How To Start A Lead Generation Business
You've stumbled upon the idea to build a lead generation business and now you're ready to take the next steps.
There's a lot to think about when building a business, so we put together a guide on how to get started, launch, grow and run your lead generation business.
We also provide you with real-life case studies and examples of founders running successful lead generation business (and how muchπ° they're making today).
π‘ Introduction To Starting A Lead Generation Business
Is Starting A Lead Generation Business Right For You?
There are many factors to consider when starting a lead generation business.
We put together the main pros and cons for you here:
Pros of starting a lead generation business
β’ Flexibility
You can put as much time into the business as you'd like. If you like the work and have some initial experience, you can start small and manage all aspects of the business on your own.
β’ Ability to start your business from home
It's not necessary to have a physical storefront or office space to get your business started. You can do everything from the comfort of your own home, at least in the beginning!
β’ Rewarding work
Starting a lead generation business can be really rewarding work. After all, you are solving an immediate issue for your customer and you're working on something you truly care about.
β’ Scalable
With businesses and processes changing daily, there will always be demand for new features, products and services for your business. Additionally, there are several different business models and pricing tiers you can implement that will allow you to reach all types of customers.
β’ Traffic to your website
A lead generation business gives people a reason to visit your website and to keep coming back to you!
β’ No overhead costs
To get your lead generation business started, there are no costs associated with overhead, storage, packaging, etc. This will save you a lot of time and money!
β’ High customer retention rates
Once a customer invests in your product, they've invested their time and energy to utilize your product/service which is highly valuable to them. Typically, your product or service becomes indispensable to your customer.
β’ High margins
The gross margins for your lead generation business are typically around 93%, which is considerably high and allows you to grow your business and manage costs easily.
β’ Control of workload
With starting a lead generation business, you have the unique ability to choose how little or how much you want to work. You also have the freedom to decide which projects you want to work on, and can turn down the ones that do not interest you.
β’ Unlimited income potential
With starting a lead generation business there is no cap as to how much income you can make. The stronger your business skills and the more energy/time you put into your career, the more you'll make.
β’ You are your own boss!
With starting a lead generation business, you are the one to make decisions for almost all of the operations. Calling the shots can be empowering and liberating!
β’ Predictable income stream
Your businesses income stream tends to be predictable based on the number of customers you have signed up. This makes financial planning and outlooks much more seamless!
β’ Higher likelihood of getting referrals
This business is all about referrals, which can be a a very impactful way to attract and retain customers. It's critical that you have a great referral program in place that incentivizes your customers to tell their friends about your product.
β’ Simple business model
A lead generation business has the advantage of a simple business model, which makes launching and building the business more seamless.
β’ Greater Income Potential
With this business, the sky is the limit in regards to your income potential.
β’ You get to do something you truly love
With starting a lead generation business, you get to put your energy into something you are truly passionate about! You'll find yourself devoting as much time and energy as possible into the business to make it successful.
β’ You can work from anywhere!
Not only can you start your lead generation business from home, you can also run your business from anywhere in the world. This is the entrepreneur dream.
β’ Strong Demand & Relatively Recession Proof
The demand for lead generation business is increasing year over year and the business is known to be relatively recession proof.
β’ Various different ways to make money
With starting a lead generation business, there is not just one business model to choose from. This field is amazing in that there are various different ways to make money. Although this may complicate things, it's great to have different options and sources of revenue.
β’ Make money while you sleep
The advantage of starting a lead generation business is that you have the ability to have passive income and make money while you sleep. This is the dream for many entrepreneurs.
β’ Results and revenue happen quickly!
Unlike other businesses, it can be relatively quick to start seeing results and revenue. As long as you follow all the steps to validate your idea before launch, you are likely to see quick results and ROI.
Cons of starting a lead generation business
β’ Crowded Space
Competition is high when it comes to your lead generation business, so it's important that you spend a good amount of time analyzing the market and understanding where the demand lies.
β’ Motivation of employees
If you plan to have a sales/content team on board, finding creative ways to motivate them can be a challenge. It's important that you're able to offer great incentives and a good work environment for your employees.
β’ Longer Sales Process
A lead generation business can be a big time and money investment for your customer, so it's important you plan and predict a longer conversion funnel and stay in communication with potential customers.
β’ Security Issues
With any Saas business, data loss and security issues may arise throughout your process of building your product. It's critical that you understand exactly what you're responsible for and how to avoid potential issues down the road.
β’ Isolation
Often times, as a lead generation business, you typically work alone and do not have much face-to-face interaction with other team members.
β’ Taxes
As a lead generation business, you typically pay self-employment taxes which can be quite high. It's important to understand what you will be paying in taxes each year so you can determine if the work you're taking on is worth it.
β’ No safety net
Typically, as a lead generation business, you do not receive a consistent pay-check and instead earn money based on your transactions each month. During the slow periods, you typically take away less since the job is based on commission. It's important to budget accordingly for the slow times.
β’ Stressful work
This line of work can be stressful for both you and your clients. This type of transaction is a significant financial decision for your client, so expectations are very high for you. Although this career path can be very rewarding, it also comes with its challenges and stressful moments.
β’ You may need to charge sales tax
If you are selling your products in various states, you may be required to charge sales tax. Although this may not impact your financials specifically, it can be a headache to create a process and procedure for this. To learn more about sales tax, check out this article
β’ Churn
In this business, customers can cancel their membership or subscription for your services - which can make revenue forecasting challenging and unpredictable. It's important to focus on your churn rates and trends so that you can prevent this as much as possible.
β’ Time commitment
With starting a lead generation business, all responsibilities and decisions are in your hands. Although this is not necessarily a negative thing, work life can take over at times. This can place a strain on friends and family and add to the pressure of launching a new business.
β’ Difficult to build trust with your customer
With starting a lead generation business, there can be minimal face-to-face interaction, which means it can be a lot more difficult to establish trust with your customers. You'll need to go the extra mile with your customer to grab their attention and business.
β’ Be prepared to get out of your comfort zone!
Although this is exciting for some entrepreneurs, it can be a big challenge for others! You may find yourself in uncomfortable social and business situations, jumping into tasks and responsibilities you aren't familiar with, and pushing yourself as far as you can go!
β’ You might struggle financially (at first)!
If you bootstrap your business or choose not to pay yourself (or pay yourself less than you were making at your corporate job), this can be financially taxing. It's important to adjust your lifestyle and set a plan for yourself so you don't find yourself in a stressful situation.
β’ Minimal physical activity
A big part of starting a lead generation business is sitting at a desk for the majority of the day starting at your computer. Some may enjoy this, but others may struggle with sitting for the majority of your day without much physical activity.
β’ The job can be demanding
This is one of the major disadvantages starting a lead generation business. It's important to understand that you may need to make yourself available on a 24/7 basis.
β’ Technical issues can be frustrating
Technical issues are common in this business. If you struggle with the technical side of things, you may want to consider outsourcing this responsibility to save yourself the time and frustration.
β’ More challenging to earn passive income
It can be more of a challenge to make passive income in this business. Often times, the amount of revenue you bring in is limited by the amount of time you have in the day.
Players
Big Players
- Apollo (5.71K Alexa Ranking)
- Homes.com (6.97K Alexa Ranking)
- LeadPages (7.44K Alexa Ranking)
- UpLead (28.7K Alexa Ranking)
- Tampa Inbound Marketing Agency (31K Alexa Ranking)
Small Players
- The Pedowitz Group - Revenue $1.5M/month
- Interact - Revenue $208K/month
- Article-Writing Co - Revenue $125K/month
- Glimp Ltd - Revenue $100K/month
- CallPage - Revenue $65K/month
- Lead Cookie - Revenue $55K/month
- Franchise UK - Revenue $50K/month
- Website Rental Coaching - Revenue $42K/month
- BizzBee Solutions - Revenue $26K/month
- GoEdison - Revenue $18K/month
- Wealth Lead Generation - Revenue $10K/month
- LinkHelp - Revenue $4K/month
- VCbacked - Revenue $1.5K/month
- Hawk Prospecting - Revenue $1K/month
- Skylead - Revenue $0/month
Search Interest
Let's take a look at the search trends for lead generation over the last year:
How To Name Your Lead Generation Business
It's important to find a catchy name for your lead generation business so that you can stand out in your space.
Here are some general tips to consider when naming your lead generation business
- Avoid hard to spell names: you want something easy to remember and easy to spell for your customers
- Conduct a search to see if others in the space have the same name
- Try not to pick a name that limits growth opportunities for your business (ie. if you decide to expand into other product lines)
- As soon as you have an idea (or ideas) of a few names that you love, register the domain name(s) as soon as possible!
Why is naming your lead generation business so important?
The name of your business will forever play a role in:
- Your customers first impression
- Your businesses identity
- The power behind the type of customer your brand attracts
- If you're memorable or not
It's important to verify that the domain name is available for your lead generation business.
You can search domain availability here:
Find a domain starting at $0.88
powered by Namecheap
Although .com names are the most common and easiest to remember, there are other options if your .com domain name is not available. Depending on your audience, it may not matter as much as you think.
It's also important to thoroughly check if social media handles are available.
As soon as you resonate with a name (or names), secure the domain and SM handles as soon as possible to ensure they don't get taken.
Here's some inspiration for naming your lead generation business:
- The Knock check availability
- Right Door check availability
- The Raise check availability
- The Magnetic check availability
- Cloud check availability
- Collective Vessel check availability
- The Easy Catch check availability
- Collective check availability
- The Generator check availability
- Redefined Lead check availability
- The Flow check availability
- Opportunist check availability
- Creator check availability
- The Glass check availability
- Brighter check availability
- Cheerful check availability
- High Hopes check availability
- Certain check availability
- Positive Lead check availability
- Rising Lead check availability
- Right Prospect check availability
- Director check availability
- Controlled check availability
- Lead Apatite check availability
- Left Turn check availability
- The Circle check availability
- The Opportunity Hunter check availability
- Active Lead check availability
- Dry check availability
- Bigger Hunt check availability
- Hunger check availability
- The Catch check availability
- Appropriate Participant check availability
- The Rigid check availability
- Generator Co. check availability
- The Right Thought check availability
- The Best Client check availability
- Favorite Lead check availability
- Technical Guy check availability
- Recorded check availability
- Availed check availability
- The Purpose check availability
- Old Companion check availability
- Fresh Start check availability
- Better Tomorrow check availability
- Happy Client check availability
- The Lead Hunter check availability
- Misplaced check availability
- Lead Navigator check availability
- The Ideal check availability
- Spark check availability
- Object check availability
- Lead Idea check availability
- Expectation check availability
- Fifth Generator check availability
- Green check availability
- Highlighted check availability
- The Big Gap check availability
- Ideal Client check availability
- Smooth Lead check availability
- Common Command check availability
- Extended check availability
- The Growth check availability
- Developed check availability
- The Business Enhancer check availability
- Daily Lead Generator check availability
- Slightly Changed check availability
- The Early Catch check availability
- Caught In Net check availability
- Contributor check availability
- Better Catch check availability
- Ideal Generator check availability
- The Definite check availability
- The Kind Lead check availability
- Pages Generation check availability
- Liquid Take Co check availability
- Left Leader check availability
- Patient Trading Co check availability
- Pilot Client check availability
- Big Wind check availability
- Corporate Customers check availability
- Romantic Trail Co check availability
- Thin Customer check availability
- Blue Leash check availability
- SixthGeneration check availability
- Important Employer Collective check availability
- Point check availability
- Pediatric Customer Place check availability
- Adolescent Applicant check availability
- Early Leash Trading Co check availability
- Juvenile Go Spot check availability
- LatestGeneration check availability
- The Diabetic Claimant check availability
- The Hot check availability
- Hard Wind Place check availability
- Technical check availability
- Wind Trading Co check availability
- RomanticLead check availability
- MaleLead check availability
- Heavy Leash Trading Co check availability
- The Prospective Node check availability
- The False check availability
- Unipolar check availability
- Much Take Collective check availability
- The Solid check availability
- Spongy Go Trading Co check availability
- Comfortable Contribute Place check availability
- Precede Trading Co check availability
- Male Wind check availability
- Graven Generation check availability
- Narrow Result Spot check availability
- The Substantial Extend check availability
- SuicidalClient check availability
- The Right Pass check availability
- Likely Leader check availability
- HarmonicGeneration check availability
- Haven Generation check availability
- Patron Customers Trading Co check availability
- Windows Clientele check availability
- FoundingGeneration check availability
- Romantic check availability
- The Single Guest check availability
- DisabledClient check availability
- Big Precede Place check availability
- Cold check availability
- The Assess Claimant check availability
- First Gen Collective check availability
- Red Result Place check availability
- Run Pro check availability
- Liquid Result Collective check availability
Read our full guide on naming your lead generation business β
How To Create A Slogan For Your Lead Generation Business:
Slogans are a critical piece of your marketing and advertising strategy.
The role of your slogan is to help your customer understand the benefits of your product/service - so it's important to find a catchy and effective slogan name.
Often times, your slogan can even be more important than the name of your brand.
Here are 6 tips for creating a catchy slogan for your lead generation business:
1. Keep it short, simple and avoid difficult words
A great rule of thumb is that your slogan should be under 10 words. This will make it easy for your customer to understand and remember.
2. Tell what you do and focus on what makes you different
There are a few different ways you can incorporate what makes your business special in your slogan:
- Explain the target customer you are catering your services towards
- What problem do you solve?
- How do you make other people, clients, or your employer look good?
- Do you make people more successful? How?
3. Be consistent
Chances are, if you're coming up with a slogan, you may already have your business name, logo, mission, branding etc.
It's important to create a slogan that is consistent with all of the above.
4. Ensure the longevity of your slogan
Times are changing quickly, and so are businesses.
When coming up with your slogan, you may want to consider creating something that is timeless and won't just fade with new trends.
5. Consider your audience
When finding a catchy slogan name, you'll want to make sure that this resonates across your entire audience.
It's possible that your slogan could make complete sense to your audience in Europe, but may not resonate with your US audience.
6. Get feedback!
This is one of the easiest ways to know if your slogan will be perceived well, and a step that a lot of brands drop the ball on.
Ask friends, family, strangers, and most importantly, those that are considered to be in your target market.
Here's some inspiration for coming up with a slogan for your lead generation business:
- Searching the best online
- Best prospects in town
- Today's target market experts
- Building a secure lead generation
- Motherly approved lead generation
- The artistic secret of lead generation
- The music of the online business industry
- The real lead generation
- Understanding the lead generation complexity
- Updated, proven, and tested in the market
- Aim high with lead generation
- We've got the latest trend
- Have a future with lead generation
- Unleash your business spirit
- Get lead with lead generation
- We'll give you more leads!
- We have the best leads!
- Don't underestimate our leads
- Best leads? No worries!
- Fresh leads online
- Lead generation makes the difference
- A Guaranteed lead generation
- The best of the best leads
- Best leads by your dream team
- World's best lead generation
- Knock-out compilation of leads
- Beaming quality of lead generation
- Your future with lead generation
- A collection of 1st class leads
- Fantastilicious Leads compilation
- Long-lasting lead generation output
- Heavenly made lead generation
- Bigger and wider lead generation
- Hero squad lead generation
- We've got the best for you
- Lead, Not That Other Crap.
- Work Hard, Dominate Harder
- Pure Go, Hot Take
- Spot Of The Wind
- Lead Know-How.
- Share Moments, Share Lead.
- Pure Hint, Early Extend
- Male Leave, Male Run
- Endless Possibilities With Lead.
- Allow Is What We Do
- Work Hard, Mean Harder
- Because Lead Can't Drive.
- Early Passes Are What We Do
- Work Hard, Take Harder
- Pure Lead, We Care
- Leads With Flag
- Pure And Dour
- Call A Friend, Call Generation.
- It's The Lead You Can See.
- Lead? You Bet.
- Kills All Known Lead - Dead.
- I Love Lead.
- Metallic Wind, Positive Contribute
- Santa, All I Want Is Lead.
- From Red To Flannel
- Live In Your Lead, Play In Ours.
- You Can't Stop Lead.
- And On The Eighth Day, God Created Lead.
- Work Hard, Run Harder
- A Day With Lead.
- The Wonder Has A Name: Client.
- Pure Puts Are What We Do
- Positive Lead, Let's Start Today!
- You Wouldn't Want To Miss Lead.
- Lead Is Forever.
- Leads With Oxide
The Consulting Business Model
When implementing a consulting business model, you have a number of approaches to choose from:
Here are a few of the most common consulting business models:
1. The Time-Based Model
This is one of the more traditional consulting business models - where your rate, terms, and scope of work are outlined at the very beginning of the project.
Typically, with this model you would choose a day rate or an hourly rate.
2. The Project-Based Model
With a project-based model, you and your client agree on the scope of work you will be performing for a set amount of money.
There is typically a contract in place which covers the deliverables and expectations from both parties.
3. The Retainer-Based Model
The retainer model involves providing ongoing service for your clients over a specific period of time.
You may not provide a specific deliverable for your client, but instead, a broad scope of work over a set period.
4. The Consulting-Firm Model
This model is becoming more and more popular. The consulting firm model involves hiring freelancers or employees to complete work for your clients on your behalf.
Typically, in this situation, you still manage the relationship with the client, but you delegate some or all of the work to your team.
Which model should you choose?
The best way to determine which business model you will choose is to research other entrepreneurs or agencies in your space that are offering the same or similar service.
This will allow you to identify your competition, set your pricing, and determine your target audience.
Learn more about starting a lead generation business:
Where to start?
-> Lead generation business plan
-> How to finance a lead generation business?
-> How much does it cost to start a lead generation business?
-> Pros and cons of a lead generation business
Need inspiration?
-> Other lead generation business success stories
-> Examples of established lead generation business
-> Marketing ideas for a lead generation business
-> Lead generation business slogans
-> Lead generation business names
Other resources
-> Profitability of a lead generation business
-> Lead generation business tips
π¬ How To Start A Lead Generation Business
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Lead Generation Business
If you are planning to start a lead generation business, the costs are relatively low. This, of course, depends on if you decide to start the business with lean expenses or bringing in a large team and spending more money.
Weβve outlined two common scenarios for βpre-openingβ costs of starting a lead generation business and outline the costs you should expect for each:
- The estimated minimum starting cost = $62
- The estimated maximum starting cost = $25,059
Startup Expenses: Average expenses incurred when starting a lead generation business. | Min Startup Costs: You plan to execute on your own. Youβre able to work from home with minimal costs. | Max Startup Costs: You have started with 1+ other team members. |
---|---|---|
Office Space Expenses | ||
Rent: This refers to the office space you use for your business and give money to the landlord. To minimize costs, you may want to consider starting your business from home or renting an office in a coworking space. | $0 | $5,750 |
Utility Costs For Office Space: Utility costs are the expense for all the services you use in your office, including electricity, gas, fuels, telephone, water, sewerage, etc. | $0 | $1,150 |
WiFi & Internet: Whether you work from home or in an office space, WiFi is essential. Although the cost is minimal in most cases, it should be appropriately budgeted for each month! | $0 | $100 |
Total Office Space Expenses | $0 (min) | $7,000 (max) |
Website Costs | ||
Website Builder: The cost of your website will vary depending on which platform you choose. There are many website builders on the market, so it's important you choose the right one for your business and overall goals. To learn more about your options + how to build a great website, check out this article. | $10 | $500 |
Web Designer: Web design includes several different aspects, including webpage layout, content creation, and design elements.If you have the skills and knowledge to design your website on your own, then outsourcing this to an expert may not be necessary. There are plenty of other ways you can design a beautiful website using design tools and software. | $200 | $6,000 |
Domain Name: Your domain name is the URL and name of your website - this is how internet users find you and your website.Domain names are extremely important and should match your company name and brand. This makes it easier for customers to remember you and return to your website. | $12 | $200 |
Business Email Hosting Service: An email hosting runs a dedicated email server. Once you have your domain name, you can set up email accounts for each user on your team. The most common email hosts are G Suite and Microsoft 365 Suite. The number of email accounts you set up will determine the monthly cost breakdown. | $1 | $15 |
Website Hosting Costs: Server hosting is an IT service typically offered by a cloud service provider that hosts the website information and allows remote access through the internet. A hosted server can help you scale up and increase your businessβs efficacy, relieving you from the hassles of on-premise operations. | $0 | $300 |
Website & Live Chat Tool: If your business values high-end customer service, you must consider utilizing a website chatbot. Website chatbots play a pivotal role in converting site visitors into long-term customers. Typically, there are different tiers of pricing and features offered by Live Chat service providers. | $0 | $200 |
Total Website Costs | $223 (min) | $7,215 (max) |
Business Formation Fees | ||
Small Business Insurance: Depending on which state you live in and the business you're operating, the costs and requirements for small business insurance vary. You can learn more here. | $500 | $2,000 |
Permit and License Fees: Depending on your industry, there are certain licenses and permits you may need in order to comply with state, local, and federal regulations. Here is an article that goes over all the permits and licenses you may need for your lead generation business. | $50 | $700 |
Lawyer Fees: Although you may want to avoid attorney fees, it's important that your business (and you) are covered at all costs. This comes into play when creating founder agreements, setting up your business legal structure, and of course, any unforeseen circumstances that may happen when dealing with customers or other businesses. | $0 | $1,500 |
Set up business: LLC & Corporations: The first step in setting up your business is deciding whether your business is an LLC, S Corp or C Corp. The cost for this depends on which state you form your business and which structure you decide on. We put together an article that goes over the 10 Steps To Setting Up A Business. | $50 | $500 |
Total Business Formation Fees | $600 (min) | $4,700 (max) |
Equipment & Supply Expenses | ||
Cleaning Supplies: Cleaning supplies are essential products we used daily at home and in almost all places worldwide. These items are used to effectively and safely remove dirt and germs to control allergens and prevent the spreading of contagious diseases, helping us stay healthy. | $63 | $200 |
Total Equipment & Supply Expenses | $63 (min) | $200 (max) |
Software Expenses | ||
Design Programs & Software: These programs might include the Adobe family of design tools: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and others. This is typically a monthly subscription ranging from $10-$50/mo. | $0 | $50 |
Email marketing tool: If you plan to grow your email list and email marketing efforts, you may want to consider investing in an email marketing platform (ie. Klaviyo, MailChimp). We put together a detailed guide on all of the email marketing tools out there + the pricing models for each one here. | $0 | $100 |
IT Support: IT support installs and configures hardware and software and solves any technical issues that may arise.IT support can be used internally or for your customers experiencing issues with your product/service.There are a variety of tools and software you can use to help with any technical issues you or your customers are experiencing. This is a great option for businesses that do not have the means to hire a team of professionals. | $150 | $2,000 |
Accounting & Invoicing Software: It's important to have an accounting system and process in place to manage financials, reporting, planning and tax preparation. Here are the 30 best accounting tools for small businesses. | $0 | $50 |
CRM Software: CRM (customer relationship management) software system is used to track and analyze your companyβs interactions with clients and prospects. Although this is not a necessary tool to have for your business, implementing this, in the beginning, may set your business up for success and save you valuable time. | $12 | $300 |
Project Management Software: You may want to consider using a project management and collaboration tool to organize your day-to-day. This can also be very beneficial if you have a larger team and want to keep track of everyones tasks and productivity. For a full list of project management tools, check out this full list here. | $0 | $25 |
Internal Communication Tool: If you plan to have multiple members on your team, you may want to consider an instant message tool such as Slack or Telegram. The cost is usually billed per month (approx $5/user/month) or there are freemium versions available on many platforms. | $0 | $20 |
Social Media Management Tools: If you plan to do social media marketing for your lead generation business, you should consider investing in a social media automation or publishing tool. This will save you time and allow you to track performance and engagement for your posts. Here is a list of 28 best social media tools for your small business. | $0 | $50 |
File Hosting Service: It's important to make sure the information for your lead generation business is stored and protected should something happen to your computer or hard drive. The cost for this is affordable and depends on how much data you need to store. To learn more about the different options and pricing on the market, check out this article. | $0 | $299 |
Total Software Expenses | $162 (min) | $2,894 (max) |
Advertising & Marketing Costs | ||
Business Cards: A lead generation business involves quite a bit of customer interaction, whether that is attending tradeshows, sales calls or simply having face to face interaction with prospective clients. Business cards are a great way to stay front of mind with your clients. | $0 | $50 |
Customer Research & Surveys: Many lead generation business's conduct industry and consumer research prior to starting their business. Often times, you need to pay for this data or hire a market research firm to help you in this process. | $0 | $300 |
Networking Membership Fees: Joining local networking groups or your chamber of commerce is a traditional yet effective way to promote your lead generation business - but these fees add up! It's important to choose the right group(s) that align with your business and help with growth. | $0 | $250 |
Direct Campaigns, Printing and Mailing: Although it may sound old-school, traditional marketing methods can be a cost-effective way to drive awareness for your brand. This includes flyers, postcards, sales letters, coupons, special offers, catalogs and brochures. | $0 | $300 |
Affiliate Marketing Commission & Fees: If you want to increase revenue for your lead generation business, affiliate marketing is a great way to promote your product to a new audience. When determining affiliate commission rates you will offer, you will want to take into account the price and margin for your product to ensure affiliate marketing is worth it for your business. According to Monitor Backlinks, the average affiliate commission rate should be somewhere between 5% to 30%. To learn more about how to set commission rates, check out this article.. | $0 | $250 |
Influencer Marketing: Partnering with like-minded influencers is one of the most effective ways to grow your social media presence. Many small businesses simply gift a free item in exchange for an influencer post, or pay the influencer directly. | $0 | $750 |
Press: If your business and story is unique enough, press and media attention may come to you, but odds are, you may need to do your own outreach and budget for this. We put together a guide here that discusses different press opportunities (both free and paid). | $0 | $500 |
Google Ads: With Google Ads you have the ability to control how much you spend by simply setting a monthly budget cap. Additionally, with these ads you only pay for results, such as clicks to your website or phone calls! It's okay to start with a small budget at first and make changes accordingly if you see valuable returns. | $0 | $300 |
Facebook & Instagram Ads: With Facebook and Instagram ads, you set your budget and pay for the actions you want (whether that be impressions, conversions, etc).You can learn more about pricing based on your impressions here. | $0 | $350 |
Total Advertising & Marketing Costs | $0 (min) | $3,050 (max) |
Total Starting Costs | $62 (min) | $25,059 (max) |
Raising Money For Your Lead Generation Business
Here are the most common ways to raise money for your lead generation business:
Bootstrapping
You may not need funding for your lead generation business.
In fact, many entrepreneurs take this approach when starting their own business, whether they have a little amount of cash or a substantial amount to get started.
So what exactly does the term "bootstrapping" mean?
This method essentially refers to self-funding your businesswithout external help or capital and reinvesting your earnings back into the business**
Bootstrapping means building your company from the ground up with your own, or your loved ones, personal savings and reinvesting all earnings back into the business
Here are some tips to consider when bootstrapping your business:
- Use your savings as your capital - one of the best ways to bootstrap your business is to collect your savings and use them as startup capital. This will also help you avoid using your personal or business credit cards when getting started.
- Determine exactly how much capital you need and how much capital you have to get your business off the ground. Generally, when bootstrapping your business, you may want to consider starting a business that involves less startup capital.
- Consider starting a business that will generate immediate returns so you can put money back into the business
- Be as lean as possible - this refers to cutting down expenses as much as possible, such as payroll, fancy software tools, unnecessary travel, renting an office, etc
- Consider outsourcing instead of hiring - in the beginning, you may not need to hire someone permanently to help run your business. It tends to be much less expensive to outsource work to a freelancer and hire someone permanently down the road!
Want to learn more about bootstrapping your business? Check out this article
VC Funding
VC funding is a traditional and long process, but an effective way to raise money for your business.
The term "VC funding" refers to venture capital firms investing in businesses in exchange for equity.
The VC's (venture capitalists) are an individual or small group investing in your business and typically require substantial ownership of the business, with the hope of seeing a return on their investment.
VC's are typically the best approach for businesses with high startup costs - where it would be very difficult to raise the money on your own or through a loan.
When deciding whether to take this approach, it's important that you have a few things in place first, and know what you're getting yourself into:
Determine if your business is ready
Having an idea is not enough to get VC funding.
Typically, VC's will check to make sure you have these things in place prior to closing any deal:
- An MVP (Minimal Viable Product)
- A founding team with all proper documents in place (articles of organization, business formation)
- A validated idea with actual customers buying your product/service
Get everything in place and build a pitch deck
A VC individual or firm will be expecting a fine-tuned presentation that gives an overview of your business.
Here's what you should consider including in your pitch deck:
- Management team, their previous experience + current roles in the business
- Market challenge and solution
- Company financials - including a P&L statement, cash flow statement, and projections
- Company progress
- Investment amount - how much do you need and why?
Research the right VC to fund your business
Research the types of VC investors out there and what niche they focus on.
Then, put together a list of target VC's you want to approach and your strategy around setting up meetings.
Be sure you have everything in place (as discussed above) before setting up any meeting!
Make sure the terms and expectations are right for your business
Committing to VC funding is a big deal and a decision that should not be made lightly.
Although the money and experience from VC's can help your business quickly grow, you are also giving away a stake in the company, and the money comes with strings attached.
Be sure you do your due diligence in finding the right investor - one that truly believes in the growth and success of your business.
Crowdfunding
For your lead generation business, a common way to raise money is through crowdfunding.
So, what does it mean to crowdfund your small business?
Crowdfunding refers to funding a project through many individual investors.
Here are some items to keep in mind when planning your campaign:
- Sell more than just your product. Sell your passion, your vision, and your story.
- Be real. Give your community honest details about your product.
- Treat your audience as your friends (not just potential customers)
- Put together a great presentation - it will attract people quicker.
To launch a successful crowdfunding campaign, you first need to select the type of crowdfunding platform to host your campaign.
Here are the most popular crowdfunding platforms to raise money on:
Kickstarter
Funding platform for creative projects.
- Pricing: Freemium
- Twitter: @kickstarter
- Website: kickstarter.com
Businesses using Kickstarter:
90 successful businesses are using Kickstarter β
Indiegogo
Crowdfunding platform for innovations in tech and design.
- Pricing: Freemium
- Twitter: @Indiegogo
- Website: indiegogo.com
Businesses using Indiegogo:
34 successful businesses are using Indiegogo β
StartEngine
Crowdfunding platform that has helped more than 350 companies raise $175M+ from a community of over 250,000 prospective investors.
- Pricing: Free
- Twitter: @StartEngineLA
- Website: startengine.com
Businesses using StartEngine:
We connected with one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns, Photobooth Supply Co, and asked founder, Brandon Wong to give us some insight on his strategy:
Product first, campaign second
So with all of those positive benefits of the platform figured out, we wanted to make sure we had the product itself in the right place before we launched.
Weβve been working on Salsa for a long time now and wouldnβt have felt comfortable revealing the ability to pay for it until we hit a very important milestone. We had a final prototype.
Doing all of the sourcing and actual production is secondaryβthere was absolutely no way we could have gone public without people being able to see real photos (and touch in person) a functioning prototype.
This meant that we had to do all of the development before we ever saw a cent.
Finding backers in the real world
We launched the product at our annual Booth Summit, which is a convention for photobooth owners to get together and learn from experts in the field. Launching a product in a receptive environment is generally considered to be a good idea. The same was definitely true for us!
We had a crowd of people who had just told us they were dedicated to growing their businessβ¦ and we had the chance to offer them a way to do just that. I really canβt emphasize enough how important it is to make products that matter for people who will care about them.
This opportunity to see the product in real life was an essential component for our launch, but it might not be the same for you. I think it just shows how essential having a great prototype is. People love to touch and feel what theyβre buying, if youβre talking about something physicalβ¦ you should be able to show a prototype before you ask for money.
Building excitement with even the smallest backers.
We knew that we wanted to have a ton of incentives for early backers so that theyβd be rewarded for taking a leap of faith on a new photobooth.
Weβre obviously not making a whole lot of money on that first $1999 tier. But it enabled people to be part of something fun.
Every $1999 backer is always going to be able to say, not just that they got a great deal, but that they were one of the first to get on board. It means a lot more than a discount code expiringβjust look at how frustrated people are on Twitter when a limited stock of rewards is secretly gobbled up.
Kickstarter doesnβt reveal the names of backers, but it humanizes them. And it just adds to the fun of getting your own spot! Even for someone backing now, theyβre able to say that they were an early adopter.
Delivering on our promise
One of the most common critiques of Kickstarter items is that they either never show up or that they take years. I wanted to make sure that our timeline was easy to deliver and also reasonable.
Nobody deserves to wait two years for your product after they pay for it. I felt like we needed to offer a much quicker turnaround than that. We launched on Black Friday 2018 with an estimated delivery of April 2019.
Thatβs under 6 months and much lower than the average Kickstarter! The most important thing is that we will be able to meet that timeline. You canβt go around promising delivery dates and missing them, this isnβt a consumer product.
Anytime youβre working with the events industry you have to be very transparent and up front about timelines. A bride who books a photobooth needs it to show up on her wedding day. Itβs non-negotiable!
Business Accelerator
Accelerators are organizations that offer a range of support and funding opportunities for startups.
Typically, this means they help enroll startups in programs that offer mentorship, office space, and resources to grow the business.
These programs are typically 3-4 months and involve intense education and mentorship - most importantly, the startups also offered capital and investment in return for equity.
Here are some of the most popular and well-known startup accelerators in the U.S:
Here are some tips on how to get into an accelerator program:
- Have an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) in place
- Make sure you have actual customers and an overview of how your business is doing (revenue, site traffic, growth metrics)
- Build a team
- Crush your interview - this is a critical piece in the process. Know your business and metrics inside out and most importantly, be able to portray what makes it so unique.
What Skills Do I Need To Succeed In Starting A Lead Generation Business?
As a lead generation business, there are several essential skills and characteristics that are important to identify prior to starting your business.
Letβs look at these skills in more detail so you can identify what you need to succeed in your day-to-day business operations:
*Negotiation Skills
The ability to negotiate on behalf of your client will be an essential part of your every day job.
This is one of the most important qualities you can have when starting a lead generation business, so it's important you practice and perfect these skills.
Here's what this looks like:
- Ability to analyze all parts of the deal: your biggest power is to understand and analyze all parts of the deal for your client, choose when to walk away, and know to what lengths you can negotiate a deal.
- Building rapport: This is key in the lead generation business. You are much likely to reach an agreement and favorable terms if you spend just a few moments getting to know each other before talking about the deal at stake.
- Be diplomatic: Being in control of any situation presented and showing intention with your words are key qualities for someone in this line of work. This includes asking good questions and listening actively.
Becoming a good negotiator does not happen overnight, but as long as you are persistent with practicing these skills and putting them into action, you will see growth day by day!
Customer Service Skills
Friendly communication with customers and the ability to address service issues is a critical part of the job.
Here are some customer service skills you may want to consider prior to starting a lead generation business:
- Professionalism: The way you act, present yourself, and respond to situations all leave an impression on your customer. It's important to stay professional at all times when handling customer requests or issues.
- Problem-solving: When issues arise, it's important that you are able to think quick on your feet and address the situation with a calm and clear solution
- Friendly-manner: This is an obvious one, but customers truly appreciate someone that can respond in a quick, efficient, and friendly manner.
- Proficient in writing: These skills include the ability to write well-crafted emails, service tickets, and any other programs used by the business (ie. chat functions, SMS texting)
Business Savvy Skills
When starting a lead generation business, there are a few fundamental business skills you will want to learn in order to be successful:
- Leadership and training skills: A great team starts with YOU. Make sure you have all company policies and training procedures in place prior to hiring your team
- Decisive and self-confident: Over the course of your career, you will need decisions that could impact your business significantly. It's important you are able to think clearly and rationally about these decisions.
- Ability to understand the financials: You don't need to be an accountant, but it is important that you are able to clearly understand and define metrics such as expenses, revenue, profit, margins, COGS, etc.
- Strategic Thinking: Setting clear goals and benchmarks, identifying opportunities, risks. Ability to effectively communicate these insights to your team.
These are a few of many business savvy skills you should have (or work on) when starting a lead generation business.
For a full list, check out this article here.
Resarch and Writing Skills
Research and writing skills are critical when starting a lead generation business. Here's what this looks like:
- Basic computer & technology skills (Microsoft office or Google sheets/docs knowledge, data input, and proficiency in typing)
- Creativity & originality in your work and approach
- Great communication skills and ability to meet deadlines
- Understanding of SEO
Other skills that businesses find valuable include digital marketing skills, basic web design, and accounting abilities. Some employers may also look for a lead generation business that has a bachelor's degree or formal education.
Additionally, you may want to consider putting together a portfolio of past work and experience. This includes samples of writing/research pieces, from school projects to internship work to career experience.
Advice For Starting A Lead Generation Business
We've interviewed thousands of successful founders at Starter Story and asked what advice they would give to entrepreneurs who are just getting started.
Here's the best advice we discovered for starting a lead generation business:
Dancho Dimkov, founder of BizzBee Solutions ($26K/month):
Invest in self-development, be persistent, and consistently seek new ways to innovate. Growing a business is a journey, and it requires patience and dedication.
Read the full interview β
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Joel Allen, founder of GoEdison ($18K/month):
Work well and efficiently for 4 hours rather than non-stop and sporadically for 9. I can 100% promise that it will be more effective.
Read the full interview β
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Ross Knap, founder of CallPage ($65K/month):
Taking part in a startup accelerator gave us the opportunity to interact with other startups and learn from each other
Read the full interview β
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Vito Vishnepolsky, founder of Martal Group ($/month):
Entrepreneur success is always going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.
Read the full interview β
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Joel Allen, founder of GoEdison ($18K/month):
Too often we want to get a little too creative with our new services. Do what works and do whatβs simple when you first start out.
Read the full interview β
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Josh Haynam and Matthew Clark, founder of Interact ($208K/month):
You can go faster alone, further together. On your own, you can sprint, run through walls, and get stuff shipped. But youβll reach your limit.
Read the full interview β
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Kristian Zivokovic, founder of Skylead ($0/month):
What Iβve learned from this experience and wish I could say to my βyounger selfβ would be to focus more on what customers say, learn from their feedback, and develop the software further from there instead of relying majorly on our vision.
Read the full interview β
-
Write a Business Plan
Writing a business plan from the start is critical for the success of your lead generation business.
Why?
Because this allows you to roadmap exactly what you do, what your overall structure will look like, and where you want to be in the future.
For many entrepreneurs, writing out the business plan helps validate their idea and decide whether or not they should move forward with starting the business.
You may want to consider expanding upon these sections in your business plan:
- Executive Summary: Brief outline of your product, the market, and growth opportunities
- Overviews and Objectives: Overview of your business, target customers, and what you need to run your business
- Products and Services: Specifics on the products and services your business will provide
- Market Opportunities: Analysis of customer demographics, buyer habits and if your product is in demand
- Marketing: Outline of your marketing plan and how you plan to differentiate yourself from other customers
- Competitive analysis: Analysis of your competition and the strengths and weaknesses therein
- Operations: Hierarchal structure of the company and what it will take to run the business on the day-to-day
- Leadership Team: Detailing roles and responsibilities of each manager based on their specific skill-set
- Financial Analysis Understanding of all expenses, operating budgets, and projections for the future.
Learn more about how to write a business plan here
Determine Which Business Bank Account You Need
There are hundreds of banks out there, and it can be overwhelming to find one that's right for your business.
Here are some factors you may want to consider:
- Location - Is your bank close enough that you can easily make deposits or get cash?
- Low Fees - Make sure to understand any and all fees associated with setting up and maintaining your bank account. Ask for a list - banks usually try to keep this hidden and in the fine print.
- Online Banking Services - Make sure you can easily navigate through your online portal and you have easy access to everything you need.
- Line of Credit - What do your options look like (even if you don't need this now, you may need this down the road).
- Every bank has something that differentiates them from the rest, so make sure whatever that is applied to your needs and values.
Check out this list of the 13 Best Banks for Small Business in 2020 and what makes them so unique.
Setting Up Your Lead Generation Business (Formation and Legal)
When it comes to setting up your business, you may find yourself in a place where you have to make some financial and legal decisions.
The first thing you'll want to decide on is whether you want to be an LLC, S-Corp, or C-Corp.
These three options are found to be the most common when starting a small business, and all serve to protect your personal assets and also provide you with certain tax benefits.
- LLC: All income and expenses from the business are reported on the LLC personal income tax return.
- S corp: Owners pay themselves salaries + receive dividends from profits.
- C Corp: C Corps are separately taxable entities that file a corporate tax return (Form 1120). No income tax is paid at the corporate level and any tax due is paid at the owners individual expense.
Depending on where you're conducting business, you'll also want to consider securing the proper permits, licenses and liability insurance.
Learn more about securing the right permits and licenses β
Need to start an LLC? Create an LLC in minutes with ZenBusiness.
How Do I Pay Myself As A Small Business Owner?
Most entrepreneurs start a business to do something they love- but at the end of the day, you still have bills to pay (maybe now more than ever).
But it's important to strike the right balance - if you pay yourself too much, you could be putting your business at risk.
There are two common ways to pay yourself as a business owner:
1. Owner's Draw
Many entrepreneurs pay themselves through an owner's draw. This means that you are technically sean as "self-employed" through the eyes of the IRS and are not paid through regular wages.
At the point that you collect money from the draw, taxes typically are not taken out - so make sure you are prepared to pay these taxes once you file your individual return.
As an owner who takes a draw, you can legally take out as much as you want from your equity.
This type of compensation is suited for Sole props, LLCs, and partnerships. If youβre an S corp, you can pay yourself through both a salary and draw if you choose.
2. Salary
If you decide to pay yourself a salary, you will receive a set and recurring amount. This will be taxed by the federal government and the state you reside in.
The reality is that it can be really complicated to set your own salary, so we have some tips for you to consider:
- Take out a reasonable amount that allows you to live comfortably but also sets your business up for success
- Consider the number of hours you are working weekly + the type of duties you are performing.
- Set your salary based on your industry-standard, location, and profits (or projected profits)
- Look at your P&L statement: Deduct your own pay from that amount. This is important so you can first tackle important business expenses, and then pay yourself from the amount leftover.
- Pick a payroll schedule (and stick to it)! In the US, it's most common to pay yourself and employees twice a month.
To learn more about how to pay yourself and what is a reasonable amount, check out this article.
How To Price Your Lead Generation
One of the most challenging aspects to starting a lead generation business is determining how much to charge for your lead generation.
When businesses under-price their product, this can be extremely detrimental to their bottom line and reputation.
Often times, businesses under-price their products to drive demand and volume, but that last thing you want is for customers to view your product/service as "cheap." Additionally, this can have a big impact on the type of customer you attract, which can be difficult to recover from.
On the other hand, when businesses over-price, this tends to be just as damaging to the business.
When customers buy, it's likely that they will explore the internet and look at other competitors to ensure they're getting the best value + deal. This is why it's so important that you research your competition and understand where you land in the marketplace.
Here are some factors to consider when pricing your product:
Understand your customer
It's important that out of the gates, you identify the type of customer you want to attract and how much they're willing to pay for your service. One great way to do this is by surveying your customers. Here are some important items you'll want to takeaway:
- Customer demographic: Age, gender, location, etc.
- Buying habits of your customer: What they buy + when they buy
- Level of price sensitivity with your customer
All of these segments will help you identify the type of customer you're attracting and how to price your product accordingly.
Understand your costs
When pricing your lead generation, it's critical that you first identify all of your costs and consequently mark up your lead generation so you can factor in a profit.
The actual cost of your lead generation may include things like:
- The actual cost to make the product (ie. raw materials, supplies, manufacturer).
- Shipping + overhead fees
- Rent
- Operating costs to run your business
You may want to consider creating a spreadsheet with every single expense involved in operating/owning your business. This will give you an idea as to what you need to generate in order to at the very least, break-even and will help you price your products to factor in a profit.
Create revenue goals
When determining the price of your lead generation, you'll want to create goals for revenue + how much profit you want your lead generation business to make.
This process is simpler than you may think:
- Think about your breakeven cost (by completing the above step).
- Create a revenue goal based on your break-even cost
- Evaluate the # of items you plan to sell in a given period (make sure this is a realistic number)
- Divide your revenue goal by the number of items you plan to sell
This figure will help determine your estimated price per product in order to meet your revenue goals.
Evaluate your competition
The last piece in determining how to price your lead generation is by simply looking at your competition.
The best way to do this is by finding like-minded businesses that offer product(s) with similar perceived value. Then, you can compare prices of the different businesses and determine where your lead generation fits best in the marketplace.
All of these factors play an equal part in pricing your lead generation, so it's important you evaluate each one individually to come up with an accurate price that will help optimize your business from the start.
Rate Calculator: How to Calculate The Price For Your Lead Generation Services
Our calculator is designed to be simple and easy to use.
The goal is to help you set realistic expectations and understand the hourly rate you should be charging to make your desired profit.
Please input below:
What Type Of Clients Will Buy Your Lead Generation
It's important to first establish who you will be selling to, whether it's to businesses or consumers.
Typically, in this industry, products are sold to B2B markets (business-to-business).
Let's take a look at what this means for your lead generation business:
B2B (or business to business) is a transaction where your lead generation business sell's your product or service to other businesses to help them grow.
Business-to business industries typically includes SaaS products, B2B marketing firms, and other business supply companies.
Unlike B2C markets, the audience is not a consumer at all, but instead a business - so it's important to understand how to best market your product/services to that target audience.
With B2B, driving leads means understanding another company's business processes and creating a business strategy that will help their operation scale and grow.
Here are some tips to consider:
- Your main focus when selling to other businesses is showing value to their business and overall return on investment
- Focus on building relationships, rather than extending your brand awareness through social networks.
- Marketing approach should include things like attending conventions, conferences, and optimizing your online presence (SEO, email outreach, etc)
- Understand that the sales process may mean more effort educating your client, so it's important that you have a well-trained sales team that is knowledgable about the product
Identify Target Customer
A very critical piece in building lead generation business is to identify your ideal target customer.
- Develop a niche and create a consistent brand that reflects your target customer.
- The colors, logo, content, and overall website should resonate with your target customer and should draw them in by helping them solve their specific "need".
Building an MVP (Minimal Viable Product)
When building a lead generation business, it's critical that you first validate your product/service rather than rushing to build it right away.
This could save you months, if not years of building the wrong product/service.
If you're hoping to decrease any sort of risk that comes with launching your lead generation business, designing a prototype can be a great way to de-risk your situation.
The point of your lead generation prototype is that it doesn't have to be perfect.
In the beginning stages, it doesn't matter how rough V1 of your prototype is, it's more important to just get started and you can always refine from there based on feedback from your network and most importantly your customers.
How To Build A MVP
Here are several different ways of building a prototype/MVP:
- Start by building a landing page to see if customers actually need your product and if they are willing to pay for it
- Build a very basic version of your idea and ask for immediate feedback from potential customers
- Present a problem and solution via Facebook/Instagram Ads and see what the response is like
Jeff Pedowitz, founder of The Pedowitz Group dives deep into the process of designing and prototyping their product:
Jeff: With consulting, itβs all about what you know - and demonstrating that to your target market. I had worked at Eloqua for some time, including as VP of Professional Services, and when I first went there the concept of lead scoring, now a very common practice thatβs been around for many yearsβ¦ didnβt exist yet.
Our team created this entire model of implicit and explicit scores and how that impacted your database and it kept Eloqua at the forefront for many companies. Business was great!
But when we started this new company, it was all about proving your expertise to the market. And as a new company, that was reliant much more on word of mouth and industry connections that we had built up.
We knew what we wanted to do, but to be honest - when youβre consulting, you do what the client needs. We had just moved into a new house, we had three young (and hungry!) kids, and so our first job was working on redesigning an environmental companyβs collateral. I am more of an engineer, so you could say this was not my forteβ¦ but we made it happen.
Cherie: I remember one time sitting up all night downloading files onto thousands of USBs for a clientβs trade show giveaway. It was a βwhatever it takesβ mentality.
Thankfully, word of mouth with Jeffβs previous work led to us getting more work very quickly, and then partnerships with some of the major companies in the marketing space accelerated that.
An in-company meeting around 2015, which included charitable work for Habitat for Humanity
Jeff with Bruce Culbert celebrating The Pedowitz Group winning a Pacesetter Award from Atlanta Business Chronicle in 2011
π How To Launch Your Lead Generation Business
Build A Website
Building a website is imperative when launching your business, and with the right tools in place, this can be a simple task to check off the list (without having to hire someone).
- Pick a domain name that's easy to remember and easy to type
- Choose a Web Hosting Plan (ie. Shopify, Squarespace)
- Make sure you choose the right theme and design
- Implement the proper page structure (ie. about page, contact page, pricing etc)
To learn more about how to build a stellar website with little stress, we give you all the details on this step-by-step guide.
Best Website Platforms To Use For Your Lead Generation Business:
There are a variety of websites platforms out there, and it's important to choose the right one that will set you up for success.
Here's everything you need to know about the two most common platforms for your lead generation business:
WordPress
Free and open-source content management system based on PHP and MySQL.
Free to use/open source but you will need to pay for the hosting.
- Pricing: Freemium
- Twitter: @WordPress
- Website: https://wordpress.com/
Businesses using WordPress:
842 successful businesses are using WordPress β
Squarespace
The all-in-one solution for anyone looking to create a beautiful website.
- Personal Plan: $12/month
- Business Plan: $18/month
- Basic: $26/month
Advanced: $40/month
Pricing: Freemium
Twitter: @squarespace
Website: squarespace.com
Businesses using Squarespace:
133 successful businesses are using Squarespace β
Web Design
Once you have chosen the domain, web hosting, and platform, it's time to get started with the design phase.
Themes are a great way to produce the fundamental style and identity of your website - this includes everything from your font design to your blog post styles.
One of the best ways to get started is to simply explore the various themes (free or paid depending on what you're looking for) and test them on your site.
If web-design really isn't in the cards for you, you may want to consider outsourcing a web designer to help bring your vision and brand to life.
Traditional Launch Strategies For Your Lead Generation Business:
There are various different ways you can launch your lead generation business successfully.
Here are a few different strategies to get customers excited about your lead generation business:
- Set up a Facebook page for your business. This is a great way to establish an online presence
- Host an event in a fun location with drinks & food. This is a great way to get exposure in the local community.
- Get Press! Pitch your story to the media and you may just land in an amazing publication
- Live sales to get customers excited
- Send a hand-written letter in the mail with a discount on your services to the local community/neighborhoods.
Maria Popova, founder of Wealth Lead Generation dives deep into the process of launching the business:
We started with building an Instagram following. It took about a year before we started seeing results and some traction. It can be done much faster with an investment of under $2000. We used paid follower growth on Instagram through a combination of shoutouts and giveaways on influencer and celebrity pages. This way you can attract real active accounts. We retained the growth by sharing social media hacks and implementing a hashtag strategy. To increase engagement, we post reels. Currently, lead gen campaigns on Instagram and Facebook are one of our main sources of new leads. If you are just starting on Instagram and you have a $5000 budget, you can buy an account in your niche with following and engagement and rebrand it. That will save you a ton of time and money.
Part of our daily life is busting myths about social media and explaining them to our clients. Growing organically on Instagram is now next to impossible. We are upfront with our clients about it offering them premium paid follower growth as a service and assisting with a monetization strategy so that they can see a return on investment faster. We also understand that not everyone agrees to play the paid Instagram game, however, based on our experience and clients' success stories, the cost of missed opportunity is much higher in the long term if you decide not to. Social media monetization is one of our most important USPs. Having spoken to hundreds of entrepreneurs, we realized that social media remains a stigma for many. One of our greatest strengths is that we help our clients turn every social account into a revenue-generating funnel.
If you are looking to grow organically on social media, TikTok might be the right platform for you. By posting 3 times a day you can grow very quickly there and land new business as you do so.
We did get a simple website, however, we didn't actively promote it and used it mostly for credibility. Make sure to have a contact form and a clear call to action.
For financing, my partner and I used a buffer that we've built from working full time and 2 credit cards with a total limit of $3500.
There was no official launch, we just started reaching out to hundreds of business owners cold and let our existing network know about what we do. We pretty much used every opportunity to talk about our business. Since we started with paid ads, we started landing new clients immediately in high volume.
Paid follower growth helped us to increase the response rate from the cold outreach on Instagram and LinkedIn. We crafted a simple message that would pick the interest of business owners and allow us to start a conversation. Having a website also helps to increase your online credibility. Most of the business owners would check it to see if you are legit. We wouldn't recommend investing too much money into it. We have done a bit of cold-calling and cold emailing, but that hasn't been very successful, so we stopped. We started the cold outreach with hundreds of messages weekly, but soon realized that it didn't produce the results we expected. Instead, we decided to identify 10-20 ideal clients and started building long-term relationships with them strategically by providing advice and value.
Currently, we acquire new leads through a combination of paid ads on Instagram and Facebook, outbound cold outreach on Instagram and LinkedIn, and networking and referrals. We don't believe that one method is better than the other and use what works in combination. This way we make sure our pipeline is always full.
Lately, we started meeting people face-to-face and taking field trips to clients and noticed that it also helps to increase trust and build stronger relationships.
We did grow slowly in the beginning, because we were both working full time and spent every waking hour building new connections. All that took place during the lockdown in early 2021, so networking events, meetings in person, and travel weren't an option. We had to go all-in on social media.
We almost gave up realizing that the amount of action required to kick it off is much stronger than what the two of us could do. What we learned from that is that it's okay to ask for help from somebody more experienced and who has walked a similar path before.
Always be on the lookout for somebody who does it (cold acquisition, sales, management, etc.) better and finds a way to offer them value in return for sharing their knowledge.
Get Press Coverage For Your Lead Generation Business
The more buzz around your brand - the more the phones ring, the more traffic to your website, and the more customers as a result.
Here are a few ways you can get press for your business:
Press releases:
Press releases are a great way to share big announcements or news, but in order to get any traction, you'll need to find a way to make your press release stand out amongst others.
Try to convey a story that really matters, not just to you, but to the reporter and to their audience.
Here are some things to consider when submitting a press release:
- Craft a catchy subject (keep it short and sweet).
- Acknowledge the journalist's past work and interests - this is key!
- Include the main point of the story in the first paragraph, heck, even the first sentence. Reporters want to hear the juice first and foremost.
- Focus on the facts and try to limit the amount of jargon used.
- Pitch yourself! Help them put a face to the story.
- Make sure your topic is newsworthy. If it's not, find a way to!
- Try not to include any attachments of your release!
Email is one of the most effective and preferred way to send your press release, so as long as you keep your pitch brief, interesting and personalized (no cold emails), you should stand a chance!
Get Press Using HARO
HARO, otherwise known as "Help a Reporter Out" is an outlet for journalists to source upcoming stories and opportunities for media coverage.
The best part is, HARO is free to use! There are, of course, premium versions you can purchase, but the free version is still an accessible way to get press.
Once you set up an account, HARO essentially will email you based on stories (that are relevant to you) that need to be covered where you will then have a chance to essentially "bid on the story."
Here are some tips when crafting your pitch:
- Discuss your experience and expertise in the space. Make sure it's obvious why you're relevant to this story.
- Answer the question in 3-4 sentences. Try and be as direct as possible
- Offer to provide the reporter with more information and make sure to give them your contact info
Plan a Publicity Stunt
Planning a publicity stunt is an effective and quick way to raise awareness for your brand and gain some traction from the press.
If you're looking to plan a stunt, the objective should be to be bold and create something memorable
However, being bold has a fine line - it's important that you consider the timing of your stunt to ensure you don't come off insensitive or unethical. For example, timing may not be in your favor if you plan something during the general election, or in most recent cases, a global pandemic.
In order to measure the success of your stunt, it's important that you first determine your end goal, for example:
- Is the stunt aimed to raise money for your business or a particular organization?
- Is the stunt aimed to drive more traffic to your website?
- Is the stunt aimed to get more followers and engagement on Instagram?
Here are a few tips for creating a great publicity stunt:
- Research to ensure that there haven't been similar stunts done in the past by other businesses - this could easily turn off journalists and your audience.
- Make sure you can explain the stunt in one headline - this will help grab the media's attention. In other words, simplify!
- The stunt should be related to the product you are promoting. Even if the stunt is a success in terms of viewers, but it doesn't tie back to your original goal, then it's not useful.
- Keep the stunt visual with videos/images.
- Leverage the internet and social media platforms for your stunt by sharing your message across a variety of audiences. This will help with word of mouth and the overall success of your event.
To learn other strategies on how to get press, check out our full guide here.
π± How To Grow Your Lead Generation Business
Consider Working With Instagram Influencers
Partnering with like-minded influencers (within your industry) is one of the most effective ways to grow your social media organically.
Industry influencers already have an established and loyal following. With one post, your product immediately establishes a connection with a brand new audience. It's that powerful.
When finding influencers to promote your product, do your research and make sure that their following will actually be interested in your product.
It's easy to be blinded by any influencer with a huge following, but if those followers don't resonate with your product, there may not be any value there... so make sure you do your research!
Evan Marshall, founder of Plain Jane discusses how "micro-influencers" have impacted his business:
Influencer marketing has been huge for us. Our approach is pretty simple. We give out samples of our products and ask people to post about us on social media aka a micro-influencer strategy.
We really like this approach because we get authentic stories and content. We cannot really control the messaging so the product has to speak for itself. We donβt really take product photos at all. Our customers take the photos and we ask to reuse them.
With any influencer strategy, you have to be very sure youβre targeting the right people and engaging with them. You can make sure youβre targeting the right influencers by looking through their posts and then looking through the profiles of their engaged followers.
It takes more time per influencer but the payoff is certainly worth it. Make sure their followers look like your existing customers.
It takes a ton of time and work to grow a social media following this way but itβs worth it. Other accounts have tried to grow themselves through botting or other manipulations. As a CBD company, we didnβt want to give Instagram any reason to shutdown our account so weβve done everything through content and real engagement. Itβs not magic to make this happen. You just have to post consistently and then reply or like every single comment you get. It takes months but it works
Improve your SEO
SEO is not just about driving traffic to your site, it's about driving the RIGHT traffic to your site, and ultimately, converting leads into customers.
One of the most important aspects of SEO is understanding what your customers are searching for, otherwise known as "keyword research."
Here are some tools that can help you choose the right keywords for your lead generation business.
- Google Ads Keyword Planner invaluable for discovering search trends.
- Google Search Console is very helpful once your website is up as it shows you what words/phrases are generating traffic.
- Ahrefs and SEMRush are paid tools that allow you to look at results of your competitor's website.
Publish Great Content
Finding keywords is an important piece of the puzzle, but Google also ranks your site based on the actual content you produce, as this is what your customers are reading and engaging with.
There are various different "forms" of content that you may want to consider diversifying on your sites, such as blog posts, articles, studies, and videos.
So let's discuss what google considers "good content:"
- Length - This will vary depending on the page, however, generally having a sufficient amount of content helps search engines recognize that your site is a good source for a specific topic
- Engagement - The longer people stay on your website to read your content, the higher Google will rank your website. It's important to have informative and "thick" content that keeps people reading
- Avoid Duplicating Content - Google will recognize this and may consider your content to have low value
- Ensure pages load quickly - This will also help with engagement and time spent on your website
- Shareability - Create content that people want to share, and is easy for them to share, especially to their social media accounts (ie. "click to tweet" is a great example of this).
Another element of creating good content is creating consistent content.
If (and hopefully you are) publishing content frequently, it's important to stick to a schedule - this helps build brand trust and easy user experience with your customers.
Planning out your content with a content calendar is key to staying consistent.
Here are a few great content calendar tools that can help you:
Backlinks
Backlinks are an important piece to SEO, as they allow for other websites to link to your content.
Search engines recognize that other sites are essentially "verifying" your content and essentially rank you higher because of this.
Of course, some links are more valuable than others and can affect your site in different ways.
For example, if a highly valuable and credible site like the New York Times links to a page on your website, this could be remarkable from an SEO perspective.
Aside from organically getting mentioned from other sites, there are other ways that you can increase and earn backlinks:
- Create infographics with relevant data that people want to share
- Promote your content on different sites/look into "guest blogging"
- Contact influencers/journalists/bloggers and ask them to mention you!
- Write testimonials for other sites in exchange for a backlink
- Leverage existing business relationships
Learn more about the fundamentals of SEO β here and check out Neil Patel's 3 Powerful SEO Tips below
Build A Blog
One of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and grow your business is through consistently blogging.
We've outlined some useful tips for you to consider when creating content:
Consistency and Quantity
Quality is important, but it should be the standard for any content you publish.
Whatβs more important is consistency and quantity.
Consistency is as simple as committing to publishing and sharing a certain number of posts per week. For me, thatβs three per week right now.
This kind of commitment is key, because one day, a random post will blow up, and you will have never expected it.
Oversaturation
The easiest mind trap is to think "Iβm posting too much", and βI need to give my readers/audience/this platform a breakβ.
This is nonsense.
There is no such thing as oversaturation. Well, there is, but it is just someone elseβs opinion.
For every person that tells you you are posting too much, there is another person that wants even more of your content.
You should ignore peopleβs opinions on how much you post.
Patience & Persistence
Keep posting, keep trying, and keep putting out good content on the regular. Your time will come, and when it does, it will change everything.
The only thing you have control over is your content.
You canβt control how people will react to it. You canβt control pageviews, likes, or shares.
So the only metric you should focus on is how much content you can put out in a week, month, etc.
Where to share your blog content
Mailing List
I know it sounds obvious, but the best places to share your content is on your mailing list. It is guaranteed traffic and it is a great way to get rapid feedback from your most loyal readers.
Send newsletters often. I have done once a week since starting, and Iβm moving to twice a week soon.
Work on increasing your mailing list as well. Look into ways to increase your conversion rate to your mailing list. I added a flyout popup thing to my site and now Iβm collecting ~30 emails per day.
An email newsletter is one of the most powerful assets you can have and it is worth its weight in gold.
Reddit is one of my favorite places to promote content.
It is a very scary place because you will often get banned or heckled, but it can really pay off.
Create social media accounts for your blog, the main ones I use:
Twitter Facebook Instagram LinkedIn
Set up Buffer and share all of your blog posts to all of your accounts. All of these little shares really do add up.
Automate this as much as possible. I automated all of my social media for Starter Story.
Facebook Groups
When I started out, I put together a spreadsheet of relevant Facebook groups for my niche, and I would post to these groups whenever I had a big story I wanted to share.
Grow Your Email List
The more engaged list of emails, the more engaged customers, which ultimately leads to more sales.
One of the best ways to start growing your list is by providing your customer with something free (or discounted) in return.
This could also be anything from:
- Ebook
- Fascinating case study
- Video series
- Free week of the product
- Discount on the product
Learn more about how to grow your email list and improve email marketing β here.
Dylan Jacob, founder of Brumate states their email collection tactic that is proven to work:
We use Spin-a-Sale for this (you spin a wheel for a discount code in exchange for subscribing to our email list). This has been the best email-collecting tool we have found because the customer truly feels like they won a prize rather than just a coupon code.
Even if a customer doesnβt convert right away, if we have their email we have a 19% chance of converting them into a future customer whether that is through future promotions, new releases, or simply just sending an email at the right time for a purchase to finally make sense for them.
We also have a return customer rate of over 14%, so one out of every 6 people we convert will end up buying from us again with an average order value of over $60.00.
Add an exit-intent popup to your online store
A great way to double, or even triple, your email opt-in rate and to grow your list is to add an exit-intent popup to your site, and offering a discount or content upgrade for subscribers.
Here's an example of what that might look like:
One thing that I spent years NOT doing, that I now kick myself about, is adding an "exit intent pop-up" to our site, which lets people enter a sweepstakes to win a Xero Shoes gift certificate.
That one idea has added over 100,000 subscribers to our email list, which is one of our most effective marketing channels.
Improve Your Email Marketing
Different types of emails
Here are the most common types of email campaigns you can send to your customers and their benefits:
- Welcome emails - the perfect way to provide information from the start with a clear CTA. Make sure to tell your customer everything they need to know about your product or service.
- Newsletters - a great way to give customers updates or send out your latest content
- Product launch emails - the quickest (and easiest) way to increase sales is by selling to current customers. Make sure they're the first on the list to know about your new product
- Promotional emails - promote discounts, deals coupons etc. Try and make this feel exclusive and for a limited time only
- Abandoned cart emails - give your customers a reason to complete their purchase!
Here's a great resource for finding curated email designs, for all types of email campaigns!
Abandonded Cart Flow
The abandoned cart workflow is one of the most effective strategies for turning your lead into a customer, and a powerful tool to have if you're an e-commerce business.
Think about all the times that you went on a shopping frenzy only to add items to your cart and then either forget or realize nows not the right time to pull the trigger.
Then, minutes later you receive an email saying "Hurry up! Your cart is waiting - and we want to provide you with 20% off your order."
Maybe that's the special touch (and discount) you needed to pull that trigger.
Implementing this workflow can automatically trigger this for your business every time a customer abandons their cart.
Here's a great example of an abandoned cart email from Brooklinen:
Things they do well:
- Showcase 5-star reviews from other customers
- Offer a small discount + free shipping
- Great design + clear call to actions!
Experiment With Pay Per Click Ads (PPC)
Pay-per-click (PPC) is a performance-based marketing method that allows you to show specific ads for services or products oriented to a very defined target, with the goal that the user visits your website or landing page.
Here are some tips to consider:
- Consider connecting the ad to your corresponding landing page so that the audience receives the necessary information after clicking on the ad.
- Conversion Tracking: When running PPC campaigns, be sure to run the ads with conversion tracking.
- Focus on quality keywords, even if there are few as this will save you time and money. When assessing the performance of a keyword, it's important to track the expense, conversion, and cost per conversion, as well as the ROI.
PPC advertising can be a very important lead generator as long as it's done properly. Your PPC campaign is intended to drive traffic to your website and help the business scale.
Additionally, if the campaign is not having the desired results, you can make the necessary changes immediately to improve them.
Ryan Schortmann, founder of Display Pros talks about their investment in PPC Ads:
My name is Ryan Schortmann and Iβm the founder of Display Pros. We are a custom trade show display booth company offering easy to use portable display βkitsβ for small and medium businesses wanting to get into the trade show game.
It did not take long to come to the realization that to compete at any reasonable level, we were going to need to take the plunge and invest in Pay Per Click ads and display.
From experience, I know that it is important to give Googleβs hivemind some time to settle in before each campaign starts seeing consistent results (this is largely dependent on budget).
A certain amount of PPC budget must be viewed as a βmarketing researchβ expense and then you can look at the analytics data and make informed decisions on where to refine, tweak or plain scrap an idea.
Google Shopping was an entirely new concept for me. You canβt assign keywords to products so at first, I was asking myself βHow the hell do you refine these?β. Then I found some good reading material and courses and learned of some advanced methods that the pros are using. It turns out you can utilize negative keyword lists combined with the priority setting on each shopping campaign to βshapeβ the keywords that are coming in and how much you are spending on them.
To learn more about PPC Ads and Google Shopping, check out this video to learn everything you need to know!
Build A Facebook Community
Building a community is a great way to grow your network and your business.
There are several different ways of building a community, one of the most effective (and simplest) ways is to build a Facebook group
Setting up the group page takes less than 10 minutes, and we've outlined ways the top 5 ways to create an engaging and successful group:
- Make the group exclusive. This may sound counter-intuitive, however, this ensures privacy and that the group will feel comfortable posting and engaging with members.
- Try to be warm and welcoming. A great way to do this is by having a "Member Monday" where you welcome new members and ask them to introduce themselves in the group
- Use polls/surveys. This is a great way to know your audience and see what people want more of in the group (more business tips, networking opportunities, etc).
- Include influential people & conduct AMA's (ask me anything). This is a great way to get members engaged
- Host an in-person (or virtual) event with members in the group. This will create stronger relationships and build a strong community.
Mike Doehla, founder of Stronger U, an online nutrition company noticed that his customers needed a little motivation and sense of community:
Most diets are lonely so we wanted to give support and a community.
I think many people fail diets because there is no one to talk to and no accountability.
You can by a book, or google a meal plan but whoβs going to keep you on track? We will. The entire SU community.
We give our members access for life to our Facebook community filled with people around the world who are looking out for everyoneβs success.
Most diets make up arbitrary rules and we thought they just didnβt make sense. Meal timing, Cutting carbs, butter in coffee, sugar being the devil? Ehh no need to overthink that stuff.
Weβll give you the science behind of what we do and show you what actually matters based on real research.
Luckily we have a PhD at our disposal to educate our staff and members so everyone is getting the most up to date information out there.
Social Media Advertising
Social Media Advertising is one of the leading ways to get the word out when it comes to lead generation business.
There are various different Social Media platforms available to you. Some may be more critical for your marketing efforts than others, however, it's important to have an understanding of what's out there and available to you.
Let's talk about a few of the main platforms and what makes them unique:
- Facebook Advertising - more than 2 billion monthly users. Facebook is the best for lead generation + capturing email addresses for e-commerce businesses.
- Instagram Advertising - approximately 500 million monthly users and has a higher audience engagement rate than any other platform. Instagram ads are best for linking to a product page or landing page and reaches the 18-29 age group most effectively.
- Twitter Advertising- Small businesses typically use twitter ads to drive brand awareness, but the platform is meant more for organic engagement (and is not as heavily used for paid advertising)
- Pinterest Advertising - 175 million monthly users and most effectively reaches the female audience. Pinterest is great for promoting products without "promoted". The promoted pins have a way of blending right in.
- LinkedIn Advertising - 227 million monthly users and is geared towards the B2B market and generates the highest quality leads. Great platform for recruiters, high-end products and services that will help businesses
It's important to first define your goal/objective so that you don't waste time and money into the wrong platform:
Here are some different questions to ask yourself as it relates to your goals:
- Do I want to simply drive brand awareness?
- Do I want to drive users to my website to gather information?
- Do I want to increase sales and get my customer to take action?
From there, choose the platform that targets your audience best and start experimenting!
Learn more about social media advertising β here.
Founder Andy Hayes talks about mastering FB ads and the pixel:
The biggest bang for your buck will likely be mastering Facebook and itβs platform - which we all know is pay for play, so youβll have to come up with a small amount of budget to start for marketing.
Weβve spent countless hours (and paid numerous coaches) before we cracked the code that works for us on Facebook, but it is working really well for us now.
Some of the most important things to know when it comes to FB Ads:
- Start with retargeting (thatβs showing ads to people who already know you but did not purchase). Master this - and start building information on your Facebook Pixel - before you do anything else
- Once you have that down, try working with the 1% βLookalikeβ audience to prospect for new customers. This may take awhile because your pixel audience is small, so try layering on interests - 1% Lookalike and your largest competitor, for example. Donβt use interest-only targeting until you master this.
- Great photography and videography is key, as is smart copy. Research whatβs out there in your industry and constantly test - what works for one company may not work for other people.
- Make sure you have good offers. For example, we have a $5 trial for our subscription, which converts affordably - if we promoted our subscription with the standard $30 front charge, it wouldnβt be as cost-effective.
ππΌββοΈ How To Run Your Lead Generation Business
How To Retain Customers For Your Lead Generation Business
Retaining customers is one of the most effective ways to grow your lead generation business.
Oftentimes, it's easy to find yourself focusing on generating new customers, vs retaining your current ones.
Look at it this way - you are 60-70% more likely to sell a new product to an existing customer than you are a new customer.
That's not to say that finding new customers and revenue streams is not important, however, the easiest (and most inexpensive) source of new revenue is right there in front of you.
Here are some ways you can retain customers for your lead generation business:
- Responding to comments on social media
- Send discounts (or freebies) to loyal customers
- Provide valuable content, for free
- Write a hand written thank you note
- Provide awesome customer service and build relationships with customers
To find out more tips and tricks on retaining customers, check out this article β here
Mohamad Alasadi, founder of Hawk Prospecting dives deep into the process of attracting and retaining customers:
My initial idea was to build the product and dump marketing dollars at it to grow. However, after the product was finally ready to launch, I knew that there is a long way to go before weβre able to market this SaaS product using paid marketing. Results will be disappointing had I decided to feed Mark Zuckerberg from day 1.
When youβre just starting, itβs important to focus on things that will move the needle for you. These involve learning all about your users and understanding what they want. Therefore, part of my decision to hold off on paid marketing came from the realization that user feedback is more crucial than ever at this stage. My marketing efforts at this point originated from my marketing agency practices.
I focused on reaching out to marketing agency owners because this was a market subsection that I was already very familiar with. I suggest any founder, especially in SaaS, also focus on speaking to their users early on and as you scale to get closer to product/market fit. As part of my go-to-market strategy, I reach out to 30 agency owners on Facebook, 15 on LinkedIn, 20 through email automation, then answer 10 Quora questions too, all daily. So far, both Facebook and LinkedIn work well for me, whilst emails are a little slow.
Quora is more of a long-term game that will pay dividends in a few months or even years to come.
The reason they work well is that Iβm building real connections and resonating with my audience through messages. This way, I can comfortably ask for feedback on the product because Iβve built a connection with my audience that helps me gain their trust.
On the other hand, emails arenβt working as well because theyβre not as personal as messages. When you think about how business owners receive 121 emails on average per day, youβll realize why it might not work so well. With emails, itβs important to keep optimizing your subject lines, and your messaging - something Iβm doing currently, to improve your results. Hereβs what my current email efforts look like:
Next is to focus on a few marketing channels that work and scale those. A mistake that many founders make is trying to do everything all at once. They do outreach PR, email marketing, cold-calling, paid ads, content, and anything else they could think of to get clients.
When you focus on too many things at once, your efforts will look like the red diagram above - doing a lot of things at once and achieving mediocre results. Instead, you want to focus on being like the green diagram. You want to focus on 1 or 2 platforms that work best to achieve massive success with those platforms.
To increase our traffic, I found a Google Sheet with 100s of startup directories where you can list your startup. This was a great way to get backlinks to my site and rank better on Google, whilst improving my SEO. On top of this, I thought that writing an article where I link back to Hawk Prospecting would also help me build those backlinks for more SEO juice. Although I dislike organic traffic as a starting strategy, itβs great to start building it slowly early on too.
Iβve heard of a few companies who managed to grow completely from organic traffic and SEO, however, this approach requires that you know exactly what youβre doing to optimize on the Google search engine.
I also took the chance of being on Appsumo as an opportunity to receive more organic traffic.
I also understood there are going to be a lot of people who sign up and find that the product doesnβt solve their problems at this point. We have an automatic email marketing letter sent weekly to keep us top of mind and introduce new features as theyβre being built. This way, weβre able to see repeat users coming back on the platform to explore features that werenβt there when they signed up initially.
Diversify Your Product Line
Adding new products to your business is a great way to expand into new markets and grow your business.
It's important to note that adding new products and diversifying may not be in the cards for you right this moment, and that's okay. You can always consider it down the road.
Here are some reasons you may want to considering adding/diversifying your product
- Meeting the needs of your customers
- Establish yourself as a top provider in your industry and stay ahead of the game with competition
- Resistance to downturns/trends fading
- Create new revenue streams
Provide Great Customer Service
Providing exceptional care and creating relationships with clients is a great way to build your reputation and retain customers.
Whether you are an online business or a physical business, it's highly important to communicate with customers and make them feel like they are the priority.
Just remember: customer service represents your brand, values, vision and YOU as a person.
Authenticity
As a brand, you want to deliver an experience that authentic, honest and transparent.
Don't make the mistake of giving your audience less credit than they deserve.
Be Authentic
If you go around chasing every trend and only focused on yourself and money, youβre going to lose very quickly.
There have been many times where we have been tempted to do this but stayed true.
Sure we sacrificed sales, but we kept our integrity, played the long game and people saw and appreciated that, and really began emotionally investing in the brand.
Build a Referral Program
Word of mouth is one of the best ways to get the word out about your business and acquire new customers. Especially when you are starting out, itβs important to build a solid referral program to encourage existing customers to help you find new ones.
A great way to do that is by offering a reward (ie. credit on your service or cash) to customers that refer you to their friends and family.
A fantastic referral program will help with clout, credibility, and establishing yourself in the space.
Word of Mouth
The most tried and true way to grow a lead generation business is through word of mouth - some entrepreneurs would say it's more important than all social media.
Why you should focus on word of mouth:
- Consumers trust word of mouth above all other forms of marketing
- 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising
- 64% of marketing executives indicated that they believe it is the most effective form of marketing
Learn more about word of mouth in our guide: 30 Ways Founders Grow Their Business β
How To Crush The Sales Process For Your Lead Generation Business
You may find yourself in a spot where you're ready to hire a few (or many) salespeople to support the sales conversion process.
Regardless if you have one or thirty salespeople, it's critical that you assign them specific roles and responsibilities to nurture the client and provide excellent support.
Mike Korba, co-founder of User.Com walks us through the entire sales process and which teams are responsible for what:
User.com Sales Process
Each user and account is qualified with a specialist. For business leads, they are handled by the sales team, and if they are qualified we give them a demo, more than often at the end of their fourteen-day trial. If theyβre happy theyβll add a payment, and get an account manager, so a customer support and success team who will help implement the solution and to use the technology.
Sometimes, users will convert naturally on their own, after using the freemium product and finding it to be something that they will find beneficial.
After they convert, we help with onboarding, give them some personalized tips for their specific business or industry to grow plus all kinds of support, for whatever they need - something we take huge pride in.
The team is right now more than 30 people, with more than half working on the IT and product side, and the rest are in three teams: Support, Marketing, and Sales who all work together very closely.
Resources
We put together the best resources on the internet to help you start your lead generation business.
Tools
- Platform tools such as Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Google Shopping, Wix.com, Weebly, Heroku, React, Node.js, Canva or trello
- Email tools such as MailChimp, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, SendGrid, G Suite, EmailOctopus, 1Password, AWeber, GetResponse, Linkedin sales navigator, Lemlist or Lastpass
- Social media tools such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Hootsuite, Reddit, Medium or Tiktok
- Advertising tools such as Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Google Adwords, Bing Ads, Google AdSense, LinkedIn Ads or Google ads
- Design tools such as Canva, pixlr, Adobe Suite, Figma or 99designs
- Analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Sumo, Google Tag Manager, ProfitWell or Google Forms
- Productivity tools such as Google Suite, Dropbox, Slack, Trello, Evernote, Calendly, Jira, Airtable or Todoist
- Payments tools such as Paypal, Shopify Payments, Stripe, Square, Bill.com or Apple Pay
- Customer service tools such as Zendesk, Facebook Chat App, Intercom or TawkTo
- Blog tools such as WordPress, Squarespace or Blogger
- Accounting tools such as Quickbooks, Xero, Google Sheets or Freshbooks
- Crm tools such as Hubspot, PipeDrive, close.io or Salesflare
- Freelance tools such as Fiverr or Upwork
- Stock images tools such as 123rf, Getty, Unsplash, Pixabay, Pexels or Freepix
- Sales tools such as ClickFunnels, CallPage or nocrm.io
- Seo tools such as Ahrefs, Yoast or Moz
- Reviews tools such as Google My Business, Capterra, G2 Crowd or Product Hunt
- Shipping tools such as FedEx or UPS
- Web hosting tools such as GoDaddy
- Software deals tools such as AppSumo
- Podcast tools such as Spotify
- Financing tools such as AMEX or Cap One
Books
- Linkedin: Linkedin Marketing Mastery - How To Create A LinkedIn Profile Business Partners Will Love (Instagram,Twitter,LinkedIn,YouTube,Social Media Marketing,Snapchat,Facebook Book 3)
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Web Resources
- 5 Steps To Start A Lead Generation Business (Local Is Key Hereβs Why)
- How To Start Lead Generation Business With No Experience
Videos
- How To Start A Lead Generation Business As A Beginner!
- How To Start A Local Lead Generation Business In 2020
Case Studies
- On Creating A $65,000/Month Software That Helps Companies Get More Leads
- On Starting A $20K/Month Lead Gen Marketing Agency
- How I Started A $80K/Month Content Writing Business
- How I Started A $55K/Month Linkedin Lead Generation Business
- How I Started The UKβs Largest Franchise Directory And Make $600K/Year
- I Left My High Paying Job & Built A Profitable SaaS [From Serbia]
- How I Use Linkedin To Grow My $18K/Month Outbound Growth Services Business
- I Built A LinkedIn Lead Generator Tool And Make $48K/Year [Singapore]
- I Grew My SaaS Project From Idea To $1.5K MRR In 7 Weeks
- After 'Accidentally' Landing Multiple Clients, I Validated And Launched My Own Digital Advertising Agency [$120K/Year]
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings