The short answer to the question, Is online marketing a silver bullet? is No.  In this social media article, I explain that not everyone is online, so online marketing isn’t ofr everyone. Look, if you are Coke or McDonald’s, and you are trying to grab the youth, then, yeah, you need a snazzy online marketing campaign. Infomercials still work. Ask Billy Mays or Ron Popeil or Magic Jack.

Many companies (see this article) can’t even wrap their heads around social media. Others think it will cost way too much to afford. Still others will coast with what they are currently doing.

In this economy, retaining clients is paramount. Deeper connections would help. That can be done with social media.

Next, it isn’t so much marketing as lead generation and sales. On a case by case basis social media may work for sales or lead generation. Try to remember that much of the I-made-$4000-today-on-twitter comes from affiliate marketers who don’t provide a service or a product, but test marketing widgets to game the system every day. As I was explaining to a prospective client today, he was getting sales from Search marketing (SEO or SEM) due to organic search results and WOM (word of mouth) was working, but he wanted to ramp up the sales five fold.  Online marketing won’t help that to his target. Lead generation and old fashioned sales would.

You have to have a Marketing Plan (and Calendar) which includes not just strategy and message but delivery platform and measurement. Marketing takes time too. It isn’t a switch or spiget you turn on and off.  It depends on what you are marketing (selling) and to who.  Use the correct tool — and fish where the fish are.

This is one model of the lead generation funnel from the blog of Brian Carroll, CEO of InTouch. The thing to take away from this is that it takes many inputs in your overall Marketing Plan to get enough lead generation going for your sales teams.

You need a combination of many elements – PR, Advertising, Website, SEO, SEM, Direct Mail, trade shows, events, networking, webinars, dialing, and door knocking. How many of these tools are you using to meet your Sales Plan?

No one likes the Planning, but it is an important part of your success. Without planning, how do you make certain that you are doing enough (especially in today’s economy) to generate enough leads?

We’ll be back with more Lead Generation ideas.

The number one question I get asked: How does one increase their leads effectively?

It’s a great question. One part of my answer is What is your Sales Plan? Who are you targeting? What is your USP, the one thing that Differentiates your product from your competitor?

This picture (from Sales Engine Internat’l) describes how dialing for dollars and cold calling for lead generation is being replaced with web search (or SEM, search engine marketing like Google Adwords). Sales Engine says that “95% of all B2B sales begin with a web search”. I don’t know if I believe that.

When you replace cold calling and door knocking, your web marketing plan better be bullet-proof. And it cannot be static. Web marketing requires constant tweaking.

We’ll be back with more Lead Generation tips.