“New leads mean new business.”
A friend of mine who sells insurance told me this not too long ago. So I asked, ‘where do your leads come from?’
Their answer was a bit shocking…
“We buy leads from our parent company, as well as we are given leads for our region.”
What?!?!?
“So, you reuse leads, whether they’ve bought a policy or not.”
After a long, barely held smile, he answered, ‘Ya’.
Lead generation in the digital marketing world is a dragon in terms of growing a business. For many service-based businesses, setting up and running good lead generation accounts means life for a brand. And when no lead generation is occurring, outbound becomes the only way to really grow a business.
That’s not to take away from outbound. While I focus on digital marketing, which is about 90% inbound, business can’t grow without some outbound marketing. Lead generation doesn’t fully replace outbound – it just supercharges your inbound!
In this article, we are going to look at specific reasons why your service business needs closed lead generation funnels. These are funnels that you own, control and the leads are only collected and meant for you.
Stop buying, renting and reusing leads
The biggest reason why I think buying leads sucks is because someone already did. If you buy leads from NextDoor, Porch, Thumbtack or other directories, be ready to be let down.
Pro Tip: Those directories are great places to grow your local SEO strength. They are authority sources, and Google favors you having profiles there. The problem is that leads on these platforms like to leverage pricing from one company to another. What’s worse is that some of the platforms like to help drive down your pricing models as well. So, be careful.
Having your own lead generation funnels set up means those incoming leads have only signed up for your offer once. They are fresh to your funnels. No one from your organization, parent, sister or your actual company has tried to sell them, nor has bought them.
In other words, that lead value is truly at max. If they signed up for the offer, and they signed up for you, then you know they are one step away from being a customer.
Now, that’s not to say that every lead is going to convert. But, conversion in a closed funnel is far better than trying to convert a lead who has been bombarded with calls, emails and text messages.
Target the person, region and even their needs at the time
Because the primary traffic source for closed lead generation funnels is paid advertising, you can target your ideal customer.
Let’s move this beyond traditional marketing demographics.
When we talk about targeting a person, I don’t mean an older female on the east coast of the United States. I mean I can target a 58 year old female living in Lawrence County Pennsylvania who owns a home and is in a household making $100,000 or more.
Pretty targeted, right?
So, in our current social media advertising landscape, we move beyond marketing demos and marketing groups, and into specifics. We can group these people by where they are, where they live, how old they are, their language, their sex and… what else?
We can target Meta accounts that they like and follow. We can target affinities like home ownership, education, income levels, workplace structure, workplace industry and general hobbies, even.
That is extremely specific for hitting on that ideal client and customer, right?
Match the lead to your offer; not to ‘everybody and everyone’
How many times have you offered a service or product, but you have known that it is for a certain type of person? So, you turn around and try to make it more general for more people to use? And then reiterate that generalization until it becomes so watered-down you are disappointed with it?
It happens, right?
Using a closed lead generation system, you can tailor offers exclusively to specific marketing groups and audiences. You can separate these into advertising platforms, time of year and time of day as well.
Closed lead generation funnels allow you to hyper-focus your target in every way.
Now, you don’t have to worry about “the golden offer”. You can make one offer for new young mothers, older retired men, single guys living in the southern US and married retired women living in Minnesota.
The offer can be tailored to the audience, and the audience can be focused on the offer.
This level of reciprocity allows you to have that hyper-focused targeting in a compounded way. You are getting far more together than by themselves.
Basically, digital advertising and closed lead generation funnels means 1 + 1 = 4!
Meet your ideal customer on every step of their journey
The buyer’s journey is something that you must worry about as you make advertising campaigns. When you are actively making a closed lead generation funnel, focusing on your customer’s buying journey becomes a powerful consideration – some say the most important after the offer.
Here is why…
Not every lead is ready to buy your product or service today.
One day you might have someone call you to ‘kick the tires’ for your service. They are comparing how fast you are, how much you cost and what they get. They are collecting information for a purchase they may, or may not, make.
The next day you will get a customer who has cash-in-hand and just wants to leave with a new roof or a new kitchen done and done!
Those two leads are on two separate ends of the spectrum, right? One needs education, discussion, sales meetings and other conversation. The other just needs a receipt!
With lead generation funnels, your focus can be on where your customers are on that journey. Your ad copy and even the offer, can be focused on that.
New leads might need a white paper, or a checklist, or some information. These people are tire-kickers – they may or may not know what they need, and definitely don’t know that you are their solution.
Another campaign can be built for a free tool to determine how much a service will cost. These people know they have a problem, know what the solution is and are wondering if the answer is YOU.
And yet another can be for a closing call – a final walk-through and estimate. These people know what they want and who they want to do it. They just need their solution fixed, their new thing installed, their broken thing taken care of.
Pro Tip: Because these leads are internal to your brand, you can walk them through the buyer’s journey, from one funnel into the next, until they become buyers.
I didn’t stutter… those leads ARE ONLY YOURS!
I cannot stress this enough – using closed lead generation funnels means having leads that are new and are not sold and resold. They aren’t just new, they are fresh, eager to learn more and possibly ready to purchase.
In industries like insurance, real estate and finance, owning your own leads makes so much sense. There is no one to borrow from, buy from, rent from and reuse from.
In service industries like home renovation, roof installations and construction/contracting, these leads are golden. They are ready for more information, immediately give you qualifying information and are relatively cheap to gain (usually less than $10 for purchase-ready leads at the time).
Hell, even in smaller industries where the average customer value (ACV). For grass cutting, pest control, power washing, carpet cleaners, painters, window cleaners, car detailing businesses and more can all use the same tactics of lead generation for more business.
What changes between a $25,000 service versus a $50 service?
The offer!
That’s really what everything boils down to. You still have a lot of research to do for your ideal customer. You still have a lot of research to do targeting to that person. And you still have a lot of research to do for creating the campaign.
But the offer changes. The value of the offer is going to be GREAT. But the price changes.
So, yes, you can use this process of closed lead generation for ANY business and industry.
Now, what did we learn and what do we do next?
Today, we talked a lot about using lead generation. Specifically, we focused on closed lead generation systems to make sure the leads are yours and yours alone. This prevents fatigue, de-qualification of leads and just wasted time and money.
We talked about the benefits of using your own lead generation systems for your business. We talked about ownership, targeting, customized offers and more.
What does it mean to you?
Hopefully you recognize that your business can make use of using your own internal lead generation funnels for maximizing your marketing and advertising. Many advertising platforms are available, and you should use the right platform, with the right offer, for the right customer.
Wondering if building and using lead generation funnels for your business could work for your brand? Maybe you might even be wondering if it can be affordable? Schedule a free consulting call by visiting this link to claim a date and time: https://blews.media/schedule.