Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Are You Generating Quality Leads


Marketing online has become a revolutionized concept these days. With each passing day new methods of marketing your product has to be applied. You might have employed best SEO techniques and your website is attracting heavy traffic. But there is no increase in sale of your product. If this your current situation, then you must wake up to new ways of marketing. Generating and following leads.

What is a lead?
A lead is nothing but contact information of a person. This is generated when a person agrees to submit this information to expect mails regarding a product or a service. All these forms for subscribing for a newsletter on a particular subject are generating leads. There are firms that sell these leads related to a particular industry to organizations with products in same field.

How can you generate a quality lead?
It is easy, there are many templates that let you collect user information on a website. You do not have to redesign your whole website, just add this code to relevant place and viola, you can have a form that collects user information, like email id. Use automated systems that store these lists to a database. This will lessen your need for man power.
A form must be as concise as required. A longer form may make a person to navigate away from your site. But a shorter form need not always guarantee super quality. You can offer to take information in steps taking care to provide option for the user to skip providing a particular information.
For example, you can have a form that basically asks for an email address and a purpose for choosing to get information. When a user clicks the submit button, you can offer to provide another form that asks for contact number if he or she is interested to be called for with hot deals related to product he or she is searching. Also provide option to skip this form if user is not interested.
So, if user has submitted his telephone number also, that means he or she needs this product pretty urgently and must be acted upon quickly. Now you know where to start from to clinch a deal. Just call him or her at the earliest. If this call is managed properly your company might end up in a deal with that lead person.

How can I market using these leads?
When you have a lead, that means a user is interested in a product, all you have to do is make a contact. Mail him or her with products and offers regarding his search. Remember a form must be able to collect information about what a user is in need of. For example, if you are a travel agency, then your form must have options like travel accommodation cost query, travel package query, etc. Leave an option for the user to specify any new option unavailable in your drop down list. Next time, you can add this option in your drop down list of this form. This way, you can develop your website and also generate quality leads.
When you have these details with your organizations, next step is to make sure that this probable client is really in need of this service. Mail him or her with promotional offers in asked category and also ask him to provide a contact information for further assistance. This way of double checking will ensure that these leads are quality one, that is each person contacted is a probable client in near future.

Be better organized to turn every lead into a sale. That is you have to update your database storing these lists as and when a client status changes. For example, a lead has turned to a client and sale has materialized, then you need not delete his or her contact information, but change his status to a client and mail him of her with general offers available with your firm from time to time. This list must be separate from the lists where a lead has not yet turned into a client. Because a lead must be mailed with mails focused on their interests only.
If you want to know about different type of leads and ways to attain and use them. Go to myBukisa where you can find many knowledgeable articles related to online marketing.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

IT Maintenance Outsourcing various approaches


IT maintenance Maintenance management system consists of six stages. Identification of work, Planning required to carry out the work, scheduling to be done for the same, Execution of it, recording the response, analyzing the response. All these stages form a cyle for any maintenance system. The analyzed result is again considered whenever new work is identified. Hence all these stages are linked. Generally lots of effort is put in the planning, scheduling and execution of work, as it is very important for the benefit of the organization. Sometimes, in this process the response analysis takes a back seat. Many a company, have had to face the rough weather for not considering the response for a particular product launched by them. Outsourcing comes in handy for such work. Deciding on which part of the maintenance to be outsourced is the crucial part of it.

How to plan outsourcing for maintenance?
There are various types of approach to decide on the work to be outsourced. In case of a shutdown of work because of workers, execution of the work can be outsourced. One can outsource even the planning, scheduling, execution, result recording to other organizations. In short the contractor or the organization has the freedom to plan and schedule the work at his or its own pace.

The common trend now is to outsource the two stages where in, the product reviews are recorded and then the reviews are analyzed for submission to identify new work. This is called Customer support. All the complaints or suggestions made about the product are recorded and analyzed to give shape to better products.

One can outsource all the stages of maintenance to other organization thus giving total control over the job identification and techniques for development of the product as well.
The job to be outsourced must be decided considering the pros and cons and hence the outcomes of giving control to the contractor or the other organization.

Process in outsourcing Once the job to be outsourced is identified, next comes inviting tenders. Any outsourcing done must have proper tendering. Meaning tenders must be invited first, citing the specifications of the product, type of work, the minimum amount payable, other factors related to the work. Specifying the requirements is the key to achieving proper response to the tender.

Once an organization's tender is selected, proper payment mode must be decided upon by both the parties. Pricing plan must be selected after considering the sequences of each plan, agreeable to both the organizations.

The responsibilities and limitations of the organization taking the contract must be clearly mentioned and agreed upon. i.e if the organization taking up contract work has to follow a set of guidelines, then this must be provided at the tendering stage itself. The guidelines help in decision making of the organization taking up contract work.

Finally the organizations must work towards the common final goal, by co operating with each other on various issues, thereby avoiding dissatisfaction in any of the organization.

Search Engine Optimization-Techniques


A website is a compulsion now a days for any business company or firm. Opportunities come clicking their way into the site for want of a product or service. The products offered must be properly advertised to the internet users. Generally people search for any product or service in any search tool bar, and the first top results are explored. A site is listed in the result if the keyword typed in the search bar is linked to it. One of the optimization techniques employed for increasing your site visibility is using the linked keywords. When a visitor clicks on the keyword, the browser will be directed to your site.

Linking are of two different ways. Internal linking where in, the keyword in a page of the site can link to another page in the same site. Creating pointed links from other sites to your own site needs to be done in affiliation of the other site. Like for example an advertisement on a different site can have links pointing to your site for certain keywords. Having more links is always advantageous. The search engine calculates the ranking of a particular site taking into consideration of all above factors. Ranking of a site, decides the place in the result listings. Generally users do not bother to see the listings after the first page. Hence it is very important for one's site link to appear in first page of the listings.

There are a certain guidelines to effectively use linking in your own site. The keywords used for linking must not be repeated. This is considered as spam by the search engine. Same meaning words can be used as links. The famous search engine Google allows 100 such links in a page. Keywords must be chosen with proper care.

One can link the footer to important pages of the site. There are many search engine optimization experts, who are well versed with the techniques and working of the search engine. Their insight of the engine related algorithms for ranking help in deciding on the strategies to be employed.

Reverse Marketing Process - Stages


The eleven phases invoved in the Reverse mrketing process can be categorised into four stages.

The stage one needs analysing skills and selection of a strategy for purchase. This analysis results help in deciding on the option of marketing startegy to choose from. This requires in detail research of the firms's developments and its stand in supply markets. A tactic must be devised to retain such position in the market. Potential and current suppliers are to be evaluated to formulate required plan for the fullfilment of current and desired activities. The suppliers with similar characteristics must be grouped together and the one that suits the best for the needs of the firm must be chosen.

The next phase is to contrive on the reverse marketing strategies to be applied. The objectives of the marketing strategy choosen must be identified and efforts must tbe put into realizing the short term results. Circumstances that require a certain decision to be altered, must be recognised and acted upon swiftly. A good support system has to be developed to focus on the cross functional communications.
The third stage is the action part. The strategies formulated must be put into action. This requires segragation of the relevant decision makers at each phase and decide upon the decision making powers of each department. A custom approach must be used to sell through this strategy. The contract form developed must highlight on the beneficial points of the deal to the supplier. Choosing a proper person to lead the team from the project initiation process through continued commitment towards it.
The final stage is to maintain the healthy relation with the customer. Evaluation must be done with regards to the satisfaction level. Providing technical assistance is a good way of maintaining the relationship. Performance evaluation must be done as agreed upon by both the parties.

Refer to Detailed Paper on Reverse marketing by Biemans and Maryse for more information