Online lead gen advice

Getting localized leads from social media might not meet your ROE thresholds.

It would be better to use PPC.

Seriously.

If you value your time.

As far as Craigslist is concerned, there are tons of guides out there.

Just do a search.

You need a solid PVA provider though.

Facebook Advertisement is the best way to generate leads.

I just saw a webby and they said 100% of their leads CALLED them (did not use email form). So, make sure you have a (Twillio) number you can forward to all your clients... eventually.

You can use SEO, craigslist, PPC, etc for traffic but set yourself up as the niche SERVICES site, e.g. Phoenix Plumbing Services or Phoenix Home Services or Phoenix Clean Up Services, etc. This way, you can funnel all your traffic to many local business providers.

For example, if you set up a site called Phoenix Clean Up Services, you can have a yard clean up business, a moving clean up business, a carpet cleaning specialist business, etc. Each business can promote your site, therefore, cross promoting all the other clean up businesses you provide. It's a win win for all b/c everyone advertises for each other. You can do this by making a flyer or magnet or something similar that promotes your website "Phoenix Cleanup Services" and has a listing of all the different clean up services your site provides.

Each business will have their own extension so calls can be forwarded to whatever clean up service the customer wants.

In the beginning when you don't have any business clients, you would forward ALL calls / extensions to YOUR number and answer them something like this: "Good afternoon, Phonenix clean up services, this is John, what can I do for you?" Then, when they tell you they need a yard cleaned up, for example, take their name and number down and tell them you will have the yard specialist call them back. Now, go look for a yard clean up business with good reviews but is on the second plus page of Google. Call them and tell them you have a lead that needs their yard cleaned. Give them the name and number for free and tell them if they need more business you're looking for ONE yard clean up business to service your leads.

Now, your "foot is in the door" and you can tell them about your lead business, how it works, how much you charge, etc.

Repeat this until you fill all the services your site provides with a Local Business.

Good luck,
Charlie

I agree that PPC would be a good route forward - but that can be VERY expensive!

But if your business model was tweaked, you could get the client to pay you for the advertising.

In other words, instead of selling them leads, you generate leads for them, using their own advertising budget, via PPC that they pay for, and you charge a consultancy fee?

Hope this helps.

All the best

Trevor

Already you are in the best way. The social media site & Craigslist both of these site working good. Here you can make any ad in a specific place, city, country. Carry on.

Craigslist is great for getting leads if you do it right. But you have to make sure you either know how to get all of your posts on their without them getting ghosted which can be a real pain. It will look like all of your posts are showing up on your side but in reality no one else is seeing your posts. There are service provider out there that know how to get around the ghosting if you don't already know how. As for FB advertising or PPC in general you need to really know what you're doing or you will just burn through money and get little to know results. I'm speaking from experience lol. I bought a few cheaper courses and a $2000 course on FB ads and since going through it I have been able to use FB ads with some success. I just recently ran an ad for a dealership which cost me $75 and it brought in around $800 in sales to the service department. The owner was pretty excited about the results and now he wants me to speak to his 20 group in a couple of weeks. I have also worked with the service manager at the same dealership who is a friend of mine on implementing a sales funnel in the service department and in the past month he spent $500 and brought in an extra $15k.

All great advice. I don't really have the budget for ads right now because I don't know what I'm doing yet and don't want to burn money that's why I was leaving towards craigslist. Are there any methods or special ways to generate leads on craigslist besides just posting ads that get blended in with the 100 other home improvement ads? How should I go about it.

You can buy PPC for your ads and make more sales.

You should focus on blogging so you can rank for those specific keywords. Then promote your posts via FB PPC. It's all about targeting your audience and getting in front of them. Just stay consistent and generate traffic every single day. This is a real business where you can make real money if you take this seriously. Remember that.

Have you heard of Houzz? They are the biggest social network for interior design and residential home construction. Another service offering you could have is helping your clients setup and maintain their Houzz profile. Some of my clients are in that niche as well, and they are seeing a large number of RFQs from there. Also have them join Home Depot's reseller program.

Getting traffic for any niche is very easy. Go to a major site in your niche, and run an ad on their site. But that's not it. Do that for many prominent sites in your niche. Then go on PPC and run ads (Google Adwords and Bing Ads). Try your hand at forum marketing and Youtube also, and always educate your leads and do whatever you can to make them highly-qualified. Because when you sell them to small businesses, you want them to have good results - so that they can come back and buy more leads from you over and over again.