process that businesses should adhere to even in good times. So the recession has forced businesses to return to the core practices that will make them successful regardless of the state of the economy. It is not that businesses are not spending money on marketing and advertising, they are now just spending money where they are most likely to get the best return on their investment. This is partly leading to the shift from traditional marketing to online marketing as well as the need for companies to prove that they can provide the results that they promise.

This is where most marketing agencies fail to sell online services. There is a famous saying in traditional marketing that says “50% of your marketing spend is wasted, you just have to figure out which 50% that is.” This practice will not work in online marketing because the ability to track and measure results is much easier than it is for traditional media. For that reason, when selling your services to companies, marketing agencies now must move towards quantifying results, which was not a practice in the past. Marketing in traditional media often focused on the quality of the creative which is subjective and focused little attention on the results that the creative produced. For traditional marketing agencies to successfully make the shift to online marketing agencies, they must understand and embrace the reality that marketing is quickly becoming more heavily science that art. That is also a shift from the past.

There are several areas that I believe marketing agencies must focus on to successfully sell their services to prospective companies:

1. Many prospects do not understand online marketing, so you must educate them - Even if the prospect is familiar with the buzz words or have dipped their toe into the waters of online marketing, most really don’t understand the potential reach and results of online marketing that is well done. This is where you have to educate them. That does not mean put a bunch of numbers in front of them that will cause their eyes to gloss over, but some realistic numbers of the potential number of people who are searching for their services, where their website currently  ranks, and the costs and possible returns from their marketing efforts. This will help them as they build their case to create budget for online marketing. Although as online marketers we know it can be effective, companies a kind of reluctant to quickly move their marketing dollars from traditional to online due to the uncertainty and the unknown. If you educate them properly, it will increase your chances of a sell and allow you to have a conversation with the prospect in which you are clear on their online marketing understanding.

2. You must have a Unique Selling Proposition - Every time that you make a pitch to a prospect, you should know that there are 20 other companies that will contact your prospect THAT WEEK! Companies are sold to endlessly. To be successful, you must set yourself apart. That is why your Unique Selling Proposition is so important. Give the prospect a very clear reason of why they should choose you to provide the service. You are competing with every company that is over promising and under-delivering and adding skepticism to the industry. Ask your prospects how many times per week they hear “Guaranteed #1 rankings” or “Guaranteed first page rankings.” It happens all day long! Your proposition is that you can provide them with measurable results(sales, leads, phone calls, e-mail subscribers, etc) that they can track back to a real ROI. Tell them rankings is only the means to an end which is more leads and more sales. Focus on the lead generation or sales and that will help to set you apart from the rest of the snake oil that is being sold in online marketing.

3. Don’t be the jack of all trades – You have to focus on something. One of the major problems that I have seen many traditional marketing agencies face when selling online services is that they say they do everything. Direct mail, collateral, trade shows, radio, tv, PPC, SEO, web analytics, billboards, kitchen sinks, etc. The downside to this is that most marketing agencies are not large enough that they could realistically do all of this well. So what ends up happening is the prospect is unsure of your identity. At large companies, the traditional marketing is often separate from the online marketing and handled by different people. Therefore, making the “jack of all trades” pitch to the person that does not handle that marketing will often fall on deaf ears. In my opinion, you have to focus on particular types of marketing so that you can scale and become the best of the best. As the saying goes, the “jack of all trades is the master of none.”

4. Use technology to close the gap between lead generation and sales. – Lastly, I think the biggest challenge/opportunity for online marketers is closing the gap between lead generation and sales and tracking the results. Many companies are starting to do this using crm’s like Salesforce or SugarCRM, but most of them do not set the system up properly, therefore the data that is derived is almost useless. Most companies have very little idea what marketing efforts generated their sales and closing that gap is where I believe the biggest opportunity is over the next few years. Marketing agencies that can close the gap will have the data to support their results and for the companies to increase their marketing spend with the agencies.

Selling any service is a challenge, but eliminating some of the challenges that I have outlined will set you apart from 90% of your competitors and provide your company with the best chance to close new business. As more and more data becomes available, it will become that much more important that the data is used to make wise decisions for your clients marketing dollars. Make sure you are the company to help them solve their challenge.