- Today we're talking about
one of my all-time favorite subjects,
I feel like I say that a lot,
which would be none other than online lead gen.
More specifically, the best way generate leads online
for your business and my five-step strategy
to make it happen, every time.
Let's get to it.
Oh yeah, one more quick note.
Stick around 'til the end 'cause I'm gonna give you
my top two absolute best channels
that are showing the best results
across all of my clients and students businesses.
All right, let's get back to it.
Hey there my name is Adam Erhart,
Modern Marketing Strategist,
and welcome to the Modern Marketing Show
where we help you make marketing that matters.
So if you're interested in generating more leads,
customers, and sales for your business,
you might wanna consider subscribing.
When it comes to generating more leads online
there is no shortage of strategies available to try.
You can run paid ads, you can do email marketing,
you can create video content for YouTube,
audio content for a podcast, text content for a blog.
You can optimize your website for SEO,
spend time doing organic social media posting,
and the list is pretty much endless.
But what makes matters worse and even more confusing,
is that for every strategy available
there's at least a dozen gurus on this side saying,
this is the absolute best thing ever,
and then a dozen more on this side
saying it's a complete waste of time and don't even bother.
So let me pull back the curtain and share with you something
that most gurus don't really like to talk about.
You see, it's not that the strategies don't work,
most of them do, and it's not necessarily your fault either
that things didn't work out.
Odds are good that you probably gave it the old college try.
So if the problem isn't the strategy,
and it's not you either, then what is it?
Well, nine times out of 10,
it's a mismatch between you and the strategy you're using.
Well, most of the time it's a mismatch combination,
and the fact that the strategies aren't being built
on a solid foundation.
So let's fix that now.
Here's my five-step strategy and the best way
to generate leads online today.
Step one is kinda boring, but oh so important.
Because if you get this part wrong then all the time,
energy, and money that you invest will be absolutely wasted.
This is why the very first thing you need to do
is as accurately as humanly possible,
clearly identify and articulate your absolute
most perfect customer and ideal customer avatar.
The kind of customer that loves you, loves what you do,
wants to tell everyone about you,
and is willing and able to pay you
for the true value you provide.
It's important here to clearly identify
their demographic details like age, gender, income,
and occupation, their geographic details like
where they live, including what city, or state, province,
or country, as well as their psychographic details
like what are their attitudes, their interests,
their beliefs, and their opinions?
The better and more clearly you're able to identify
and really articulate and flesh out
this ideal customer avatar,
the better your online lead gen will be.
All right so now that we've got you ideal target market
fully fleshed out it's time to move on to step two
which is what I call, miracles and miseries.
It's in this step that you want to identify their miracles,
like their wants, their needs, their desires
and their dreams, as well as their miseries,
like their fears, and their frustrations,
and their pains, and their problems.
It's in this step that you're clearly able to identify
what they want and what they don't want,
and then start to communicate how your business
is uniquely positioned to solve this problem for them.
You see one of the best ways
of showing someone that you can help them,
is by actually helping them.
And when you identify and really let them know
that you understand their miracles and their miseries,
and you present to them a solution,
and ideally, a solution that you're business
is uniquely positioned to provide,
well, that's when you both win.
All right, let's move to step three.
Step number three is all about giving them what they want
in the form of educational based marketing,
or EBM for short.
It's in this step that you're gonna start creating content
that directly addresses their miracles and their miseries
and delivers it to them in a form that matches both
your content creator style
and their content consumption style.
What I mean by this is you really wanna identify
what kind of content your ideal target market
likes to consume.
Is it video, audio, text, or a combination of all three?
Also, you have to take into consideration
what kinda content you don't mind creating.
After all, if you hate being in front of video
then maybe video's not the answer.
And if you hate talking,
then audio's probably not the way to go.
And if you absolutely hate writing,
then clearly you're not gonna wanna do text space content.
But when you can match up
your preferred content creation style
and their preferred content consumption style
you get something called content congruence.
And that's again, where your content really resonates
and hits the mark.
Once you've got your content created
you can deliver it in exchange for a name,
or an email, or a phone number,
whatever kinda lead gen you're after.
You can also just give it away for free.
Just make sure that if you do,
you include some kind of relevant call to action at the end,
that lets the know what step to take next.
It's at step four where the rubber really meets the road,
because this is where we're gonna be taking your content
and actually getting in front of your ideal target market.
After all, the best content in the world
don't really do much good if nobody sees it.
This is also the step where most marketing tactics
tend to fail.
You see, most tactics advise picking a channel first,
normally whatever's hot that day,
and then diving in and staking your claim there.
Sadly, this is the entirely wrong way to do things,
and has resulted in countless businesses
going out there and starting content marketing strategies
on channels that their target market
isn't even active or present on.
Ouch.
The alternative then, and the best way to do things
is to take a look at all the steps we've just covered
and really identify where your ideal target market
is spending their time online, and then go there.
Once you figure this out, it makes deciding where to focus
your online lead gen efforts a complete no brainer,
and way more effective.
All right, so now we're at the final step
and at this point we're gonna take a good thing,
and make it better.
And the way you do this is by doubling down
on your most effective lead gen content,
and then throwing a little gas on the fire
with paid advertising.
Again, where most people go wrong
is they start with paid advertising
before really fleshing out all of the details,
and all the steps that we've just covered prior.
What this means is they tend to go into paid ads
completely blind, not knowing what's gonna work,
not knowing what content's gonna resonate,
and not even knowing if they're on the right channel.
As you can imagine this leads to a lot of loses
and a lot of disappointment when it comes to paid ads.
This is why we always put paid advertising
at the final step.
Because by now we know about our ideal customer,
we know their miracles and miseries,
we know what kind of content we need to create,
we know what channels to go and advertise on.
So now we know when we start investing
time, and money, and energy, and creating ads
and putting it out to the market,
well, we have a pretty good idea
of what's gonna work and what's not.
All right, so we covered a lot in this video,
but if you go through steps one to five
you'll be miles and miles ahead of the competition,
most of whom are still using outdated lead gen strategies
that were barely even affective five years ago.
Also, always remember, strategy first, tactics second.
All that said, if you're still not sure
of the best place to generate leads online
for your business, I don't wanna leave you hanging.
So here are my top two suggestions
and the two channels that we're seeing time and time again
be the most effective with all of my clients
and my students.
First up is Facebook.
While the big kahuna has come under some pretty heavy fire
in these last few years, it's still one of the best
and most effective places to generate leads online.
This is due largely to its absolutely massive user base,
but also to the sophistication and level of detail
present in its advertising platform.
Because the Facebook algorithm has gotten so sophisticated,
it allows you to really laser in
on exactly who you're trying to reach,
including their demographic, geographic,
and yes, even psychographic details
like attitudes, interests, beliefs, and opinions.
For most businesses, using Facebook
for online lead gen is an easy choice.
Probably not surprisingly,
my other recommendation is YouTube.
This is due to a number number of reasons
we don't have time to get into today,
but a big one is that while Facebook
is a discovery platform,
meaning that people can tend to just kind of happen on
and discover your content.
Well, YouTube is largely a search based platform.
Meaning, people log into the platform, typing something in,
and actively looking for a solution
to a problem they're currently going through.
Use Facebook or use YouTube alone
and you'll get good results, but combine the two
and your lead gen will never be the same; in a good way.
All right so thanks so much for watching
and I hope you enjoyed the episode.
If so make sure to give it a thumbs up,
subscribe to the channel,
and say hello in the comment section below.
For more great marketing strategies, tools, tips, tricks,
and tactics make sure to checkout adamerhart.com
which is packed full of resources, videos, and articles,
all designed to help you take your business
and your marketing to the next level.
So thanks so much for watching
and I'll catch you next time on the Modern Marketing Show.