How we Harnessed the Internet to Create an Automatic
pre-qualified Lead Generation System for our Network Marketing Business

We have worked with the Grant's to adapt their systems and tools and apply them to our successful network marketing business . We've packed in details of absolutely everything we did - the steps we followed, the resources we used, the names and contact details of people who have helped us along the way, and copies of the tools we've developed.

Before we go any further I just want to state what this web site “is” and “is not”....

This website is not to recruit anyone into any Network Marketing Organisation.

This website is to help new and existing Network Marketers to learn how we generate automatic prequalified leads over the internet for our network marketing business. All these tips and techniques can be adapted by you to build your downline in your network market organisation. Once you have your prequalified leads you should use the training and systems taught by your own network marketing company to enlist the prospects into your business. Your company will have its own methods for converting leads to distributors/associates

There are eight basic steps to building one of these websites

If you are looking for a specific part of the process, simply click on the appropriate step below. Otherwise, continue reading after this list for all of the detail and links to resources you will need.

The 8 steps to building a lead generation website are:

Now you are ready to call your prospects to develop rapport, ask question and welcome them aboard. Then start on the next of many marketing campaigns – repeat steps 1 to 8 and run in parallel with existing campaigns.

Step One — Decide on the type of Free Report you want to implement for the first campaign – A “Product Based” free report or “Business Opportunity” free report

The long term aim is to have both the Product Based and the Business Opportunity Free Report models running side by side but you have to start with either one or the other. Look at the Pros and Cons for each model below and implement the one that better fits your short term financial goals and your network marketing structure. Remember both these models use the “Free Report” as their basis so don’t get too hung up on the decision, the important thing is to start. The sooner you start the quicker your stream of “warm leads” will be in your email marketing funnel. 

The Product Model

Advantages

• You start getting income quickly as you are selling product
• It is very simple to get product related topics for your free reports

Disadvantages

• You may need to build your site so it is able to sell items, and accept payments. You may also need to take on the task of packaging and dispatching the goods
• There are more steps in the cycle before you introduce the prospect to the business side of the network marketing. All network marketers know that happy customers will often convert to distributors, so there an upside.

Business Opportunity Model

Advantages

• Easier site set up(no selling)
• Prospects are targeted as directly interested in Business Opportunities, a great message to market match to make prequalifying prospects easier.

Disadvantages

• Harder to get niche topics for  your “Free Reports”

Depending on your network marketing company’s structure I normally recommend setting up the “Business Opportunity” free report first as it is quicker to get something up and going.  Set up your website to handle the Product sales later while adding more “Business Opportunity” model campaigns and fine tuning your existing campaigns.

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Step two—Identify a potential topic for your “Free Report”

Your goal is to find a topic that lots of people are looking for, and where people “want or must have” (rather than “need”) the product or opportunity.

You also want a “niche”, ie a topic which is not too general. For example, “health” is far too general, but “anti oxidants and the immune system” is very specific.  The words, “Business Opportunity” are far too general but a headline “How I made 100,000 a year from home in my pajamas” may be what you need to get the prospects to your free report.

Your network marketing company will have heaps of material that you can use, especially if you start with your company's flagship product. Concentrate on the prospect and the benefit to them, “what’s in it for them” is the driver you need to remember.

Tip – Don’t contemplate a topic that consists of telling the prospect

• how good you are
• how good your product is
• how wonderful your company is
• How good your business model is

Your prospect is not interested. If you do this you will bore them and lose their attention . You need to sieze your prospects attention and keep their attention. The way to do this is to concentrate on the benefits to the prospect, and what is in it for them.

The internet is one of the quickest and most accurate ways of seeing what the greater market “wants with a passion”.

The tool we use to determine how popular ideas are is www.keyworddiscovery.com. We also use www.goodkeywords.com and www.alexa.com. There are a lot of free and paid utilities available but the ground rules keep changing i.e our previous tool of preference was www.pixelfast.com/overture, and it has been terminated by Yahoo(in our membership site eclasses we cover this in detail).

Once you have come up with some ideas, search for the key words you think people interested in a topic might look for. You are looking for words or phrases which total more than 10,000 hits per month on pixelfast for your topic. For example if you type in “relationships” you get over 950,000 hits per month. As you can see this is far too general, you need to look for a niche or an angle. Building on the “relationships” example you could use “Tips for building relationships with prospects” as an angle especially if you were targeting existing network marketers.

Next do a search on Google for the same words. You are looking for:

• The number of websites on the topic
• Who else is offering similar information on this topic
• Is it for “free” or are people “paying”
• Existing google ads.
• You don’t want a topic where someone is already using a good sales letter and selling or giving away information on the internet.
• If you are using Google Adwords for your marketing you don’t want to compete with heaps of ads – otherwise you end up paying too much per click

The way you can compete here is to use the Free Report topic in a marketing media other than the internet.

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Step three—Decide which marketing strategy to use for your first campaign

The express purpose of “Free Report” marketing campaign is to attract the interest of the prospect and get them to register their name and email address on your website to receive the “Free Report” – It is as simple as that.

There are a large number of Marketing strategies and they all have a place in your arsenal but you have to select one to start with.Some examples of marketing strategies include :-

• Fax broadcast
• Voicemail broadcast
• Cold Calling – No we don’t want to do this
• Email Lists
• Mail Lists
• Small Adds in Media
• Flyers
• Internet “Ads”
• Infomercials
• Interviews
• Running Seminars/Presentations
• Press releases
• Etc Etc

I would recommend something inexpensive for your first campaign like a small ad in a local paper or a google adwords campaign if you can find a good niche topic with low cost per click.

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Step four—Build your website

For the Product Model you will need a process to sell and collect payment

Pages you need are:-

• Landing Page – to collect prospect's name and email address so you can in turn send the “free report” and start the email funnel drip feeding information to the prospect.

• Autoresponder - We use Aweber as our autoresponder and there are many other good ones like GetResponse and 123Response . What you want is an autoresponder that can handle many email contact lists for many marketing campaigns each with its own set of emails. The more and varied marketing campaigns you have on the go, the more people you will have in your funnel at any one time wanting to join your MLM business.

• Sales Page (Product Model only) This contains your sales letter which should be matched to your marketing campaign. There should also be a checkout system for prospects to buy the product, so you will need a payment system like PayPal, VeriSign, 2CO,ClickBank etc.

• A Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page. You should start with some basic questions, such as:

• Can I buy the product? If so, How?
• I don’t have a credit card – how else can I pay for the product?
• How do I know that what you’re saying is true?
• How secure is your payment method?
• You can then add other questions as people email you with their queries.

• Home Page – Make it simple at first and concentrate on getting your first marketing campaign up and going. There are many features you can add later to make your site a more powerful marketing tool, such as forums, blogs and other SEO tools.

• Contacts -“contact us” page, with a form they can submit their questions. It should have boxes for their email address, name, and question or comment.

There should be links to your other web pages and other sites – but be aware that this strategy has the potential risk of confusing the prospect and you may lose them unless you retain control. i.e. on my landing page I never put any links, only a box to accept the prospect’s name and email. i.e. I make it clean and simple. I do not give the prospect any other options, other than to give their name and email or "back out".

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Here are the steps to building the website:

• Create each of your pages in MS Word. Once you are happy with the content, do a “save as”, and save them as webpages.
• Edit the look of your webpages.
• The software we use for this is Dreamweaver, from www.macromedia.com
• Front Page from Microsoft is another Web Page editor.
• There are a number of Public domain and shareware editors.
• Upload the finished page to the web via ftp.

You can make your website look really professional by seeking professional help:

• Have a good template and graphics, www.youreasywebsolutions.com is really good value for doing this, and we always find that sales go up when we change the look of our sites to being more professional.
• Add audio or video for real impact. Instant audio / video generator is the software we use for this. You can get it at www.instantvideogenerator.com

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Step Five — Write your Ad, Landing Page, Free Report and marketing Emails.

Copywriting Skills - Mastering this skill will provide the greatest benefit to you and your network marketing business. You can learn the skill yourself or get someone else to do it. There are many books and programs on the market that can help. Some are listed below.

There are set formulas to follow for good copywriting. I think this is the most important skill to learn as a network marketer, and that's why I have four eclasses on copywriting skills in my membership program. Basically you need to include the following.

• Problem—what are the prospect/buyer’s biggest fears, frustrations and needs?
• Aggravate—how does the problem get worse if they don’t do anything about it?
• Solve—what can you do to help?
• Prove—substantiate your claim with testimonials, research, etc, and give a money back guarantee
• Call to action—ask them to buy and make a special offer.

With each of the following elements you can see the "call to action":-

• The Ad – the “call to action” is to get the prospect to your Web Site’s Landing Page
• Your Landing Page - the “call to action” is to get the prospect to leave their name and email address only.
• The “Free Report” is where you could begin asking to buy (product model) or make a special offer, offer to send more information. Make sure your free report is of value and benefit to the prospect, and ful of good content.
• Marketing Emails – the marketing emails will be coming from an autoresponder. The first is to thank the prospect for collecting the “free report” hoping that it will be of value. This is the first in a series you will send the prospect to build trust and a relationship as you, step by step, move to prequalify the lead and each offers a "call to action". 

There are plenty of examples around that follow this formula. There are also plenty of training programs or materials that can help you with your copywriting technique. Some of them come with vouchers which enable you to get feedback on what you’ve written. The training programs that we think are the best are:

• Mal Emery's Gold Pack from www.malemery.com
• Yanik Silver’s Copywriting Pack, the Ultimate "at-Home" Internet Copywriting Workshop from www.surefiremarketing.com
• Brett McFall’s AdPack from www.brettmcfall.com

The other thing you need is a good headline. "Headline Generator" is software that is an easy, automated way to generate hundreds of headlines in just 5-10 minutes. You can get it from www.headline-creator-pro.com

The “Free Report”

If the topic looks like a “goer”, you need to develop the “report”. You can either write it yourself, or get someone else to write it.

If the topic is something you know a lot about, it will be cheaper to write it yourself.

Your network market company will have volumes of data that you could use as a guide.

TIPS for the “Free Report”

The “Free Report” must have good information content, and be interesting. It  can also subtly contain the elements of a sales letter (see Writing the  Ad, Landing Page , Free Report)
Remember the purpose of the free report is to give the prospect good information in a non threatening way, so make the report interesting and simple to get . i.e.

• They only need to register their name and email address.
• They do not have to talk with anyone.
• The website’s landing page builds the prospect’s awareness of “you” and begins the relationship and trust building.
• The email funnel and later your phone calls when the “lead” becomes qualified will continue the relationship and trust building with the prospect.
• The entire process can be duplicated, which is what every network marketer wants.

The Product Model – use the benefit your product provides as the basis for your Free Report. Your Free Report should describe a problem that your product solves.

The Landing Page

The purpose of the Landing Zone, and the only purpose, is to collect the prospects’ Name and  Email address – you have not earned the right to begin try to recruit or sell anything at this stage. So now is not the time to start trying.

You should add a photo and audio of yourself thanking the prospect for coming to your site and hoping they will get value from the “Free Report” as this increases the building of trust and your relationship with the prospect and makes it personal too. People love to see a real live person is behind the web page.

Set up a database to collect the prospects names and addresses. There a few ways to get the emails

1.....You can get the website to send the email directly to your email in Outlook. This is the cheapest option but it does not automatically build a database or do the automatic email control, you have to do this manually.

2.....You can use a database program like aweber to collect the responses and build the database , and do the email automatic response marketing.(autoresponder)

Email Marketing Funnel

The email marketing is where you are going to be doing the most work and changes long term as you adapt the system for you and your MLM company.

You need to have a series of emails in the autoresponder ready to go as you run your first Free Report marketing campaign.

The emails should all contain good content and contain all the elements of emotional marketing sales letters. Remember the elements above under "copywriting".

We have 9 emails in our funnel that automatically go out to the prospect at set intervals and we use Aweber as our autoresponder but there are many other good ones like GetResponse and 123Response. What you want is an autoresponder that can handle many email contact lists for many marketing campaigns, each campaign with its own set of emails. The more marketing campaigns you have on the go, the more people you will have wanting to join your MLM business.

The first email should be to thank the prospect for going to your site and getting your free report. Mention that you hope it will help the prospect like it has helped you.  Offer them your email address in case they have any questions. Ask for feed back on the content, what did they like, what didn’t they like.

The next series of emails should be to slowly introduce your prospect to your MLM Business Opportunity by "drip feeding" them with information. Take it slowly. Don’t overload them with a ton of prospecting information. Space the emails so you do not overwhelm the prospect. This is very different from what most network marketing companies teach. (We have a lot more on this subject in our membership eclasses.)

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Step Six— Test the site - Make sure that the Advert, Landing Page, Free report and emails are all flow and are matched for this campaign

The system is now ready for testing. It is a must that you test.

The Ad

• Read the ad – does it make sense ?
• If ad is electronic (email or google adword) does it link to the Landing Page ?
• If the ad is print media based is the Landing Page address correct and unambiguous ? If you have an incorrect address for your site, or an address that the propspect can't understand, you have wasted your money on the ad.

Landing Page

• In your browser - Type in the address - does it link to the Landing Page?
• Read the page does it make sense , does it flow ?
• Is it simple to put in your name and address ?
• Put in your name and email
• Did you get a return , “thank you” email with “free report” ?
• Does the email make sense ?
• Is the Report the right one , does it make sense ?
• Is your tester's name and email in the database ?

The Email Funnel and Autoresponder

• check that you have your name and email in the correct marketing list
• check that you are getting the emails at the right frequency
• check that you are getting the emails in the right order

If you have a Product Model – make sure you can purchase and collect monies and produce orders – Get your friends to put some transactions through to make sure it works and reimburse them.

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Step Seven —Monitor and fine-tune to maximize results

Activate your sales campaign by going to Google adwords and reactivating your ads or placing your Ad in the Local paper.

Google campaign is generally up and running in under 30 minutes , the Paper will take longer. You can check the adwords are working by doing a Google search on one of your key words, and clicking on the ad. It should go straight to your Landing Page.

Every day for the first few weeks (or until the campaign is consistently getting prospects to register their name and email) you need to monitor the number of registrations, and understand how this campaign is going.

If you have an electronic campaign you can do a lot of fine tuning quickly. The print media turn around is much slower

• Make some changes to your ad
• Measure the impact of the change
• Make changes to your Free Report
• If you are using Google Adwords monitor your budget, as your ad may be stopped (if it hits your budget) before your market is “awake”.

If you are making changes, it’s important to change only one thing at a time, so you can see what’s working.

We found that Perry Marshall’s “Definitive Guide to Google Adwords” improved our productivity enormously for electronic ads. Go to www.PerryMarshall.com for his manual.

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Step Eight – Use the email funnel to take the prospect to the next step. Sell the Product / Convert the prospect into a Customer or Associate.

Your autoresponder will drip feed information to your prospect. The emails should all contain good content and contain all the elements of emotional marketing sales letters. The elements are listed above in the copywriting section.

Remember the emails must build trust with the prospect and it may take 7 or 8 contacts before the prospect is ready to buy or want more information from you.

Each of the email steps should be designed to pre-qualify your prospects. You should monitor when the prospect has accessed each bit of information so you know when it is time to approach them as a prequalified lead. Move in when you sense they want more information from you!

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Next steps

Start on the next of many campaigns – repeat steps 1 to 8 and run in parallel with existing campaigns

By this time you should be experienced and you can repeat the entire process with another Business Opportunity or Product based Free Report

You should aim to slowly build a large number of varying marketing campaigns and continue to run all the campaigns. The only reason to stop a campaign is that it is not giving results (after fine tuning) or it is costing more than the leads are worth to you (and you can’t lower the cost). That way you will always have your marketing funnel full and you will soon work out from your testing and measurement which are giving you the best results in terms of leads , sales of product , affiliate income etc.

If you follow these steps, in 10 weeks you should have prequalified leads coming in, starting to fill that marketing funnel, wanting you to ring them so they can find your more about your business. In our eclasses we will start working though ways of increasing the numbers of leads and decreasing the cost per lead. Like any successful endeavour this will take time, effort and perservance.

Good luck!

While we are happy to receive email queries, we don't guarantee that we will get back to you immediately, but we will get back to you within 48 hours. We have set up an FAQ page with answers to the most common queries, so please check the FAQ page at this site.

Kind regards