I can't tell you the number of times I come across companies that are investing anywhere from $30 - $50 thousand for website redesign. When I ask them why they are doing this, they respond: "Well, our website is not generating enough leads (for us)". The thing is, they are missing the bigger picture. If a tree falls in the woods, does anyone hear it? You can create the world's greatest website, but if no one knows it exists, it will not make any difference. Internet marketing, much like real estate, is all about location, location, location.

Successful business owners know the value of location. They go to great lengths to find the right one. They look at demographics, competitor's locations, parking, and transportation routes and many other factors before choosing a location for their business. This is not only for retail businesses either: business to business companies need to consider these factors as well, otherwise they incur recruiting or logistical challenges. Unfortunately, many business owners do not have the same discipline in building a website. Instead, many companies slap a few web pages together and expect business to start flowing. Talk about a field of dreams!

Picking Your Location

For your website to deliver the desired return(on) investment, you need an effective lead generation program designed to attract visitors, convert them into leads or sales, and nurture those new leads and customers. In order to achieve this, you need to use proven tactics such as email marketing, search engine marketing and social media to drive qualified traffic to your website, which becomes the hub for your lead generation efforts.

To simplify what can be a potentially confusing concept, you can group online marketing into three broader tactics: 1) Get Found, 2)Convert and 3) Analyze.

Step 1. Get Found

The first step after developing a website is to attract new visitors. That means you have to get out of the woods and into the city, where potential customers can easily find you. This begins with creating andoptimizing remarkable content that answers the challenges that your prospects are facing. Blogging is a great way to quickly create fresh content that draws search engine visitors to your website. Other great tactics include:

• Social Media Marketing
  Don't ignore it. Social media is here to stay and your customers are looking for answers to their problems on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook etc today.
• Search Engine Optimization
  38 million people use search engines daily and 75-90% of Internet users begin their quest for information with search engines
• Email Marketing
  Integrating email marketing into an overall online marketing strategy adds another effective ROI opportunity. Emailing is one of the most popular online activities, along with searching: this fact is unlikely to change in the near future.

Step 2. Convert

After you drive visitors to your website, using the tactics above, the next step is to convert them into customers or qualified leads. That means you have to upgrade your online brochure to a lean, mean lead-generation machine through conversion marketing. You need to capture, manage and nurture leads.
Two key factors increase your conversion rates:

• Landing Page Optimization
  Qualified traffic is great, but acquiring customers is much better. A good landing page can convert 50% of its visitors into leads. A bad one less than 1%. Landing page optimization can make all the difference in the world to your return on investment.
• Lead Nurturing
  Sometimes a lead isn't ready to buy. You work hard to attract leads. Lead nurturing refers to building relationships with sales prospects, whether they fall in the 'ready to buy' or 'not ready to buy' category. Since over 50% of leads fall into this latter category, it's vital that you implement a proven lead nurturing strategy in order to maximize sales results.

Matt Filios, Chief Operating Officer at CodeBaby, points out the importance of making as much of a human connection via the web as possible. "Instead of screaming out at your website visitors about how wonderful you are, the key thing is to engage them in relevant conversation", points out Filios. "Optimizing the customer experience in order to achieve your lead generation objectives is a win-win proposition".

Step 3. Analyze

As you build your lead generation program, you will need analyze your results. By doing so, you will learn to make smart marketing investments that translate into results. An effective lead generation program is not a "set it and forget it" project. It's more like a treadmill, and the treadmill doesn't run by itself. You need to be constant improving it and analyzing the following areas:

• Overall traffic and conversions
• What marketing efforts generated leads and traffic
• Where your traffic and leads come from
• Which pages get the most traffic
• Your sales and marketing funnel
• How you stack up to your competitors

So, if you already have a website and you are wondering what comes next, just follow the simple lead generation steps above to generate new sales and business. It's important to remember, however, that lead generation is cyclical; though they do not necessarily happen in consecutive order. For example, you might need to build a relationship with a prospect before the prospect is willing to convert. Likewise, your website should be optimized for conversion before you invest in search marketing to attract new visitors.
Remember that when a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around, it is not heard; if your website is that tree, no one will know you exist, and all your efforts will be in vain.