Most businesses suck at lead generation…
It’s the reason so many businesses struggle to grow as fast as they want.
Sure, you may have a great product. You may have happy customers. But when it all comes down to it, you don’t control the flow of new customers in through the door.
And this is equally true for the solopreneur as it is for the bigger business, with lots of employees and lots of customers.
The exceptions end up being the companies that dominate their industries. Because they know how to consistently bring leads in through the door, they slowly take over the entire market.
I definitely know it’s true of Breakthrough Marketing Secrets readers. (Don’t feel bad though — the pain is nearly universal!) How do I know? I know because in my Reader Feedback Questionnaire, I’m already finding about 2/3 of responses tell me they want more leads and new customers for their business.
… By the way, if you haven’t yet — will you please give me your feedback right now? I’ll be closing the door on this soon, and I don’t want you to miss this chance to shape the future of Breakthrough Marketing Secrets. Click here to share your feedback.
The good news is, you can get a lot better at lead generation, fast!
In fact, in just a couple hours, you could be well on your way to generating more high quality leads for your business than ever before…
In fact, I’m going to tell you exactly how.
It’s not difficult.
It’s just something that most businesses never do.
Introducing… My 3-step process to lead generation success!
Here are the three steps you need to take to dramatically increase the number of new leads and customers coming into your business…
- Know thy audience…
- Make it a system…
- Pay for traffic…
Let me break down each step…
Know thy audience…
The absolute worst way to think of your universe of potential customers is “everybody.” If your offering is for everybody, it’s actually for nobody.
The first step to any kind of lead generation success is to get crystal-clear on the specific person you want to focus on and do business with.
Some people call this a customer avatar, or an ideal customer profile. Others may call it their target market.
The more personal it feels, the better.
Get to know this ideal customer. Make it a single person. Or, if you have a handful, create profiles of each one, as if they were individuals.
What makes them unique? What are their biggest needs and desires? What are their interests?
Imagine a scenario of walking up to a random person on the street, and trying to figure out in 30 seconds if they’re a member of your ideal target market. What 5 questions could you ask that — once you knew the answer — would either qualify or disqualify that random person as being an ideal prospect?
Once you’re crystal clear on who this ideal customer is, it’s time to start thinking about the marketing itself…
Make it a system…
We’re going to set aside our ideal customer profile for a minute, and think about what it’s going to look like when they interact with your business.
Get out a pen and paper. Or go to your white board.
You’re going to draw out each step of the process.
I’ll use a very simple Facebook lead generation funnel as an example.
— Step one is the Facebook ad. That’s what they see while they’re browsing through Facebook.
— Step two is your landing page. This is the page they go to when they click on your ad.
— Step three is the lead magnet — content or a tool — that you promise them on the landing page.
— Step four is the follow-up. This is where you get them to consume the content or use the tool, and start to introduce your offer.
— Step five is the offer page. This is where you make them an offer that moves them toward becoming a client. This can be a discovery consultation, an application, a scheduled very short phone call.
— Step six is conversion. This is when they take you up on the offer.
Draw this out on paper. Or whatever the process is for your business. Get crystal-clear on the steps someone is going to take to move from total stranger to knowing about you, to engaging with you at the lowest level (entering their email, giving permission for further marketing follow-up), to actually consuming your marketing and selling content, to being introduced to your introductory offer, to converting to a client.
You’re building the blueprint of your lead generation and conversion system.
You’ll use this in two ways. First, you’ll use it to actually build the system itself. Then, as you launch the system, you’ll use it to track results.
By laying it out in this step-by-step detail, you will be able to track how many leads go through each step of the process. You’ll figure out how much you paid to run ads. You’ll see how many clicks that got. How many clicks turned into landing page conversions. How much engagement you got on your lead magnet. How many of those people visited your offer page. How many of those turned into applications, or initial consultations. And how many of those turned into paying clients. As well as how much those clients spent.
With all these numbers, you have a system. You know how much you spend per person, at each step of the process. You can figure out from there if it’s scalable, or if you need to improve results.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because for all that tracking to happen, you have to…
Pay for traffic…
I’ve found this is by far the biggest difference between people who build big businesses, and those who don’t. Especially online businesses.
I’ve known many people who’ve launched websites that they loved, that they poured their heart and soul into, and that could easily have appealed to their target buyer.
But then they launched the website to crickets. Nada. Nothing.
It’s because they didn’t do what it takes to actually get traffic to visit to their website, in a scalable, repeatable, and on-demand way.
That is, they didn’t pay for people to come to the site.
And without that…
Nobody came.
Which reminds me…
If a business person makes a perfect pitch of a perfect offer in the middle of the woods, and there’s nobody there to hear them, do they make any sales?
No!
You’ve gotta bring people in through the door.
And for the most part, that means you have to pay for some kind of advertising.
Now, I don’t want to exclude the many kinds of offline advertising that work. I’m referring to online advertising as shorthand. And because it’s what a lot of my readers are focused on.
But whatever you do, you’ve gotta pay to play!
Start small. Test your lead generation system. Pay to attract some kind of traffic to it. Measure your results. Then, make your decision from there.
This simple 3-step process goes well beyond what most wannabe marketers are willing to do!
It’s why the vast majority of businesses start small, and stay small.
The ones who do this are able to accomplish so much more.
The ones who read this, and then don’t take action, are the ones who will stay small.
So… What will YOU do?
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
PS — Wait! Before you run off and build your ultimate lead generation system, take under 5 minutes and give me your feedback on how I can make Breakthrough Marketing Secrets better for you! Click here to make your voice heard!
