Every online business owner wants (and needs) more leads. Leads are people who have indicated that they want to learn more. They like what they see when they land on your blog, and they want to possibly become a customer. 

The good news is that lead generation can be automated, allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business without missing a beat!

When you automate lead generation, (if done well) you'll have an audience of people you can regularly talk to about your business.

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Automation enables your business to work like a well oiled machine, cranking out leads that convert to sales on a consistent basis.  

We will look at five basic functional areas (web traffic, the offer, lead generation, follow-up and sales) of a typical business process and how these areas can affect your ability to reach (and exceed) your goals.

Once you look at these areas and how they can help your business, we hope you will implement any missing components and review your process to see how it can be improved. 

Practices That Have a Negative Effect

When it comes to online marketing it's common to focus on one area and one area only... sales.   It's easy to skip over all the other important functions and start promoting products and services so that you can start earning commissions as soon as possible. 

We totally understand why this might happen and how a new business owner might think this is the way to go.

For example, established companies make online marketing look as easy as grabbing an image, slapping it on social media and directing traffic to a website to generate a sale. 

And in a lot of ways, that is the basic process.  But what most entrepreneurs don't see (unless they have received training) is that there are additional systems that work in the background to make a campaign work to turn leads into paying customers. 

These systems can make the difference between success and failure. 

How the Missing Systems Can Hurt Your Business

Without the missing systems, many entrepreneurs find disappointing sales figures. They may spin their wheels for a while before their business takes off. 

By selling first, they have placed the cart before the horse. They are hoping to quickly begin generating income, but their actions may result in the opposite effect.

If they don't have the supporting systems in place, they may look like an amateur to the people whose business they want to receive.

When people sense that they are working with an amateur, they either try taking advantage of it or they back away.

Sound Familiar?

If it sounds like you, think about the future and how you want it to look to potential customers.  If you're like most online marketers you want a business that will grow over time. 

You don't want to put more time in as time passes, the goal is to put in more time in the beginning to get your business off to a great start, and slowly over time, put in less effort to maintain your process and apply it to other products and services that you may be interested in promoting. 

Take a look at the video below to see how other areas work to support your business. There are a few steps that should occur before you start selling.

Adding these areas to your marketing process will help you work smarter, not harder.

Video: An Automated Sales Process

Why Do I Need an Automated Process?

Automation means that your process works on auto-pilot, without your assistance. You set it up, you test and check, and once you have it running the way you want, you let it run, checking on it and using your analytics to monitor progress.

When you have a process that works well, you can repeat it over and over. You can scale it up and apply it on not just one website or product, but you can apply it to many websites to create multiple streams of income.

For example, you can take the 5-step marketing process from the video and use it over and over again to create income from a number of different products and services.  

Once you learn the concepts, you can adapt them to your business and make them yours.  Once you have a process that works for your business, no one can take them away from you. And all you need for an additional stream of income is to implement them with a new product on a new website.

Automating any process takes you out of the equation and enables you to scale the process up or down as needed.  

It also enables you to earn while sleeping, vacationing, and handling other aspects of your business.  You're not tied to a computer, other than to monitor, test, tweak and analyze data from your sites.

If you're someone who loves home parties, or meeting with clients, you can do so without the pressure of "having" to meet with people face to face in order to make a living.

When you meet with someone or talk to them by phone, you can give them a link to your automated sales process that does all the talking and presenting for you.

You can handle objections, answer questions and send them to an article that explains everything.

Automating as much of this process as possible will help you reach your sales goals a lot faster. With automation, your sales process can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  

You don't have to be present for an automated system to work.  Prospects can sign up and go into your follow up system on auto-pilot.

This Sounds Complicated

Mapping out and automating your process is the easy part. It's easy because we can show you how to do it with free training resources that will walk you through it step by step.

You can also hire us on demand to automate your business process. We will handle details like setting up your lead generation and follow up systems so that you can focus on other aspects of your business.

Once you have mapped out your current marketing process, you'll quickly realize that manually trying to sell enough products and services to create life changing income is really the complicated part.

Take it from someone who tried to do this manually, and there is no comparison between doing it manually (the hard way) and using automation. 

Mapping Tools You May Be Familiar With

To map out your process, use a program like Gliffy, PowerPoint, or even a pen and paper.  Write down the steps you take to complete work in each of the areas outlined in the video shown above.  

If you're not currently working in these areas, then look at how you would like to handle these areas in the future.

Once you have written down a basic process, use the "SmartArt" Function in PowerPoint to map it out. We used PowerPoint to create the process flow in the video and the diagram above.  

Web Traffic - Hopefully you have plenty of this. Without a large number of people who can see and appreciate your offer, you won't be able to generate the income levels you're looking for. 

The great thing about traffic is that it can come from a number of different sources.  And the more, the better because if one source is no longer available or having problems, you'll have other sources that can carry the load. 

The Offer - The goal of any online marketer is to put together an offer (really several offers) that will appeal to readers and encourages them to make a purchase or become a lead. This applies whether you're promoting products, services or other business opportunities.

Crafting an offer requires some research to determine what your readers and prospects want. Understanding the challenges faced by your readers will help you craft offers that will compel them to take action.

Lead Generation - Once a potential customer or visitor to your blog or website decides that they like what you have to offer, and they provide their contact information (mainly their email address), they are giving you permission to follow up with them. At this point they become a lead.

This presents the business owner with an opportunity to follow up with the lead and convert them into a customer.

Follow up - This is a critical piece of your marketing process and it's where many business owners drop the ball.

Because many new business owners focus on sales, they don't see the absolute gold mine they leave behind when they fail to follow up.

Many business owners will try to handle this manually, or in an unorganized way. When this happens they become overwhelmed and lose track of their process. As their list gets larger, it becomes more unmanageable unless they implement a way to manage it.  

Follow up Mistakes We've All Made

When you follow up late, don't follow up at all, or when you follow up with information that makes no sense to your leads, you will find that they will dry up quickly. In other words, they will unsubscribe from your list. 

Once someone signs up to become a lead, the first thing they should receive (as soon as possible after they subscribe) is a brief, well crafted welcome letter that tells them who you are, what you do and how to contact you. In the welcome letter, you should also include a free resource that helps them to accomplish their goals. 

The welcome letter should be branded in your company colors, including your logo, and/or a picture of you, and any other information that will help them identify and make the connection with your company.  

This will help ensure that your emails will be opened more often.  Subsequent emails should educate and inform your leads so that they know enough about your products, services and company to become a customer.

Sales is the Ultimate Goal, But Not So Fast

Sales - This is the ultimate goal, but as you can see there are important processes and systems that you should have in place that will help you get to more of this part of the process. Without the previous steps, you may receive a few sales here and there. But you may struggle with consistent, reliable sales that will help you reach your goals. 

Some people will land on your page, and immediately make a sale. However this won't happen enough to give you life changing income. 

To make life changing, consistent income you need all of these steps in place.