Roast My Idea - Lead Generation Business

[tafy]

Well you can take the booking and tell the company to contact the customer asap to arrange details. If there is any problems you can always refund the customer

 

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[SmoothFranko]

I don't know why I didn't realise sooner but It only occured to me a few days ago that even though I'm not competing directly with IT businesses for services I am competing for web traffic. So today I launched an AdWord campaign.

I currently have 5 ad groups running (hopfully) following @Andy Black 's AdWord advice.
My Ad as it appears on Google.

 

[CoolAV8R]

I don't know why I didn't realise sooner but It only occured to me a few days ago that even though I'm not competing directly with IT businesses for services I am competing for web traffic. So today I launched an AdWord campaign.

I currently have 5 ad groups running (hopfully) following @Andy Black 's AdWord advice.
My Ad as it appears on Google.

Hey Smooth...Are you running at least two ads per ad group?

If I may ask, where are you sending traffic to?

 

[Andy Black]

Generate a lead.

Contact businesses who can fulfil the lead and ask them if they can deal with it.

Start a relationship with that business and see where it goes.

I'm maybe only 1 or 2 steps ahead, or arguably in the same place. So take my thoughts with a pinch of salt.



IMHO (In My Humble Opinion):

• You need to know if you can generate leads. (The best way to do so is to generate some.)
  
  
• You need to know how much it will cost you to generate leads. (Again, the best way is to generate some.)
  
  
• You could price the leads based on what your cost is to generate them. (You could be leaving money on the table of course.)
  
  
• It would be nice to find out the ticket value of the leads you're generating. (So you can price them based on their value to the merchants, rather than based on your cost.)
  
  
• Talk to the merchants. I think you should start by developing a very good relationship with at least one of them. If you can get to work with one very closely, you'll be able to determine the value of the leads. They will tell you what type of lead they want more of, and what they want less of. Ideally they will tell you how much they quote for each lead (that's definitely possible).
  
  
• Will there be a mixture of leads from corporate and consumers? What's the difference in average-order-value (AOV) and average life-time-value (LTV) between corporate and consumer? Which do they prefer (different merchants might have different preferences)?
  
  
• What you class as a lead (a call or a form fill), the merchant might just see as an enquiry. Maybe you're not selling leads per se. Go into it with an open mind.
  
  
• Getting a conversation with merchants is easier if you actually have a lead when you speak to them. I'm definitely finding it best to generate leads first and then talk to merchants.
  
  
• It looks like you're building a brand in the vertical. I like this. My learnings so far is that consumers will interact with that brand as if you're a player in the vertical, and so will merchants if you do it right. This has resulted in us interviewing the merchants, rather than them seeing us as a lead generation business, or marketing agency.

TL;DR

Just start. Generate leads. Talk to merchants. Build relationships. See where it takes you.

HTH

I'm not the only person saying this. Check out @MustImprove's post here.

 

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[Alex W.]

How about a marketplace in which businesses bid for a list of high-converting leads?

Just setup an auction site, and direct merchants to it.

Post a list of "qualified leads" in a specific vertical, set a starting bid & let the auction begin.

Of course it'd be pretty difficult to get going, as you're essentially creating a new market. You'd need a decent # of merchants participating for it to work. That said, I bet there are creative ways to attract merchants to such a site (free bids, new account credit, free leads, etc...)

Hell, maybe even allow other lead-gen'ers (for lack of a better term) to post offers. Just act as an intermediary (and take a commission, of course).

Surely this has been attempted before?

If not... Andy, how 'bout a partnership

Just thinking aloud. Sorry if it's a derail.

 

[Alex W.]

How about a marketplace in which businesses bid for a list of high-converting leads?

Just setup an auction site, and direct merchants to it.

Post a list of "qualified leads" in a specific vertical, set a starting bid & let the auction begin.

Of course it'd be pretty difficult to get going, as you're essentially creating a new market. You'd need a decent # of merchants participating for it to work. That said, I bet there are creative ways to attract merchants to such a site (free bids, new account credit, free leads, etc...)

Hell, maybe even allow other lead-gen'ers (for lack of a better term) to post offers. Just act as an intermediary (and take a commission, of course).

Surely this has been attempted before?

If not... Andy, how 'bout a partnership

Just thinking aloud. Sorry if it's a derail.

Looking into both centralized & decentralized lead marketplaces now... not much out there.

Found LeadPoint, which is a market that matches lead buyer/sellers. In reality, though, it looks a bit like list buying (they offer "core" and "value" leads, which are only recommended for buyers with experienced sales teams). Their "premium" leads are rare, according to their site.

So... a market for only premium, high converting, leads could be well received (and command a premium price).

I'll move this to another thread if I decide to pursue it any further.

Good luck with your venture @SmoothFranko

 

[Ben Doyle]

@SmoothFranko

Are you running this on a Wordpress site?

If so you can install a plugin called Contact Form DB (it's free!) this records all the contact form submissions which you can download as a CSV file so you can email that to your clients daily/twice daily.

Easy as that really!

Also, someone mentioned that selling the leads could be difficult, the easiest way to get around this is to give your leads away for FREE for 14/30 days. Then if a company is making money from those leads they will gladly pay you for them.

 

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[Andy Black]

@SmoothFranko

Are you running this on a Wordpress site?

If so you can install a plugin called Contact Form DB (it's free!) this records all the contact form submissions which you can download as a CSV file so you can email that to your clients daily/twice daily.

Easy as that really!

Also, someone mentioned that selling the leads could be difficult, the easiest way to get around this is to give your leads away for FREE for 14/30 days. Then if a company is making money from those leads they will gladly pay you for them.

Agreed.

1) Free leads is an easy sell. Get them to provide feedback on the leads "so we can generate better leads for you". Use that info to learn more about the value of different types of leads you're driving.

2) Move the needle. Then turn it off. If you were providing value then you'll find out soon enough.

 

[Andy Black]

Bump.

A few recent threads talking about lead gen. Some good input in this thread.

 

[Scot]

Bump.

A few recent threads talking about lead gen. Some good input in this thread.

It's always interesting because when people read the book they go "MJ made his money from Lead Gen" and they start thinking about ways to lead gen.

There are so many great idea out there that don't factor in lead gen!

 

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[Andy Black]

It's always interesting because when people read the book they go "MJ made his money from Lead Gen" and they start thinking about ways to lead gen.

There are so many great idea out there that don't factor in lead gen!

True. I also think we're all in the lead gen business, and that the internet is just one big lead generation machine...

 

[UncommonWay]

So I'm not sure if no one has any advice because my post is in the wrong place or because I'm talking out of my a$$ and have screwed up lead generation completely, SO I created this model to hopefully explain how I think the business would operate.

As you can see here Step 3 is what I am struggling with, as of yet I have not come up with a means of managing and distributing the leads to prospective businesses. Has anyone on this forum had experiance with SELLING leads? I'm not talking about making leads for a specific client I'm talking about a "Hey I have customers who need service! Who wants em? first is first served kinda thing?

There are several online "gurus" who teach about lead gen. One of them bases his model on routing all leads through a call-forwarding service. When somebody calls the phone number on the lead gen landing page, his system automatically does a "round-robin" call routing in which the phone call is forwarded to one of several companies.

Or, for faster service, his call tracking platform can ring several companies at the same time, and the one that picks up first gets the lead.

He tracks how many leads each company gets, and bills them on a per-lead basis as long as the phone call meets some criteria such as minimum call length.

If that model sounds like something you'd be interested in, I can post further details or you can PM me.

Note: I don't have a vested interest in the guru I'm talking about. I've bought his lead gen courses and they're informative, but I don't want to spam the forum with his name or the service he promotes...just trying to add value here.

 

[AdamMaxum]

What if you didn't charge for a lead... What if you charged for a confirmed customer/sale/purchase instead? That's where the bigger money is.

 

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[Scot]

What if you didn't charge for a lead... What if you charged for a confirmed customer/sale/purchase instead? That's where the bigger money is.

That's essentially affiliate marketing