Starting A Home Business: Step 5

by Ken Leonard Jr

Published on this site: May 24th , 2005 - See more articles from this month...

After completing Step 4 of this series, you should have your home
business entity created and licensed and your professional internet marketing tools all set up. If you've been doing your homework up to this point, you've also finished your keyword and ad research which produced a profitable keyword phrase for your product and you have written sales copy for your web site (or had a pro write it for you) that will entice your prospect to take the action you want them to.

(If you missed the first 4 steps, you can catch up here) http://kenleonardjr.com/step1

Today you will learn how to set up a lead capture system that you will profit from. Many visitors to your site will not by from you on their first visit. You will learn how to get your visitors to give you their contact information, which turns them into interested prospects. Multiple exposure to your offer is proven to get more of the people that visit your web site to purchase from you.

Your first task is to give your web site visitors a reason to want to give you their contact information. Offering a useful resource that would REALLY be of interest to your target customer is a good way to do this. A "how to" series dealing with your subject matter is a good way to establish multiple contacts by email. Offering the information they want as a PDF report that is only available from a link that you email to them is another way to get their email address.

Next, take the information you are trading for someone's email address and load it into the autoresponder system you set up at the beginning of this series. If you are offering a series by email, set up the first message to be Part 1 of your series and the same for each message to follow. Space out the messages so they are delivered every 3 or 4 days for the first couple of weeks, then you can try once a week for a while then once a month. If your lead list is from a PDF report signup, you will have less communication with your readers. Make sure you email them every month or so just so they don't forget you. Try to include something useful for them when you do.

Now it's time to create the forms that your site visitors will use to submit their contact information for your series or PDF report. This is easy, but it will require you to edit the html code that is your web page. I mentioned in Step 2 of this series that it would be a good thing to learn to use a web page editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. Now you see why.

Just go to the control panel of the autoresponder you want people to sign up for and use the link provided to create form code. You will get several lines of html code that need to be copied and pasted into your web page html. You can insert the form code into tables placed in different locations on different pages of your site. You can even use the form code in a pop up that visitors will see when they enter or exit your site. Give your site visitors as many different opportunities to sign up for your lead list as you can.

You can set up most autoresponders to redirect a new prospect after they sign up to a welcome or confirmation web page that blends in with your web site's look. From there you can take them anywhere you wish.

Once you get everything in place, it's time to test the system. Act like you are an interested visitor and go to your web site. Find the form to sign up for your email series and enter your name and your email address. After you click the Submit button, you should be redirected to the subscription confirmation page that you set up. Now check your email inbox for the first message in the series. If you got it, everything is working fine. If not, it's time to troubleshoot until you've fixed the problem.

So what kind of contact information should you collect from your sign up forms? It will depend on the product or service you are offering or if you are promoting a network marketing program. Some people are uneasy about giving their personal information, so ask for as little as possible from them. A phone number and country is always good to have if your follow up requires contact by phone. A mailing address is great if you can get them to give it up, since you can direct mail them with anything you want. When you create the form code from your autoresponder control panel, you will have the option to ask for different information fields in your form, like email, first name, last name, phone number and country or time zone.

In Step 6 of this series, you will find out how to get targeted traffic to your web site so you can generate leads for your follow up system. You will also learn how to direct qualified leads through your autoresponder without web site sign ups. And wait until you see what's in store for you in Step 7 and Step 8! See you then...

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