You see all kinds of internet marketing information everywhere and how to get filthy rich sitting at home in your underwear. That is hard to compete with and I won't even try. It isn't something I am qualified to talk about since my monthly income from affiliate marketing is just a few hundred.



There is something I can talk about, though. I brought my monthly marketing consulting practice income up from nothing to five figures. How? Other than a $500 ad I placed over a year ago, I only used internet marketing strategies.

My marketing costs are around 2% of sales, and I spend zero time directly prospecting or looking for new clients. (OK, there are some activitites such as writing newsletters that play a part in getting new clients, but I see these as distinct from traditional "cold calling" or prospecting activities).

Faster and better results have been accomplished by many people out there but there are just as many who haven't been able to build their websites into one that generates good leads yet. These people will most definitely want some tips on methods that work for others.

So here are some of the strategies that I've successfully used to build up my consulting business. Your business may well be different, but if generating high-quality sales leads is a challenge for you, you may find many of the same tactics directly applicable.

It has to be said that achieving these tactics and having success with them involved a good amount of trial and error. To get over the plateaus, you have to stick with them. Then you will see good, long-lasting results.

1. Be unique

The attractiveness of your offers to the audience you are targeting will be determined by how you have positioned yourself.

The majority of web designers are competent in the technical aspects of web design. The sites they produce are great looking. However, they see these websites as the end product.

For example, results have always been our focus. This means, "we don't just build websites, we provide you with an automated revenue-generating tool".

We stand by our claims by providing a lot of information on online marketing and show plenty of case studies to back up what we say.

The attraction of this claim to business owners is that we don't say something like "we are the best with Java Script, PHP, XHTML and a bunch of other stuff you can't understand and we don't have a clue as to whether your site will at least cover its own costs.

2. Teach. Teach. Teach.

It is important that clients know the benefits and value of the service or products you are offering. This is especially true in marketing consulting, as it requires a high level of trust to get sales.

Prospect need to learn about the expertise we have in our field and what solutions we can offer to resolve the problems they might face. To this end, I publish an online marketing guide and newsletter that are available free. If a newsletter subscriber's goals and our methods are a good match, he or she will approach us to establish a business relationship.

Offering value and education with case studies, newsletters, evaluations, and white papers is far more effective than the old school sales pitch by itself. High quality information related to your target market can result in solid sales leads.

Again, there's a great deal of free information available on the Internet. It can be hard to get traction. To make this strategy work, your subject matter either has to be truly unique or of very high quality. I try to give away information, strategies and advice that prospects would normally have to pay for elsewhere.

3. Test all things

Many of the marketing activities we've tried such as banner ad services, paid link exchange and PPC search engines such as Overture have produced sub-par results. But we've always known they weren't working and cut them off before they costed too much money.

On the other hand, some things have worked very well such as Google Adwords. We've continued to optimize and expand what's working to generate ongoing success.

By taking what works and expanding it further, you will find it very hard not to succeed.

4. Be proactive in your own education

Especially on the Internet, it's important to stay abreast of new developments. One of the best ways to do this is by reading blogs and investing in education products such as ebooks, software and courses. There's a lot of junk out there, but there's lots of fantastic profit-building tools as well. Rather than learn by trial and error for yourself, it's much quicker and easier to pay $50 or $100 to learn from someone who has "been there, done that".

I spend at least $300 - $500 a month on info products and other self-education resources.

5. Online success elements must be understood

These four things are necessary to keep current on if you are to build a successful lead generating system:

1. Strategy - how your sales process is put together. This is particularly important if your product or service is relatively complex or expensive.

2. Design - flashy animations and graphics are not the way to go. Simple, easy designs that are user friendly is what you want and need.

3. Sales copy - you need content that motivates users to act and contact you for further information. The quality of your sales copy can have a significant effect on your lead generation results.

4. Targeted traffic - You will have higher sales conversion rates if your traffic is targeted.

On a regular basis I examine each of these areas and action improvements.

Improvement is ongoing

If the pace is not fast enough and your lead generating results are slim, you can easily get impatient and frustrated. It take consist effort over a period of time to improve the results you see online. Hiring someone with expertise in this area will help you cut the learning curve short. If your primary business is not internet marketing, you may want to do this.