sales and marketing

Leads – where are they and who are they?

Paul TagentLeave a comment

Just where do you start looking for leads?! How do you qualify them? How to quantify them? Try and use the Qx2 method – Qualify = ensure that they are in the target group to buy from you; Quantify = has their organisation the budget i.e is the suspect you are looking at an actual prospect?

Not these leads!
This all might sound a bit over the top and scientific, but there is no point in tapping a potential piece of business and allocating time and energy to the sales and marketing process if they do not follow the Qx2 rule.
So……where to start? Constructing a wish list is not difficult in the early stages of business. After all, you know your market, you read the trade press and/or papers etc. But remember, the list must be reasonably long so as to give yourself a broad target to aim at and to allow for the probable high volume of non effective contacts that you are bound to face on your first attempt. In my opinion quality is better than quantity, but you can never have too many leads.
From bitter experience the early fear of the prospecting process can quickly be replaced by the need for more leads as your initial list shrinks! Therefore, do not discount purchasing a list/database from a reputable company. In addition, many leads are available from directories like Free Index or UK Small Business Directory (are you listed on these directories?!). In addition, use networking (4Networking preferably!) and keep your eyes open as you travel around – good prospects are everywhere!

Once you have got your list, dedicate real quality time to your own marketing. Get your brand right; get your website right and get your marketing material right and there will be no stopping you!

Social Media Optimization

Paul TagentLeave a comment

Ranking high on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or Bing is not a paid endeavour, but rather a combination of factors, including:
• How long your Web site has existed.
• How much traffic your site has.
• How relevant your content is to the term being searched.
• How many relevant links you have, inbound or outbound.


To fully understand the wherewithal’s my suggestion is to firstly add analytics to your website. What is analytics? It is a code that your web developer can insert into the html template (before the ‘body’ tag) that allows you to actually monitor how traffic arrtives at your website. It also allows you to see what the browser did when on your site, what percentage of browsers pressed the dreaded ‘back’ button, what terms were used to get the there etc etc. Put simply, this free tool is essential in SEO and SEM.

More Traffic
Once the foundations have been laid (see a previous article), a well-crafted SEO campaign can really make a difference to driving the right sort of traffic, but more and more techniques are being developed every day. One of the emerging techniques is Social Media Optimization (SMO). SMO is a great way to amplify the strength of an SEO campaign. It uses social media to promote a site. And with a vast number of social media sites being developed, SMO is the future of SEO.

There are a number of sites that spring to mind when constructing SMO, but YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are the major players. These three sites are commonly used by browsers for search functions and there are already arguments that Facebook is fast becoming the number one source of referring traffic— even ahead of Google.There is already a foundation for social media, since almost everybody has social media profile or a YouTube account. The browsers are there, and it’s just a matter of turning them into clients.

If you need help in this key area of marketing, please get in touch with me by emailing paul@bathmarketingconsultancy.co.uk or by filling out the contact form on my website.