Local lead generation is still not widely talked about on most affiliate marketing blogs, and one topic that I have never seen addressed is how to get these local customers. As with any business, finding customers is the key so how do you find local businesses interested in your lead generation services? Here are a few ideas:
- Your blog or website. Not all of us are lucky enough to have a widely viewed website, so this probably won’t work for most people. But if you do have a website you can advertise your services there.
- Weekly mailers. Sometimes called value mailers or coupon shoppers, these are the little 20 page junk mail flyers you get every week. There are always tons of companies offering things like carpet cleaning, house painting, dentists, flooring, etc. These companies are shelling out a lot of money for a very low return form of advertising. They are desperate for new customers. All you have to do is show them how much cheaper your performance based advertising is, that is also fully trackable and more effective. These are a great source of new customers.
- Referals. Satisfied customers like to tell their friends. If you are doing a good job for a client, encourage them to tell their colleagues. This can spread like wildfire throughout a local community of professionals or businesses. Everyone wants to get in on a good thing. Soon you can come to own a certain business niche in your community, and the more work you do in it, the better you will become. You really only need one good niche to make a great living doing online lead generation.
- Trade shows. Instead of going to Internet Marketing trade shows only, branch out and go to a trade show for the niche you are promoting. If you are doing well promoting plumbing services leads, go to the national plumbers trade show. Sure, it might not be as fun as say an Affiliate Summit, but this is about business. Talk to the attendees and tell them about your services. Maybe even rent a small booth and hire some people to hand out information for the day. You could launch your lead gen business to the next level from just one show.
- Professional Organizations. Most types of businesses have a local professional organization. You can usually advertise on their website or get a list of members to contact. There are also networking events you can attend, which are a great place to get the word out about your services.
These are just a few of the many ways to get customers for your lead generation business. Do you have any creative ideas for finding customers?
Chad,
Regarding this quote:
“Soon you can come to own a certain business niche in your community, and the more work you do in it, the better you will become.”
Do you find it creates a conflict of interest if you are driving leads to more than 1 company in a certain business?
How do you drive leads to 3 different roofers? Don’t they get mad that you are driving business to their competitors?
Or do you look at it more like a “Lending Tree” situation where you tell each roofer that the lead is being sold to 2 other roofers who are bidding against each other so that they pay you accordingly?
Thank you for your insight and for posting this series. It’s very helpful.
Rob
Rob, I always work with exclusive leads. I think that’s the only fair way to do it, and would never give the same lead to more than one person. Most of the time businesses are far enough apart geographically that the leads don’t overlap. You can always increase your volume so if you were generating generic roofing leads, you could sell your leads to both companies with no competition between them.
Here are a few of the places I’ve talked to other companies or got referrals:
* local chamber of commerce. They throw plenty of social meetings, mixers and new member nights. $100/membership well spent.
* pop open the phonebook and look in a popular industry, search for any company that has an 1/8 page or larger ad and then do a search for them. If they don’t have a website then there’s the first $500 you can make.
* I’ve gotten all my projects/customers from the 2 above and run this company as a solo owner. I’m not able to take on more unless I expand but another idea is to just develop a basic site with minimal content and then just sell them on the idea that it’s already up and ready to marketing with. I did it for my favorite local sandwich shop just today Mikeys Roast Beef
* And the most ballsy move if you really want to land a client that has turned you done already is to do the step above and then have some cheap biz cards made up with their logo, the website and phone number and maybe a Facebook fan page you populated with a little content and get a few of your friends to join. Then take the cards and just place 15 or so every week or so on the receptionists desk, front counter or even mail them to the owner directly. If you showed this much enthusiasm this far how could they not hire you.
Hope these help. I’d be curious on what you thought of these Chad.
I agree with the local chamber of commerce, its similar to the professional organization idea. Personally I wouldn’t try your “ballsy” idea, it seems a little to pushy for my style and frankly we are turning away more customers than we can handle right now. But if you are really hungry for a client it might work!
I am NOT turning away clients and don’t have anyone calling me although I’m on relying on referrals right now. What have you done Chad or anyone to advertise your local marketing services besides the above?
Phone book listing? Local newspaper ad?
I’ve mostly gone after certain companys and companies aren’t able to follow me.
Also Chad how are you billing clients?
Currently I run very close to a budget problem 2x month when it comes time to pay adwords, yahoo, facebook and MSN. I know I’m making a profit but aren’t really able to up my credit limits on my CC’s right now.
And clients don’t exactly pay me the same week most times either.
I invoice some clients weekly usually until we get a trust built up. Then I can relax the invoicing to 2x a month or longer in some cases. The key is to build solid payment terms into your contract up front so their is no confusion about how and when things should be paid.
Ken,
One thing I’m working on now, but haven’t “launched” yet is a piggy-back effort off of the 3/50 Project.
http://www.the350project.net/home.html
I’m sending a press release of sorts to the local papers about how I’m trying to keep money in the local area by helping local businesses attract more customers. Not the “big” local paper, but the local papers for each suburb of my city. It’s generally pretty easy to get something written up in those, especially when you are trying to do something to help out locally.
My theory is that tying my business to the 3/50 Project that has already gotten a lot of press will make for a good local news story.
Anyway, just a thought. It doesn’t cost anything except your time to write up the press release and contact the local journalists.
Chad,
One further question, if you don’t mind. Do you find the PPC methods a better way to drive leads than SEO type stuff? I have some local sites that are at the top of the SERPs, but the number of searches is very small. My local accountants site gets about 10 visitors a day during tax season even though I’m #1 for a bunch of local accountant/tax terms. For reference, my local area is about 1 million people, so it’s not exactly a small town.
I haven’t tried Facebook yet, but I’m thinking that might be a better way to target local people, kind of like the Shoemoney post a while back. I don’t believe the number of leads he was claiming in that post because I don’t think a dentist can treat that many patients. Any insight you feel comfortable sharing about this is appreciated. If not, no worries. I’m not trying to get you to give up all your “secrets.”
Rob
That’s an interesting idea, good luck with it!
I have still had good luck with PPC even for relatively small local areas. I have always been a PPC guy so I tend to focus on that mostly, but social media can work for the right niche. It has to be the right niche though, where PPC will work for anything.
Chad – i also had the same question as Ken regarding billings…. i’ve been dabbling with this idea a bit and all of the clients are personal friends so paying hasn’t been an issue. But for landing outside clients, the last thing you want to do is have a problem collection for valid leads…
how does your firm handle it?
I agree that referrals is the best way to get customers. word of can make or break you, that’s why you should make sure you should give great customer service to keep people coming back. nice post.
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