It's been a really interesting week here. I've been working on a new project developing a prospecting list for one of the verticals we've been ramping up outreach for, and I was reminded about a very critical point that I wanted to share with you. It has to do with what I personally believe is one of the single most important skills that anyone who's responsible for developing lead flow in their business must posses. And that's the ability to build accurate and highly-relevant prospect lists and advertising audiences related to your market.

I've seen way too many business owners invest in prospect lists to acquire contact data, and then immediately start reaching out to, or advertising to, these lists. And that's a huge mistake. 

The problem with buying lists, or outsourcing to a virtual assistant - or even hiring a "professional" list builder - is that they're most often focused on volume. And what you should be after - is accuracy, and relevance. I'd rather have a list of 2,000 prospects who I know are a 95% match to my ideal avatar, than a 10,000 person contact list that is only a 70% match.

When it comes to lead gen, and building your prospecting lists - I always recommend focusing on highly targeted, well researched leads, over massive lists. No doubt about it.

I know you've been told time and time again that prospecting is a numbers game - and it is (to some degree) - I mean, more activity (or visibility), results in more business - true. But... greater relevance, results in less activity required to generate the same (or a greater), result. And that's where the gold is - right? When you can do less work, and produce more revenue - that's what we're after. And it all starts here.

Over the years, I've learned to spend far more time researching, and eliminating prospects before starting outreach, or a marketing campaign. This time is much better spent, than being "in the trenches" trying to contact as many people as possible.

I'll take a small list of prospects that have been through three rounds of scrubbing, over a massive list with "endless opportunities" any day of the week.

And outbound marketing is one thing. But the same holds true for Inbound marketing. If you have an ad audience of 2,000 of your best prospects - and you run ads to them, you'll find that it's likely to perform much better than a campaign that goes out to 10,000 prospects that haven't been qualified as well.

The reason here is that ad platforms want to reward advertisers who provide a great experience for their users. You may be the one paying the bills, but these platforms care more about the end-user than the advertisers. Sorry to break that to you (if you didn't already know).

So your campaigns to the smaller, more highly targeted audience will get better engagement, more reactions etc. - and the ad platform will see this and reward you with lower CPM's, cheaper clicks, and less expensive conversions. It's a win for the ad platform; a win for their users; and a win for you.

So - always keep filtering your prospecting lists, and audiences until you believe you have a highly relevant data set. Now of course it needs to be large enough to be useful, but you can always add more prospects.

In the rest of the episode, I'll go into a bit more depth about our current project, but you'll have to listen in for those details... 

I hope this all makes sense - but at the end of the day, when your building out your prospecting lists or marketing audiences, take the time to do it thoughtfully, and pay attention to every person you add to your list. Are they really a good fit, and do you feel like you know enough about them yet. Put a little extra focus in this early stage of marketing development, and it will pay dividends later on. 

Hope this helps! See ya' next time...

In speaking with so many business owners every week, I tend to hear a lot of the same questions over and over. The one that comes up most frequently is in fact: "How much should I be spending on lead gen?" Now, what makes this so interesting, is that despite the fact that I speak with businesses of varying sizes, the answer is always the same: 

Your lead gen "budget" should be determined by two simple things:

1. Your goals as a company, and your ability to fulfill the projects you sell - and...
2. What your competition is doing.

That's it. Your goals/capacity, coupled with the competitive landscape, equals your proposed marketing budget. Let's dig in just a bit more.

Ok, first - it seems obvious that your goals matter here - right? I mean, if you're a small business owner, closing in on retirement, and just want a stable business - you're lead gen strategy will be much different than if you're a young company looking to aggressively grow and become the dominant player in your space .

But, what's most important, for the businesses I work with, is their capacity. The last thing you want to do, is invest marketing budget into generating jobs you can't do (or do well), that will ultimately leave you short handed and over stressed. This also leads to dissatisfied customers and negative reviews, which can be damaging to a business. We definitely don't want that. 

So, start by determining your capacity, and work your lead gen plan back from there.

In the audio, I give a detailed example for a paving company, to illustrate this point. 

Now, the second factor that determines our required budget, is competition. Many businesses think that the ad platforms determine ad costs - but that's not really the case. Most ad platforms nowadays run on an auction based model - meaning that the advertisers (you and your competitors), determine ad costs. The ad platform charges only what the highest bidding advertisers agree to pay. So what does this mean to you?

Well, it means that as more advertisers enter a market, or as businesses are able to make more money per customer (by increasing the customer's lifetime value), ad costs will increase. I've covered this on previous episodes, so I won't go into too much detail here, but let's just agree, that in every market - ad costs increase over time, and eventually, there become only a handful of "strong" businesses who get the vast majority of the available customers each month. These are the businesses who can pay the most for a customer. 

So you just need to be aware, that as competition increases in your market - your marketing budgets will need to be adjusted too. This can happen slowly - or  all at once (like if a new franchise with proven marketing systems starts moving into your service area) - so you need to be constantly aware of what the competitive landscape look like in your market.

These are really the biggest factors to consider when trying to determine how much you should spend on lead gen. Sure, there are a hundred other micro-factors, but in reality - get super clear on, and monitor these things, and you'll have no trouble knowing that your marketing budget is on point.

Today's episode is all about the importance of Lifetime Value (LTV) when it comes to lead gen strategy. Now, a lot of people think the lifetime value of your customers is something you measure and think about after you get lead gen dialed in - but that's simply not the case. Whether you're a new business, or a well established business - in order to properly launch an effective lead gen strategy - you need to already know what your average customers are worth - not "right away", but over the course of their relationship with your business. 

Businesses that base their acceptable customer acquisition costs on the value of immediate sales will always lose to those businesses who factor in Lifetime Value when deciding what they're willing to pay for leads - and eventually customers. Almost all "pay to play" platforms nowadays are auction based models - meaning that you (and your competitors), determine what your going to pay for visibility. Most platforms have enough inventory for only a handful of "winners" in any segment of a market. So if you're a cleaning company using Google Ads to acquire customers in the Greater Boston area - you might be competing (or bidding against), 10-20 other cleaning companies and half a dozen lead companies. Although there may be 30 or so total advertisers bidding for that traffic, only half a dozen or less are likely getting any significant customer flow because of limited page one inventory, and search volume etc. (there's lots of factors that play a role here). 

In our experience, 80% or more of the total available customers each month are probably going to 3-4 of the "real businesses". These are the businesses who: provide the best user experience in their advertising; have the best social proof; the strongest offers; and who are willing to spend the most - there's just no way around it. 

Now many of those factors you can control - like providing a great user experience by using proven ads and creatives, driving to a great offer on a direct response marketing funnel etc. And you can work to get more positive reviews than any of your competition. But you can't spend more unless your business model supports it. Meaning, if the LTV of your average customer is $350 - but your competitors are able to maintain a $550 LTV - they'll always be able to outspend you, and capture more market share - allowing them to grow month after month, while your business remains flat.

So what do you do? It's simple: put a focus on increasing LTV of your average customer.

There are an unlimited number of ways to increase LTV, but let me spur your thinking with our current example of a cleaning company. You could offer additional services that you don't already offer. You could change your pricing model to charge for extra bathrooms, larger kitchens etc. You could incentive customers to get on recurring programs. You could do better email marketing and run monthly and season promotions if you're not already. You could sell gift cards and get your current customers to become a referral engine for your business. You could partner with other related, but non-competing businesses and earn referral fees - maybe partnering with someone who does grout replacement, heating and air conditioning vent cleaning, laundry services etc. The point here, is that with a little creative thinking you'll see there are always dozens of ways to add additional revenue streams for any business - and hence - to increase your average customer lifetime value. 

When each new customer is worth more to your business - you can invest more to acquire those customers, and ultimately - become the leader in your space. Because you've probably heard it said (I believe the original quote was from Dan Kennedy), that whoever can spend the most to acquire a new customer wins - and I know it's true.

Alright, welcome back. Today I want to share one simple thing that can help you to 3-4x your conversion results - literally, overnight. 

I've been doing research on a bunch of ad accounts this week, sharing where I see the greatest areas for improved ROI - because ideally, although we focus on lead gen metrics as a leading indicator - what we actually care about as business owners is bottom line revenue - right? Of course.

I ran through at least 5 accounts this week, that were breaking one of my cardinal rules about running profitable paid traffic campaigns for any small business. These accounts were driving people from an ad, to their website. In some cases, they were driving to moderately targeted pages about the particular service they were featuring, and in others they were driving to the homepage of their site - I mean come on. You can't expect to drive profitable campaigns without using proven, direct response landing pages in your marketing funnels. 

For those that haven't heard me speak on this before - here's the 2-minute version of how to run a profitable marketing funnel with paid ads - in this case we'll talk about search advertising (like Google Ads), as this is my preferred method for customer acquisition for 90% of businesses we work with:

1. First, you need to start with a targeted list of "buyer intent" keywords or search queries that you want to target. Specificity here, and commercial intent are key to running high return campaigns. As an example, if you're a landscaper offering hardscaping projects like patio installs, you'd want to bid on terms like "patio installer near me" and not "how to build a patio" (which would indicate someone looking to do it themselves) - makes sense, right?
   
   
2. Second, you need to write compelling, offer based, "What's In It For Me" (WIIFM), type ads that get people to take action. An ad that says "$500 off all patio projects booked in December. Check out our 5 star rating (254 happy customers can't be wrong!)" is far more compelling than "Quality workmanship, at a fair price" - right?
   
   
3. And third (this is so critical) - drive them to a highly related landing page that gives them one thing to do (fill out a form, or call you directly), and speaks very specifically to the one thing you know they're interested in - like... having a patio built! They don't care about all of the other services you offer. They want to see proof that you build the best darn patios in town, and that other's love your work and your business - and that you're fair and honest - right - you get it. Don't send them to a page that has lots of other links, and makes them look for everything they need to know and see to decide if you can help them with their patio project. When it comes to driving bottom line revenue for your business, this is a huge mistake.

Ok, so maybe that was more than a two minute run down, but hopefully, you get the point. Any time we've helped a business move from driving to their website, to setting up the marketing funnel I just went through, we've seen a 4x increase plus. In some cases we've seen (literally), a 10x improvement in revenue generated from the campaigns - without spending a dime more in advertising!

Let that sit for a moment.

What if you could even just 4x your return on investment form your marketing campaigns by doing just one thing? Well, if you're driving to your website in any way shape or from from your ads - then you can.

I encourage you to fix your funnels, if you're still using your website as a destination for paid search campaigns. You'll thank me for it.

That's all for today!

Welcome back - had an interesting conversation with a prospect a while back, and we got a message from them recently that reminded me about something really important, and I want to share it with you today. If you can shift your thinking around this type of "auto response" - your business will thank you for it. 

I was talking with this particular prospect about a paid traffic channel that I was sure would help them grow their inbound lead flow significantly. We had done it for other clients in the same market many times and had the results to back up this recommendation. 

Their immediate response was: "I tried that before, and it didn't work". I paused for a moment to really consider their statement - and dug in a little more.

"What do you mean it "didn't work", I asked.

And they said, they had hired an agency in the past to run ads using this tool, and the results were terrible.

So I said - "Ok... how long were they running the campaigns? Where were they driving traffic? What was your average cost per appointment, and what percent converted into new business - what was that business worth?"

Sadly, they couldn't answer any of those questions directly. Seems the agency that was running things didn't actually set up real time tracking (which is just terrible marketing - but that's neither here nor there) - and the prospect said basically: "Well, we paid them like $500, and we didn't see any significant uptick in new business".

Now I'm pretty well known for telling it like it is - so I said:

"First, you can't run any real, significant, and meaningful test on an ad platform if you're only investing $500 between ad spend and someone to run it - that's just not enough budget to get any meaningful results. Second, you should never make marketing decisions based on a "feeling" or a "sense" that it "wasn't working". Everything needs to be tracked so you can know (with certainty), whether it's working or not. And third: you need to set objectives, and targets right out of the gate so you know what success will look like even before you start"

We had a bit of a longer conversation that led to this particular business giving it another go. After running for a couple of weeks they immediately started seeing productive lead flow - and after the first month - they were blown away that they could have been so wrong. 

I basically explain it in a sense that you can give the same exact toolbox to an apprentice carpenter, and to a master woodworker - and ask them both to remodel your kitchen - the results you get from them will be drastically different. It's the same with online tools and advertising campaigns. It's rarely ever the "tools" fault that something didn't work (if it were, the "tool" wouldn't exist very long) - it's more often how the tool was used. 

Now the point here isn't necessarily to reinforce the importance of vetting who you choose to work with - although that's important - but more so to not get set in the "that doesn't work for my business" mentality - because if you do - you're likely to be missing out on some powerful ways to improve and scale lead flow for your business.

Next time you catch yourself saying "that doesn't work for my business" - dig a little deeper and ask yourself: "Is that really true?". 

One of the fastest ways to maximize bottom line revenue for your business, is to maximize lead flow by using as many different channels as possible - and you can't do that if you're ruling them out based on previous poor performance for reasons that have nothing to do with the tool itself. 

Hope this helps!

In this episode, I want to talk about why internet marketing is really the only marketing that matters nowadays. 

Now, before we get into that, let's just do a real quick history lesson. It used to be, if you're a small business, especially a service area business (meaning you have a physical location and you're only able to service a specific radius - like you can serve customers within 30-45 miles of your business), you would advertise in all different kinds of mediums to get in front of potential customers each month. 

You might advertise in the newspaper. You might run a TV or a radio spot. You'd send out direct mail pieces. You'd get a lot of business from the yellow pages. Remember those? Point is: there were all these different mediums that you could use to reach people. And you would also get referrals and things along those lines. 

Well, what's happened now, is that consumers’ attention has slowly (it's actually happened pretty quickly), moved away from those mediums, and instead moved to the internet. 

The reality is, that the yellow pages are no more (at least not in their physical form); and the newspapers have kind of gone by the wayside as well. Everything's gone to digital publications. People get their news real time now on the internet.

Direct mail doesn't work anywhere near the way that it used to. And even radio and television, although a lot of businesses do still advertise there, doesn’t work like it used to. The vast majority of the population is now consuming that type of entertainment through ad-free streaming services. The world has changed - and continues to change.

Nowadays, if you are looking to hire a company to do something, what do you do?

The first thing that people do, is they pull out their phone and they do a Google search. Whatever type of help you're looking for, you're going online and you're looking up to see” “Who can I get help from?”, “Who should I hire?”, “Who should I do business with?”. 

Everybody now, is going to Google.

So, if your business isn't showing up on page one of Google search results, the reality is - you're probably not going to get those customers.

In the remainder of this episode, I'm going to tell you how to shift your marketing strategy to get the greatest result in the coming months and years. Let's dive in...

I engage with a lot of businesses every week - more than most people. I founded a digital marketing agency after all, and our business is helping small businesses grow - so it makes sense.

When talking with a business that has reached out for help, the first thing I typically ask is “What caused you to reach out? What challenge in the business are you hoping we can help you solve?” 

And almost always (about 90% of the time), get an answer that’s something along the lines of “I need help with lead flow; I need more customers; more sales opportunities.”

We then dig into their current sale numbers - and then their goals.

A large percentage of these business owners are doing less than half a million a year - and (although they’ve been in business for years), they’re struggling to grow by any significant amount year over year. Most will say something like “I’m doing $500k/year right now - but really want to get to a million.” 

I’ll ask what they think is preventing them from hitting that target - and they (almost without hesitation), tell us the issue is consistent lead flow with ready and able to buy customers.

And in most cases, they’re right.

As I continue, I want you to keep in mind:

These are businesses that have been in business for years.

They’re “stuck” at their current income level - and (in their words), no matter what they do, they can’t seem to grow by more than small margins every year. 10% is what we see on average - and that barely covers inflation - so nothing really changes in their lives.

So, straight from the business owner’s mouth we have:

“I’m stuck at $500k/yr and no matter what I try, I can’t seem to break that ceiling. I need more sales opportunities, but nothing seems to be working at any scale.”

Does this sound familiar?

If it does, you’re not alone - it’s literally the same story I hear with tons of businesses we speak with every single week.

And here’s the dirty little secret:

This is a simple problem to fix - but fixing it isn’t easy. And the solution has very little to do with tactics, and more to do with how most small business owners think.

What I’m going to share with you (although it’s a universal truth, and it applies to every business), is very personal. It’s something I had to realize for myself (the hard way) - and I think that’s why I’m so passionate about helping other business owners realize this point for themselves too.

I hope this episode helps you so grow your business by higher multiples this year - enjoy...

"Why do I keep having to pay more and more for leads - shouldn't they be getting cheaper, the longer I advertise?"

It's a great question, and I'm going to approach this from a "year over year" standpoint, because that's where a lot of these factors come into play. Sure, when you launch a new traffic campaign - leads will be most expensive at the beginning, and lead costs will continue to decrease as you optimize things. In this case we're talking about days, weeks, and months.

And this is great - right?

Eventually, you'll reach a point where you just can't improve lead costs anymore - which is fine - your campaigns and everything that makes them work is fully optimized, and life is good. You routinely launch new creatives to offset ad fatigue, and you're monitoring things.

Well, slowly - over the course of months or maybe even years - your lead costs start to increase (no matter what you do), and you just can't figure out why. 

Most people will blame it on the ad platforms, algorithms etc. - but these things usually cause short term issues. When we're looking at longer timelines and increased lead costs - it's more likely a natural development of the market. Now there are definitely other reasons, but the point I want to make - is that in my experience, lead costs rising over time is a natural market development.

Here's what happens in most markets as it relates to lead flow (and for simplicity's sake, we'll focus on "pay to play" platforms like Facebook Ads, Google Ads etc. - doesn't matter for this point.

Ok, so the day arrives when you've optimized your ad account, offers, funnels, follow-up etc. - to get your lowest possible lead cost - happy day. So, you continue work to maintain that cost (ideally to lower it, but you're happy if you can just keep the leads coming in at scale at the current cost) - right? Right. 

Over time, you notice no matter what you do, lead cost start creeping - a little bit at a time. A year later, you're paying 25% more per lead - and you're trying to figure out why.

Here's why:

In most markets, two things happen that contribute to this:

1. New competitors enter the space, - and start competing for the same leads. There are only so many leads to go around - and the law of supply and demand kick in, causing leads to become more expensive. Typically, new competitors come in faster than existing businesses fail. Also, for more established platforms, the rate at which they're adding new users (potential leads), decreases over time. Neither of these work in our favor. 
   
   
2. And the second thing that happens, is market sophistication. Your competitors continue improving their businesses, and increasing their new customer value - meaning they can (and do), pay more for every lead. This will continue until there are only a handful of highly profitable businesses in a market - and they "eat up" all of the leads because they can (and do), pay more (happily). 

So that's all well and good - but what can you do about it?

Simple:

1. Always be looking for additional traffic channels for your lead funnels
2. Always be improving the back end of your business, so you can (happily), pay more per lead than your competition
3. Build "multipliers" into your lead processes that allow you to turn 1 lead into 2 (like referral mechanisms) - but that's a topic for another episode.

Point here is this: It's not always the campaign’s fault, or the platform’s fault, or anything like that - sometimes it's just the natural course of a market. The trick is in knowing how to tell what's normal, and outside of your control - and what's not. That's why we developed theleadsgame.com and it's one of the core missions of this podcast: to make you the best darn lead gen expert in your market. 

See you on the next episode.