Hey everyone, Jason here digital marketing consultant and in this b2b lead generation
guide, you're going to learn five actionable strategies you can apply today with a low
budget, if you're just getting started as a freelancer or agency owner.
Time stamps below along with some deeper dive tutorials based upon the strategy that you
choose.
And that's because, as we go through these five, you need to make sure that you focus
on one.
There's only so much time in the day and you want to become a master of one of these lead
generation channels, as opposed to doing three or four of them mediocre, right?
And then the second key to success as we dive into these five is making sure that you have
a clear picture of who your actual ideal customer is.
And strategy number four, we'll talk a lot more about that and your ideal customer.
I'll link up in the cards in the description as well to a video that takes a much deeper
dive on how to come up with your ideal customer avatar.
So the very first strategy we have is one that's probably not gonna be all that popular,
but that's freelancing platforms, right?
If you're new branching out on your own, the whole prospect of marketing yourself, is going
to be daunting and it can be daunting.
And a lot of strategies may take a lot longer time than you actually have.
So if you're looking to start generating some income from your new venture, within the next
couple of months, then going to a freelancer platform like Upwork, guru, even Fiverr.
If you can get on Fiverr pro or freelancer might actually be your best option to at least
get your income off the ground.
Now, is this the most ideal?
No, I would say.
It's the least desirable of all of these five, but it is an option, because it doesn't require
any marketing.
And the fees for things like up work and Fiverr are relatively low, compared to what you'd
have to pay to get clients on your own.
Now, number two is going to be a little more popular and manageable.
And that is community groups.
Specifically groups on LinkedIn and groups on Facebook.
No, I am in no way shape or form saying that you should come up with a nice little sales
post and then post your services everywhere, that's not going to work.
What you have to do here is identify groups on LinkedIn and Facebook that are full of
your ideal customer, right?
Not necessarily other businesses like you.
So for example, as a marketing agency, we might want to look for local restaurant or
let's say dentists, right?
Almost every town in the US has a dentist.
So we say you know what our ideal customer is a dentist, who's trying to get more teeth
cleanings or maybe trying to get more cavities fills or whatever it may be.
And then we would go find LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups that are full of dentists.
We wouldn't go find Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups that are full of marketers, like us,
because you don't need to find groups full of people who are doing your similar service.
Of course you can't to learn from them, but you need to find groups full of people who
your actual ideal-- who are your actual ideal customer.
And then when you're in that group, here's the key to this step.
You never promote yourself.
Again, you never promote yourself.
I know it sounds counterintuitive, but all you're in there to do is just talk and be
helpful.
That's literally it, which means when you aren't posting, you're only going to be doing
one of two types of posts.
The first type is where you're sharing valuable information from other sources.
You're never using your own sources, even if you have a blog, you have a YouTube channel,
you're doing something great on medium, doesn't matter.
Don't post your own links in there.
It just comes across as self-promotion.
So other people's links, other helpful content.
And then number two, when you are engaging and answering other people's questions in
the group.
All of the actual sales is going to be done either via direct message, so they'll reach
out to you or you can reach out to them after you've had a lot of back-and-forth in the
group, or they'll go to your profile and they'll reach out to you, because they'll see that
you're promoting yourself on your profile.
So you can do promotional posts on your LinkedIn or Facebook profile, just as a normal post
once a week, and that way you have posts and content there on the platform that clearly
show that you're looking for clients and you're open to helping your ideal customer, but you
never want to do that inside of the group.
Now, number three is going to be cold email.
And with cold email, you're going to be using some sort of software or service, like LinkedIn
sales generator or lead fuzz to find emails of key decision-makers at the businesses that
you want to do business with, right?
And so the key to success here is making sure that you're very specific on who you're trying
to target, right?
So if we go back to our dentist or restaurant example, we didn't just say, “okay, local
businesses within a five-mile radius of wherever I may be in the world”, right?
Well, no.
We want to be very specific on okay, well what kind of local business?
Right?
So we do-- we want to target therapist or chiropractors or dentists for some reason
I'm on a medical thing right now.
So or restaurants there we go there's there's a non-medical one, right?
So whoever your specific ideal customer is, we'll get some more on this in a little bit
here.
Make sure that you're customizing your emails directly to that person.
This is not a time where you just come up with a template and you blast it out, because
that's gonna be spam, right?
So you need to customize the first couple of lines and make sure that it's clear that
you actually know who you're sending the email to.
And if you want to do more than ten of these a day, you will have to pick up a service
like woodpecker, to allow you to send more emails.
Now, these next two are going to be a lot more evergreen.
So the good news is it's not as much as day-to-day work, it's not a more-- it doesn't won't feel
like a hustle and grind.
The bad news though is these are going to take significantly longer than everything
else.
If we just talked about the first three, the first three you're probably going to find
success within the first three to six months.
This one is going to take longer than six months.
The advantage is it compounds over time, but don't expect anything we're about to cover
with these last two, to work within the first six month period.
So you're strapped for cash this is not the place to start, right?
Start with one of those first three, which is why we went with them.
So number four is going to be creating pillar content.
Specifically creating pillar content here on YouTube.
Now, I’ll link up in the cards and the description to a full-blown video that takes a much deeper
dive on how to do this, I'm just gonna 8020 the process here, so you see what the actual
strategy is.
So the first thing of course is, “who is your ideal customer?”.
You want to know what are they struggling with and you want to know what ultimately
results they are after as well as knowing What type of business are they in?
What do they sell?
And what is their job title?
And then once you know those three questions, and you know what results they're after and
what's getting in the way of the results that they want.
You're ready to create three valuable pieces of content for YouTube.
Now, I want to stop right here and let you know that you don't have to have a big channel
for this to work.
We have worked with niche channels that have less than 5,000, less than 3,000 subscribers
and they are doing multiple six figures off just a couple of valuable videos specific
to their ideal customer.
And heck, if you don't want to get on camera, just do a SlideShare PowerPoint presentation.
It doesn't have to be fancy, it just has to be valuable.
Now there—four, your three different videos you're actually going to make three different
kinds and then we'll get into how specifically to make sure that these videos actually drive
the action that you want.
So here are the three kinds that you're going to use.
The first one you're going to use is, a “how to”.
You're going to show potential customers exactly how to achieve something that they want.
An example from this channel is we do a lot of tutorials on Google ads and YouTube ads,
because as an agency, we run Google heads and YouTube ads for people.
So it makes sense for us to help potential customers get started with their advertising
and eventually hopefully they either figure out how to do it on their own or they say
you know what this is way too complicated, let's go hire the guys who originally taught
us.
And that's as simple as it is.
The second one is reviews of product or services that are not directly related to your product
or service.
So it's very important it doesn't come across, like you're just reviewing a competitor, right?
But you do want to be valuable in helping your ideal customer make a decision on which
product or service they should buy.
Now this third one is also helping them make a decision.
And this one is a decision guide where you weigh the pros and cons of doing option A
or option B. A simple example of this that we've done on this channel is, do things like
the pros and cons of advertising on Facebook versus the pros and cons of advertising with
Google ads or some other social media platforms.
So we're not necessarily reviewing the two platforms, we're just saying here the pros
of doing it this way and here the pros and cons of doing it that way, and cons over here
as well.
So you kind of just equally weigh it out, so it's very easy for your ideal customer
to make a decision.
Now, these are the only three types of videos that you have to make.
So I'm telling you with this strategy, you only have to make three videos.
One of these is most likely going to work and of course once you find one that works,
you just keep making more like that and then it compounds, but you're just getting started
so start with three, even if it's just a couple PowerPoints.
Now inside of your videos, here's the key, you want at least two to three times throughout
the video, no matter how long it or short it winds up being, have a clear call-to-action
for someone to click a link in the description or check out another one of your videos, so
that you get them to start it in your lead generation process.
So this can be a call to action the more content a call to action to hop on the phone with
you or call to action to force something called a lead magnet which we'll get into it with
strategy number five.
Now, here are two really basic examples of how you could set up this call to action inside
of your content.
So let's say we're going through a YouTube ads tutorial here and we're just saying hey
if you want to learn more, check out our YouTube growth webinar here, right?
We just say hey we have a webinar that expands more on everything that we were talking about.
If we directly wanted people to give us their contact information so we could book a discovery
or sales call with them, then the call to action would go something like this.
Now, if this sounds like too much work, go ahead and check out that link in the description
to book a free strategy call with us to have us help you do the heavy lifting.
And that's all there is to it to those videos.
Again, I’ll link up in the cards in the description to a video that takes a much deeper
dive on how to set up that lead generation process, it really is a cinch and you'd be
surprised how many views and how many leads you can get just from a couple of really niche
targeted videos here on YouTube.
Now, this final one is going to be I'd say the best strategy, but it's the most complicated
to set up, the most expensive and it will in fact take the longest, but that's actually
creating something called a lead generation funnel.
And this is where you're going to create something called a landing page, a lead magnet and then
you're going to use a software like convertkit or mailer light to send out emails and this
is something that you're actually going to be able to scale.
Now, the key before I dive into this, number one, this is not the place to start.
I know a lot of new agency owners and freelancers, as soon as they hear the word scale they're
like oh that's me I'm ready to go.
You know, we all start with zero clients, zero customers, zero sales.
One of the strategies we just talked about is the way to go.
This is the one to work on once you have a couple of clients, once you have some cash
flow coming in because it is in fact the hardest as simple as it may seem.
So let's go through the process.
How does this work?
Well the first thing you want to do is just like we talked about creating valuable content
in a video, you would create valuable content in the form of a webinar or a PDF where you
are helping your ideal customer overcome a roadblock that they're struggling with.
And exchange for this information, you ask for their contact information.
Typically their name or email, if you're doing sales calls maybe a phone number, so you can
give them a call or get them to book a call with you.
And so all of this process is designed to do is collect contact information in exchange
for providing that lead magnet.
Now, what the heck could a lead magnet be?
There-- here are a couple of quick examples.
It can be a simple case study, it could be an audit showing them what they're doing wrong
and what they're doing right, it can be a report where you've taken a lot of data and
just crunched it down for them, or it could be something as simple as a template or worksheet
to help them achieve success and a project they're currently working on as an example
the landing page you're looking at here, was built in a free tool called “mailer light”.
And this is as complex as the webpage needs to be, it just has an image a headline, a
couple of bullet points and then a place to collect the contact information.
If you want to learn more about setting up this process, we have a super deep dive video
it's over 30 minutes long.
I'll link it up in the cards in the description to a full-blown tutorial on exactly how to
set this up click by click.
And that does it for the five b2b low budget-- budget-friendly strategies.
So make sure you go and hit that like button, subscribe for more marketing strategy videos
just like this one.
And until the next, keep building the business you love.