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One of the best ways to help people find you is using the Internet. In fact most of today’s successful businesses are using the Internet in one way or another.

A common misconception is that you put up a website, and then people will find it. Nothing could be further from the truth. Websites with a lot of visitors get that way by advertising.

It’s also not true that you need your own website to take advantage of the Internet for finding new sales leads. As you will see you can do a lot of things using services and websites that are already out there.

Let’s take a look at some of my favorite Internet based lead generation techniques.

Banner Advertising

This is what most people think of when they think of Internet advertising. You create some sort of graphics banner advertisement, and then pay to have people put it on their websites. Although this can work for some companies and circumstances I consider it to be one of the least effective Internet advertising strategies around.

Online Newsletter Advertising

Like magazines, online newsletters have very wide distributions and can be very effective places to advertise. Like magazines they are read by a group of people interested in a specific topic. You can often advertise in them for a fraction of the cost of advertising in a traditional magazine. More and more people are subscribing to online newsletters every day.

If you want to find online magazines in your market niche, just type your market niche into Google along with the word “magazine”, “ezine” or “newsletter”

Online Directories

Just like the big yellow pages beside your telephone, there are hundreds of directories on the Internet for everything you can imagine. Just go to a search engine, like google.com and search for the product or service you offer and go through the search results. Many of them will be directories of similar products and services. The good ones make it easy to contact them to add your website or advertisement.

Search Engines

Search engines are great way to get traffic. The challenge is to get your website far enough up the search engine rankings to get visibility. Most people never search beyond the first page of search engine results for things.

The good news is that there things you can do to improve your search engine ranking and a lot of companies out there that specialize in search engine optimization (SEO). Their job is to get you near the top of your chosen topic. Make sure you choose a reputable company, and make your payment terms based on the results.

Direct e-Mail

Direct email is just like direct mail, but without the mailing charges. Like direct mail, you need to do some preliminary lead generation before you can use direct email (so you know who to email to).

In email marketing it is important that people first give you permission to email them. In most western countries legislation prevents us from just spamming people with a lot of unrequested emails, but if you can get people to subscribe to a newsletter or website that interests them, then you can get their permission to send them periodic emails with special offers, etc.

A lot of software companies ask for permission to send you information and updates when you register the software. They are essentially asking for permission to direct email market to you as new things become available. If you are interested in the topic, then these messages are welcome news.

Online Press Releases

Just like traditional press releases, there are sites on the internet that publish electronic press releases. Unlike traditional press releases, the resulting press release often stays posted for years. The web service publishes your press release, and submits it to hundreds of other press release sites for publication. This type of press release can be seen by hundreds or even thousands of publishers.

Many people publishing on-line magazines, and even traditional paper magazines are looking for content to put into their publications, but the real benefit of this type of press release is that it allows people to find out about you on the internet using web searches. This is very important since more and more people are using the internet to make their buying decisions every day.

When submitting press releases it is very important to remember to include your name, company name and how to contact you. If people can’t contact you after finding your press release then the press release has been wasted.

Some of my favorite general purpose online press release sites are: prweb.com, newswiretoday.com, and pr-inside.com

On-line Articles

Similar to traditional articles, writing articles for the internet is a great advertising method. Online articles can get picked up by hundreds of websites looking for relevant content to add to their pages. This exposure lets you be found using on-line searches. Many of the web sites that pick up your story will have extensive web-traffic generating strategies to get people to their websites. When you submit your articles on-line you get to enjoy the benefit of their efforts.

When writing articles for the Internet, there are a few things to keep in mind. First of all, don’t write articles that read like sales letters. Make the purpose of your article to inform people, not to sell them anything. If people like what they learned they will come to you for more information. The second thing is that when you submit an article online you will also be asked to supply a short biography, or bio, about yourself. This is where you are allowed to put your name, the name of your company, and your website or your email address. If you forget to include this information in your bio, the article will be of no value to you.

A few of my favorite article submission sites are: articlecity.com, submityourarticles.com and goarticles.com

Summary

There are a lot of ways to use the internet to generate new sales leads. This is a great way to get your name out there in front of a very large number of people. You don’t have to be an internet genius, or even have your own website to enjoy the benefits of internet marketing.

In upcoming and final part of this series we will turn our focus from finding new prospects to turning them into paying customers.