Hey everyone!
Jason here, digital marketing consultant.
In this Lead generation guide, you're going to learn three actionable and budget friendly
strategies to generating some leads and of course, how to scale them as your budget increases.
Timestamp below along with some other helpful videos, I'll be referencing depending upon
the lead generation strategy, you choose.
Now, as we dive in here, I'm going to assume that your general overall strategy, is to
collect some contact information so you can begin your sales process.
Now, there are two main ways you can do this before we get into our three different strategies
for actually starting to get some leads, right?
The very first way is of course, offering something called a lead magnet.
Now this can be a free guide, PDF, template or resource even a webinar.
Although I don't recommend starting off with webinars, because it take way too long to
create, or you're simply offering some sort of free discovery or consultation call.
So all of our strategies are going to be reliant upon you offering either a lead magnet or
some sort of free discovery or strategy call as a way to collect that contact information.
Because after all, when it comes to lead generation people, aren't just going to give you their
contact information.
If you say, “Hey, I have something really cool that I'd like to sell you, just give
me your name and email and phone number.
And you know, I'll follow up with you and try and sell you something”, right?
It's not going to work all that well.
So we need something of value, in exchange for that contact information.
If what I just went over sounds completely new.
Then go ahead and make sure you check out the link in the cards and the description
to a full blown video that walks you through how to create a lead magnet funnel along with
some free software to help you get started with that.
So the very first strategy we have for starting to attract some leads and drive some traffic
to our website and lead capture pages, landing pages and squeeze pages is of course going
to be content marketing.
Now hold your horses.
I'm not saying you're just supposed to make a bunch of videos or go to town, writing 50
blog posts, and then crossing your fingers that, you know, you get some leads out of
it, right?
We're going to be very, very strategic here because you're on a tight budget and you probably
want to do to see some results within the next few months, as opposed to the next few
years, right?
Because depending upon and how you approach content marketing, it can take months or it
can take years.
So what I highly recommend doing is choosing either to make videos like this for YouTube,
or going ahead and starting a blog using WordPress.
Now, which one you choose is completely up to you.
Obviously I'm making a YouTube video right now.
So I'm a little biased, but both of these content mediums are going to work, but it
is important, you choose one of these content mediums, either go to YouTube or a blog, because
you need your efforts that you put in now to actually start providing results over time,
as opposed to, you know, posting on Facebook and Instagram and your post is just pretty
much dead after 24 hours, right?
So we need to be investing our valuable time in something that's going to continue to produce
results long-term.
Now, when it comes to what you should be making for your content strategy, again and I'll
link up in the description to a full blown content marketing playlist, but to 80/20,
the process, you only need three different types of videos or posts to start with.
I'll just use videos as an example, if you decide to go with blogs, you can just as easily
do it with a blog post.
So here are the three we have an how-to post, a reviews post, and a what decision guide
post.
So your how-to post is simply going to be a helpful piece of content.
That is a step by step tutorial that would be valuable to your idealer customer.
Now what's important here is this step by step tutorial doesn't necessarily have to
be the same as your product or service.
It just has to be valuable to whoever you're trying to sell to.
Now, these next two are going to help your customers make decisions.
So the first one here is going to be a review guide, and these are great where you can review
products or services in your niche or industry, and help your ideal customer make a decision.
You want to position yourself as someone who can be helpful.
Now, of course you don't want to be reviewing products or services that are direct competitors
to whatever your product or your service is.
So you want to make sure that it doesn't look like you're just creating a fake review to
make your company look better.
You want to review a product or services that aren't directly related to whatever you're
trying to sell, but still in your niche or industry.
And finally, a decision guide is just weighing pros and cons of going with different decisions.
So, as an example, we're a digital marketing agency.
So some of our pros and cons is using software versus hiring an agency or using different
advertising platforms like comparing the advantages or disadvantages of advertising on Facebook
versus Google or LinkedIn, right?
And those posts aren't directly related to our Google ads or YouTube ads services in
most respects because we don't actually do anything on LinkedIn or Facebook.
But when we do those types of comparison videos, it's helpful to our ideal customer.
So if you want to learn more about this particular process, again, all link up in the description
to a full blown playlist that walks you through everything you need to know with your content
marketing, including sites like Answer the public and SemRush to help you get some ideas
of types of content you can create.
So you really only need to create one of each of these.
So you're going to have three types of content.
And then inside of those pieces of content, you're going to have one of three calls to
action.
So your first call to action could just be, “Hey, check out some of our other content”.
Your second call to action could be something along the lines of if what we went over in
this blog post or video sounded too complex, or you still have some questions, go ahead
and check out a link to book, a free discovery or strategy call with me, right?
So there's your call to action, number two.
And then call to action, number three, if you're offering some sort of webinar or PDF,
lead magnet, guide, resource, report, then that could be your call to action at the end
of your content as well.
And when you're creating these calls to action sometimes, it's going to be a little bit uncomfortable.
It's going to feel like you're being salesy or you're pitching something.
“Go ahead and make sure check out the link in the cards and the description”
And don't worry if it feels really pitchy or salesy when you're making your calls to
action, because it's something you're just going to have to get used to with your content.
Yes, some people are going to get annoyed, right?
But our job not to make everyone who watches our videos or reads our blog posts happy.
Our job is to collect leads and people who are a good fit for your product or service
will be happy that you offered them a next step, whether that's a free discovery call
or a lead magnet.
So that does it for your first type of lead generation strategy, you can do on a budget
because you can get up and running with YouTube or blog for less than 50 bucks, right?
So again, I'll link up in the description to a full blown playlist that walks through
everything you need to know with your content marketing.
Now, the second option you have, is going to be a lot more groundwork and that's going
to be networking.
Now, given what's going on in the world, I'm not saying go to your local meetups.
But what I am saying is go to Facebook and LinkedIn and figure and find communities where
your ideal customers are.
Now we need to stop right here before we go any further I'm in no way, shape or form saying
you should post promotional ads inside of those groups, zero promotion here.
It's a little counter-intuitive, but do not promote yourself, your products, your services,
or even your content in these groups.
That is a sure-fire way for everyone to immediately find you annoying and kick you out.
So please ignore those, all those comments that you read from other quote, unquote, business
owners and marketers who just run around spamming Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
It is not a good long-term strategy.
So what you want to do instead, is find your group of your ideal customers.
So let's say you want to market to local restaurant owners, or you want to market to local dentists,
whatever kind of your ideal customer makeup is.
You need to be that specific by the way, you can't just say, “Oh, I want to market to
people who have a service locally” Or “People in a 10mile radius of my office”, right?
They need, you need to be very specific with who you're targeting, and then go into that
group of dentists or go into that group of restaurant owners and then answer questions,
that are relevant to your product or service in those groups and in those discussions,
what's very important though, if you're going to link to any content outside of Facebook
or LinkedIn, it needs to be from a different website.
As soon as you link to anything of your own or of yourself, it's going to come across
as self-promotional, it doesn't matter how awesome you think the post is.
It's everyone else is going to see that as that person's promoting themselves and you're
most likely going to get kicked out by the group admin.
So make sure that when you're engaging and replying to people, you're in groups that
are specific, very specific to your ideal customer, and you're actually being helpful.
What you will find over time, and yes, this does take time, right?
We're on a budget.
So we're giving up time and saving a lot of money here, is you're going to be able to
start those conversations in private messages, right?
And people are going to click on your profile and on your profile, go ahead and once, once,
if not twice a week, max, go ahead and post some promotional posts.
So when they're going through your posts and your timeline, they're checking out, who's
this person that was just helpful in the group.
They can naturally see that you offer products and services, but don't have any of those
promotions inside of the groups.
You can always private message people and start more conversations there.
So that's how the, you want to use those groups for networking.
And of course you can always private message people.
And once you have a conversation going, then link them over to your calendar, to book a
free strategy call with you or your opt-in page to, blinking there, or your lead capture
page to get your free report guide or you could just send it to them in the private
message.
Right?
So just make sure that you keep all that promotional stuff out of the groups.
All right, I think that's enough on that one, you probably get it.
So let's go ahead and go into number three, which is, and it costs a little bit more money
than the first two.
I mean, the first one is going to cost you 50 or a 100 bucks, right?
To get going.
And then the second one's presumably free.
Cause you're just spending all your time on Facebook and LinkedIn groups.
And this last one you're going to need anywhere from, let's say a 100 to 200 dollars a month
in ad spend, that's going to be focused ads.
So the keyword being focused, there's a lot of different things you can do with advertising.
There's a lot of different advertising platforms, but if you are on a budget and you're specifically
trying to generate leads, for a specific product or service, and you are geographically tied,
which means your product or service, the geographical location matters, then focused advertising
is definitely the way to go.
So if you're an e-Commerce store and you're selling all across the world, this is not
the place to start, if you're on a really tight budget, but if you're a local services
based business and you know, you can actually still provide your services, then this is
a way that you should go.
So what you do is you use Google ads, now I know Google ads is notorious for being expensive,
but there's a reason for this.
And you're going to choose two to five, very targeted, exact match keywords of people who
represent your perfect ideal customer.
And you only bid on those keywords.
Now, are you going to get a lot of clicks?
No.
Are you going to get a lot of conversions?
No, but the few clicks you get, and the few conversions that you get are going to be very
hyper-targeted on your exact ideal customer.
So a lot of advertising is about casting a wider net, and then making it up on the average.
But here you're going to be very laser targeted.
And the reason I say, use Google ads, is because Google ads allows you to specifically target
people who are typing in exactly what your product or service is.
There isn't another advertising platform out there, that allows you to be that specific
and that granular and of course, you're going to make sure that in your targeting options,
you target your local neighbourhood, zip code or county, province or state.
Don't go outside province or state.
If you're a country wide service, then this is not a place to start.
This really works well, if you have a specific product or service and it's localized and
you can really focus on those local search results to either bring people into your store,
if you're actually allowed to, or actually get some local clients.
So that does it for the three different types of lead generation strategies you can use
on a budget.
I'll link up in the cards, in the description to a full blown Google ads video that walks
you through exactly how to apply the strike Google ad strategy we just talked about.
And of course, in the description, you'll check out the links to how to put together
a lead magnet funnel using a free tool, as well as a playlist on exactly how to get started
with your content marketing.
If you decided that's the way to go.
So go and hit that like button subscribe for more deep dive marketing guides, just like
this one.
And until the next keep building the business you love.