Show notes
If you're in a situation where you know you need to get more leads -- you need to generate more and better leads -- there are very specific ways of doing it.
One of the things that we do with our clients is we focus on, what are the different methods of lead generation that they're currently using? What are some of the methods they could be using, if they're not already using those.
And then testing those out as quickly as possible to find out what actually works and what doesn't. Some people spend months or years trying to perfect something that isn't working. And simply by switching to another method, you can get incredibly better results in a much shorter period of time.
David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co host Jay McFarland and I will be discussing how to get more leads. Welcome back, Jay.
Jay: Hey, it's so good to be here, David. What an amazing topic. I mean, it's got to be the question on everybody's mind, how to get more leads.
David: Yeah. And I think a lot of people look at it and they think, well, they know leads are the lifeblood of our businesses.
Now, if we're not constantly getting new leads in the door, then your pipeline dries up, everything gets bad. It's not an ideal scenario. Obviously, it's a very important consideration. There are lots of ways to get more leads and there's no shortage online of people who will try to sell you different methods of doing that.
And, this is why I value your opinion on this as well, because I know that you do quite a bit of lead generation in your own business, and lots of people pushing lots of different things. I'd like to get a feel from you, if you don't mind, to start out. sort of the types of things that people have told you are going to help get you leads and which ones seem to work better and which ones didn't seem to work as well.
Jay: Yeah, you're exactly right. This is something that we rely on heavily. Our entire business model is getting people to sign up for our free consultations. And so, how do you do that? How do you make sure that they're the best leads? We started out relying heavily on Google Ads, pay per click.
But even that, can be so tricky. I don't want to spend my time talking to a lot of people who really don't need my services. So, not just leads, but qualifying leads. We're going to talk about that in an upcoming podcast. But, I'll tell you, David, we don't want to pay for every lead.
So our question has been, how do we get leads that we don't have to pay for, right? And then also, how do we make sure that we have the best close rate on leads? But, we get email marketing, we get people contacting us every day saying, we can do this for you and we can do that for you.
And you want to try some of those, but at the same time, I'm like, oh, we have a system that works. And so I have a hard time breaking away from that and spending a lot of time on those other things because you really don't know what's going to work until you try it.
David: Yeah. We've probably had a bit of this discussion in the past as well.
The idea that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So there are people who like generating leads on Instagram. And so they'll put out information on here's how to get leads on Instagram, or here's how to get leads through Facebook groups, or here's how to get leads on LinkedIn, or through LinkedIn direct messaging.
And so everybody's got their own little tiny slice that they're looking at to say, this is it. This is exactly the way to get leads. And in my experience, not only in our own businesses, but also working with other people's businesses, what I found is that it's very easy for people to get sold on the idea of like one particular, tiny niche solution that is going to be the solution to all of your lead problems.
And I mean, I spend a lot of money on my own training, my own education, exploring, what's available, what works, what doesn't work. And there's a case to be made that a lot of these different things can and do work, under the right circumstances.
But do they work for everyone? And the answer to that is usually no, they don't.
They might work for you and they might work for you if they're done correctly. But the likelihood of just saying, okay, this is the solution and it's going to work, is actually pretty low.
So I think when we look at this idea, if we want to focus on being able to get more leads, If you're already generating decent quality leads in your business, or let's even bump that up a notch, if you're already generating high quality leads in your business, then it's a lot easier because you can look at things and you can say, all right, where did my best quality leads come from? And then, where do I go to get more of those.
So if you are generating leads online, is it through Facebook? Is it through groups? Is it through Facebook ads? Is it through DMing people? Same thing with LinkedIn or any other online social media.
If you're doing YouTube ads, any of that sort of thing, you can look at what has worked for me historically. Does it continue to work, and can I continue to improve it?
If you've been doing things that worked for a while and then stopped working, then it becomes tempting to jump to something else. Okay, this is no longer working. But that's really usually a mistake, because the reason that it stopped working might not be the platform you're using, it might not be the online source that you're using if it is a social media platform.
It might be something related to the messaging that you're putting out on there. Maybe that message has gotten stale with the people who have been seeing it, or maybe you're no longer reaching the right people. This goes back to what we talk about all the time in these videos, which is the subject of the MVPs of marketing and sales.
If your message is off or if it's getting in front of the wrong people, then the marketing vehicle doesn't matter because it's not going to work. So, when there is this much focus on a marketing vehicle, like Facebook or YouTube or whatever it is, I think people end up missing the point. And when they try to get more leads, it's easier to be unsuccessful because they might be working on the wrong problem.
Jay: I think that's such a valuable point. And you talked about social media. I think one of the problems with social media marketing is you're reliant on somebody else's algorithm, right? And so what is working today, suddenly tomorrow, it's like, wait a minute, what happened to all our viewers? What happened to everything?
Well, they changed their algorithm and so you're going to have to figure it out again, right? So I'm a big fan of diversification, and you kind of mentioned that just like you diversify your retirement portfolio or whatever else. But for us, the real secret is always assessing.
We're never satisfied with our lead generation. We're never satisfied with our keywords that we use. We're never satisfied by saying, yeah, we're filling up our schedule right now. We're never satisfied with that. So we are constantly looking for other ways, other sources, and we're constantly reassessing our own. Because, you know, in today's world, marketing social media, it's moving so fast.
And if you think, oh, it's working right now, that's going to keep working, I think that's a mistake.
David: It definitely is. And so far, all we've really talked about is online lead generation. And for a lot of businesses, that's what they've been focusing on, but there are still a lot of offline methods of lead generation that people use, whether it's going to networking functions, whether it's getting phone numbers and making cold calls.
There are lots of different ways that people are still getting leads outside of the online methods.
Some people exhibit at trade shows. So there are still lots of things that are happening that allow you to get in front of the type of people that you want to be able to get in front of, to get them qualified in or out as quickly as possible, to find out if they are good, valuable leads for you.
In our Total Market Domination work with our clients, one of the primary things that we focus on is exactly this. We refer to it as the methods of first contact.
How is it that you are reaching out to someone? And it can be any of these things that we're talking about. It's the marketing vehicle in the MVPs, but it's just one part of the equation.
So for anyone who's watching this, who's thinking, okay, so let's get to it. How do I get more leads? The first thing you want to consider is: look at where you're getting your leads now and is it working for you or is it not working for you? So that would be the first thing.
And write them down. Just put together a list of, okay, this is where I'm currently getting my leads. This is where my best leads are coming from. This is where my worst leads are coming from. And this is where no leads are coming from. If there are places that no leads are being generated there, you want to ask yourself a question then, okay, is it this particular marketing vehicle?
Or is it the people that I'm reaching on this vehicle or is it what I'm saying to these people? Cause it is always going to be one of those three things.
Now that kind of takes you in a couple of different directions, which is not ideal. But if you really want to be able to generate more leads that are going to turn into customers, this exercise is practically essential.
You pretty much have to do it. Because if you don't, you may be spending a tremendous amount of time trying to solve the wrong problem.
Jay: Yeah. Figuring out while you're doing it, how are your leads, where are they coming from? What are the results from those leads? And I don't think this is something you should be trying to do from your recollection, after the fact, right?