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It’s no secret that more people are trading in their basic cellular phones and upgrading to smart phones and this trend doesn’t seem to be ending anytime soon. If you’re like most business owners, you know that just advertising won’t cut it anymore.

Today’s consumers can have technology in their hands so you’re going to want to be right there with them. Mobile lead generation gives you the power to render new clients as well as build rapport with current customers.

Listed below are some the of top ways to develop your patron base.

Apps

I’m sure you’ve heard their phrase, “there’s an app for that,” and if you’ve ever searched on a smart phone, there certainly is an app for about anything you’re interested in. Having an application available in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store is a sure-fire way for mobile lead generation.

QR Codes

There’s a reason it’s called Quick Response Codes. Using the camera function on your smart phone, you can take a picture of the barcode like code and get instantly transported to your company’s website.

X (X (formerly Twitter))

Not only can you use X (X (formerly Twitter)) on your desktop, but you can also use it on your smart phone. With over 190 million users (600 million estimated in 2025) on the social networking site, as of July 2011, as a business owner you can potentially reach all these people when they are on the go.

Text Messages

Having a special or just received a new shipment in? Instantly announce this information to your customers through an opt-in text message. You can even offer specials to those who show the text.

Advertising

Advertising on other popular apps, where it makes sense, can lead to numerous mobile lead gen opportunities in just one click.

Inbound marketing is creating content that will bring clients to your website using various search engines and inbound links. Your site needs to be full of fresh and relevant information that doesn’t sell as much as it educates. You want clients to feel like they found you, instead of feeling like you were invasive and hitting them with a marketing message. The greatest thing about inbound marketing is that, besides your time investment in creating content, it is free!

When you consider the cost and the ease of doing inbound marketing, where you are found by people who are already interested in learning about or are already shopping in your industry, having some inbound marketing ideas to take advantage of is a no-brainer.

Here are three great content ideas that will make your website a “go-to” place as opposed to a “drag-them-to” place:

1. Industry News

When making decisions, customers and clients will often investigate the industry itself. What are the new products? What companies are in the news? Fresh industry news content will be hit upon by search engines and will drive traffic to your website.

2. Company news

Go ahead and put it out there, this is one of those inbound marketing ideas that is simple, yet incredibly effective. Everything that is happening in your company, from new hires to retirees. Put a human face to your website, people want to know they are dealing with other human beings, and not just a computer monitor.

3. Product testimonials and customer stories

There is no amount of glittery and flowery sales talk that can replace a good, honest, real-life testimonial from a satisfied customer. Invite your customers and clients to share their stories on your website and watch as potential sales line up to read them.

Social media marketing has emerged as an important inbound internet marketing strategy. The key to using social media in your marketing program is understanding how social media can promote your brand and build strong customer relationships.

Currently, the most important social media platforms for building these relationships are Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and LinkedIn. While they both have large numbers of users, they are quite different in their focus. Facebook exists to promote networks of users with shared interests: families, classmates, and other groups can easily share information using their Facebook accounts. Facebook also allows users to create pages that exist separately from Facebook user accounts.

For businesses looking to use social media marketing, creating a Facebook page is an important first step. Facebook pages are designed for groups and businesses to promote themselves. Using a Facebook page, you can announce changes on your website, promote special deals, and invite users to “like” your website. This draws more traffic to your website and helps promote your brand to Facebook users.

Businesses also have the opportunity to create a LinkedIn company page. These have increased in importance in expanding visibility. With the ability to add Products and Services to your LinkedIn companies page you are able to encourage the market to recommend the product to others, while making it easy to get more information.

X (formerly Twitter) gives users the ability to communicate with their social network using 140 character messages called tweets. X (formerly Twitter) can be a powerful marketing tool if it is used regularly. By sending out tweets on a regular basis, potential customers learn about your business and can follow you through updates on your X (formerly Twitter) account.

Using social media marketing is just part of an overall marketing and brand development strategy. First, it is important to build engaging content that speaks to your potential customers. With strong content that exists on the Web, you can use social media to attract users to that content and convert leads to loyal repeat customers.

Good news — the latest rage in promoting your business is called inbound marketing, and it means having your customers come to you.

It’s a legitimized strategy that eschews everything practical (and therefor tedious and painful) about outbound marketing: the cold calls, the fliers, the blanket advertisements…and all the costs associated with them.

Inbound marketing instead focuses on utilizing content, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media to bring potential customers right to your business.

It’s suave, more efficient, and most importantly, cheaper. Here are the top five effective inbound marketing techniques:

1. Have content. Like, totally awesome content.

Content is the bread and butter of effective websites. This means pertinent, genuine, in-house content. The CEO should blog, and visitors should know the site is human and constantly updated. Videos and white papers are even better if you’ve got the resources.

2. Use keywords in that content.

Think of your four favorite words relating to your business. Now repeat them in a blog post. Beautiful, your keyword optimized. All right, that’s an extreme example. Don’t do that. But do make a point to include the phrases that you’d imagine people searching for in your content.

3. Be optimized. 

If you’re a bakery in Boston and you’ve got the clout, feel free to include something like “best bakery in boston” several times. Web-searches (i.e. future customers) love those types of searches, and the more your content utilizes search engine optimization (SEO), the more likely you are to show up in Google and Bing.

4. Share.

Share your links with like-minded businesses and reciprocate. No reason a knife company can’t link to a fork company’s site if the fork company does the same. B2B is key.

5. Be social.

Have a Facebook page and a X (formerly Twitter) feed — and use them.

It is a commonly accepted fact that when purchasing a vehicle, it is a good idea to get a pre-purchase inspection.

One of your most important marketing assets, your company’s website, needs to be inspected as well to ensure that everything is running smoothly and that your time and money spent on it is worthwhile. Here are 5 key points that will guide an inbound marketing inspection on your website.

Pre-Inspection Website Strategy

Taking a step back from the website for a minute, think about two critical questions first:

• What is the business objective of your website? (generate leads, build membership, etc)
• What primary action do you want a website visitor to take? (purchase something, sign up for free consultation, etc)

Answering these questions guides the success of the rest of your inspection, because you won’t be ‘blinded by love’.

Step 1: Inspect the Outside of Your Website

How does the website look visually on the outside? Think of the common phrase, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The trouble with that mentality when it comes to the web is that your website should hopefully be whirling across the eyes of thousands of people. These are people that spend on average 5 seconds looking at your web page before determining if they are going to read on or click the back button. After all 76% of website visitors want a website that makes it easy to find what they want!

Mechanic’s Tip: A website design should be visually appealing, sure, but more importantly functional for the people actually using the website!

Step 2: How Is Your Website’s Engine Idling?

This is an easy one, but one that surprisingly I encounter often. You must have website analytics reporting installed on your website.

How can you know if your website’s engine is purring or roaring if you don’t have a baseline? Now, don’t get caught in the analytics trap, however. Just because you have analytics running and you are viewing them, doesn’t mean you have established the correct inbound marketing baseline.

Mechanic’s Tip: Coordinate your website traffic goals with the baseline and some real set goals, marketing and sales goals.

Step 3: Check the Book Value of Your Website

How do your website and blog stack up against other ones in your industry? How about your competitors? There are so many different variables, but the most important to focus on when ‘valuating’ your website are:

• Indexed Pages – The number of pages from your website that are stored in a search engine. Usually, the more the merrier! Think ‘more exposure’
• Linking Domains – How many other websites link to yours? Search engines give you priority in search results based on your inbound links. Think quality.
• Optimized or Not – Have you done some of the basics like use titles for the pictures on your website and put in descriptions for the pages and good titles to help search engine know what the content is?

Mechanic’s Tip: It can be easy to get hung up or become obsessed with website reports, grades, assessments, but one thing is for sure, you need to have an idea of where you are really at. You can explore new business opportunities by strengthening areas of weakness.

Step 4: Checking the No Brainers “Tires”, “Brakes”, and “Steering”

A good mechanic wouldn’t skip checking the tires, brakes, and steering system. After all it would be consider crazy not to. It’s basic.

There are a few website basics that often get overlooked.

Go back to the questions pre-inspection (strategy), and ask yourself, do I clearly ‘guide’ my visitors to the expected thing they want, or the desired result I have?

Mechanic’s Tip: Place clear call to actions prominently on your page that make sense.

Step 5: What Reliability Rating Would You Give the Website?

Not reliability in terms of uptime, although that is important too! Reliability in terms of: can your customers or clients rely on your website giving them exactly the information they need to do business with you? Are your prospects able to fully rely on the content you’ve published online to accurately portray how you do business? Enough with the long boring about pages and on to who you and your company really are.

Mechanic’s Tip: Put your best foot forward and invest in clear content marketing where necessary.

Post-Inspection: Website Goals

An inspection isn’t always designed to point out the bad. Often you can find better during the process. But don’t neglect things that are important. Just as it wouldn’t be wise to ignore what your mechanic suggests, especially if it relates to your brakes or steering, it doesn’t make good business sense to ignore making your website the true marketing asset and sales tool it can and should be for your business.

A social media policy should exist with two purposes: to help set boundaries, and to create brand ambassadors within an organization. There are three key principles that should be included in every social media policy.

1. Be smart

“Have fun, but be smart.” – One of the principles in Coca-Cola’s social media policy

Much can be learned from others. Respect others, treat them with respect. If you share something online be sure to also link to the source. Give credit where credit is due. It’s OK to share ideas, which is one of social media’s strong points. Be cautious, when necessary, but in general don’t be afraid to be open and transparent.

2. Teach others

Everyone should be taught the policy and teach it to others.

People, make business happen. Your workforce has the ability to create a stronghold of positive communication through your people. Teach the benefits and boundaries of the policy, but don’t let it hamper their ability to spread good news about the business. This word of mouth will drive positive communication and lower average cost per lead.

3. Connect the dots

Make it understandable.

Don’t leave people wondering how a social media policy (SMP) affects them. Give them the information necessary. Set boundaries but allow freedom. A good social media policy will connect the dot and point to other internal policies that relate as well. Keep the SMP separate but connected.

Marketing Takeaway

Social media has forever changed the way we communicate. Technology, as it continues to innovate, will spur further evolving ways for brands to connect with people and people to connect with brands. Could it be that brands are becoming more humanlike, taking on a persona of their own?

While it is important for good business to take place behind policies and procedures, take care and not to limit carelessly the freedoms that can help grow your company through use of social media. Give boundaries without hampering benefits.

Organic search traffic, the un-paid search traffic to your website, can be valuable indeed. The value of these visits goes up when you have clear call to actions and a well thought through website sales funnel.

It can often seem like a daunting task to rank for a specific keyword or keyword phrase, especially in a competitive industry. But where the real results lie in the aggregate overall ‘effect’ your content has on your inbound marketing getting found perspective.

In the past I’ve talked at length about simple things you can do right away to have an impact on your search rankings. Over the long term, a well thought out inbound marketing plan, in conjunction with allocated time and resources, whether internal or outsourced, you can consistently increase the organic search traffic and leads for your business.

When done right, you compound these results over a long-term period of time, rather than focusing on the short term results. Sometimes quick, immediate results are needed and can be a good testing ground, which is where paid advertising online can come into play. For those that can allocate money in their budgets for both content marketing and paid advertising you can get the best of both worlds.

Focus on building out the long-term approach, and yes indeed, organic search traffic saves you money! Just don’t neglect the visitor after they get to your website.