Generate Free Leads - 5 Strategies to Generate Free and Low Cost Leads for Your Home Business

If you’re trying to grow your home business on a budget, you will find the following discussion not only interesting, but necessary.

Here’s a no-nonsense guide to generating free and low cost leads for your home business:

1) Start a Blog

In today’s Web 2.0 world, your blog plays an essential role in your overall marketing strategy. It’s the hub, the centerpiece that connects all the other areas of your marketing (some would argue Facebook could fill this role, too. I argue to use both and integrate). Here’s the important part: Your blog does what a standard website cannot – it interacts with your customers.

Your blog allows your reader to comment on your posts, bookmark your posts on social bookmarking sites, and overall, feel like he/she is part of a living, breathing community. It’s this community and “I’m a part of something cool” feeling that creates incredibly sticky readers. And happy, involved, sticky readers will almost always join your mailing list (file under: free leads).

So, stop advertising your company’s replicated website and start advertising your blog. You’ll get highly targeted, low cost leads before you know it.

I HIGHLY recommend using Wordpress to start your blog. It’s simply the best blogging platform out there, is free, and is incredibly customizable with hundreds of free plugins. Go to Wordpress to get started.

2) Capture Names and Emails

We’re building a business here, right? In order to generate free, low-cost leads for your business you can forget about #1 above if you’re not collecting your visitors’ names and email addresses when they visit your blog. This is the big secret among top internet marketers. They collect people’s names, build relationships with those people, and then market their products to those people. It’s been the surefire formula for decades.

The bottom line: the money is in your list.

So, how do you collect your visitors’ names?

Simple. Offer something of value in return for their name and email. Offer a free report, e-book, newsletter, or bootcamp. Offer them something that is similar to the topic of your business and your blog and make sure that what you are giving away free is not crap. Make it useful! You’ll be amazed at the amount of opt-ins if you give away something GOOD.

Next, communicate with the people on your list frequently. I prefer 2-3 times per week but it’s up to you. The bottom line here is you’re forming a relationship. You’re there to help your reader get more info on your topic area and you need to position yourself as the go-to person for this information. Become the expert and position yourself as such.

3) Get on Facebook Now

Here’s a little known fact.

Did you know that in terms of page views, MySpace peaked in the Summer of 2007? That’s right. Myspace’s page views are actually decreasing!

Facebook is Myspace’s major contender and it’s not without reason. I find Facebook’s interface to be cleaner with less ads and less obtrusive ads than that of MySpace. I also find the quality of people to be higher (it makes sense – Facebook started as a college social network).

So, go on Facebook and create a profile. Once your profile is completed you will want to create at least one Facebook Page and one Facebook Group. We’re going to use these to interact with one another and ultimately drive people back to your website or blog where you are capturing names (remember?).

Facebook Pages allow you to talk about and promote an entity such as your business. Remember NO PROMOTION on your Facebook Profile, only on your Facebook Pages and Groups. I recommend you create a Facebook Page about your blog, website, or business. Make sure you add fresh content regularly to your Page. Hint, use an RSS application for facebook and feed your blog posts directly into your Facebook Page. Here’s one of many Facebook applications for RSS:

Facebook Blogger RSS

Finally, link your blog to your Facebook Page and vice versa.

Facebook Groups allow you to form a group around your defined topic area. For example, if you like kite surfing, you can form a group about kite surfing, promote your group, and build a fan base (methods for this will be saved for another post). The same things apply to a group as to a page. Namely, you want to add regular, good content to the group, answer questions, spur discussions, and again, be the leader. See a pattern here?

Get free leads on Facebook Marketplace. If you’re familiar with Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace allows you to post for free under different categories. Promote your website, blog, or Facebook Page on the Facebook Marketplace.

For more info on how to generate free and low-cost leads using Facebook, you’ll definitely want to check out this post:

Facebook Marketing Bible

4) Use Content Sharing Sites.

Another way to generate free leads fro your business is to post your articles and content on Hub Pages and Squidoo. These two social content sharing sites are getting great rankings and high amounts of traffic in Google. Plus, if you post on these sites, you can avoid the Google sandbox and the headaches from search engine optimization (SEO). People are dominating longtail keyword categories in less than a day.

Hub Pages

Squidoo

Simply write an article, post it on the content sharing sites, and be sure to have one or two links that link back to your blog or web page. Just like in most areas of social marketing, DO NOT PROMOTE. Offer up good content and include your links as a natural flowing process in the content you are giving. The fastest way to get booted from one of these networks is to promote when you should not be promoting.

5) Alternative Pay-per-click (PPC)

Let’s face it…Google is no spring chicken anymore. It’s getting expensive as heck for the average home business owner to advertise with Adwords. The money keyword “home business” costs over $2/click before you spend months optimizing your Adwords account. This is financial suicide for the newbie who is promoting his company-replicated splash page.

If you want to use pay-per-click and you don’t want to pay for $10 leads on Google, these are two great alternatives:

1) Facebook introduced a PPC engine called Facebook Social Ads in November 2007. I'm getting 30 cent clicks and $1.50 leads.

Go to www.facebook.com/ads to get started.

2) Amazon has partnered with Clickriver and its PPC engine. Like Google, you bid on keywords and when those keywords are entered in the search box in Amazon, your ads appear at the bottom of the page.

Fernando Ceballos of Attraction Marketing Formula put together a great tutorial on using Clickriver. I'm getting 25 cent clicks and $1.50 leads, so you might want to watch his video.

To get started go to Clickriver.

Conclusion:

In this hub, we covered the top five ways to generate free and low cost leads for your home business. As with any free lead sources, there is an element of "elbow grease" you need to apply. But, if you put in the effort up front, your traffic and lead flow will slowly build and eventually become incredibly substantial. It's worth it in the end.

In addition to the five methods outlined above, you will need to continue your education and hone your skills. This is crucial. Continually read and train yourself!

Action Items

1) Continue Your Education: Read Magnetic Sponsoring.

Industry leader, Mike Dillard, created Magnetic Sposoring so you can gain the proper mindset and skills to succeed online. He is a well-respected internet marketer and leader and personally, I base a lot of my success from the concepts he outlines in his Magnetic Sponsoring ebook.

2) Build Your Business on a Budget.

Another very solid resource by Mike Dillard on how to generate free and low cost leads for your home business.

3) Build Your Network: If you liked this hub, go to my Facebook profile.

Add me as a friend, and mention this hub in the personal message box. I will not accept anyone who does not write a message in the personal message box.