Best offline business to target for lead generation?

OK, just want to understand here. You have a new agency. You want to sell leads to businesses. You THINK there are targets which are easy to acquire?

You want IMPULSE buyers? Is this right? The dentist or lawyer may be EMERGENCY buyers, if they need one right away, but there is a lot of shopping around for one by most people.

Maybe cosmetics, supplements, clothes might be right for you, although I'm having trouble coming up with a business that would PAY you for leads, because if it were that easy to find these people why would they need you?

How about telling us what you bring to the table as a lead generating agency, why are you going into this business? What is your background and why are you qualified to do it?

It sounds like, and I could be way off, you have chosen to do something which sounds like a money making venture, but you lack the experience to actually do it...am I wrong?

GordonJ

Hello IMisland

We are a large full service Agency based in the UK but also operating in the US. Lead generation is one of the services that we offer.

I don't understand Gordon's answer to you, so I'll first comment on two things that he mentioned, though I may misunderstand what he meant. Perhaps Gordon's answer is unclear and he is addressing retail products, as you did mention cars and tv's:

Gordon said "Maybe cosmetics, supplements, clothes might be right for you, although I'm having trouble coming up with a business that would PAY you for leads, because if it were that easy to find these people why would they need you?".

1. "Maybe cosmetics, supplements, clothes might be right for you". - These are retail products and in general, most retail products would not be suitable for lead generation.

2. "although I'm having trouble coming up with a business that would PAY you for leads, because if it were that easy to find these people why would they need you?". - So, as long as we are clear in that lead generation is for service based business's, the obvious reason for a business to be willing to pay for leads is so they can generate new clients. Very few business's have marketing skills, they might know how to do dental work or plumbing but they have very limited knowledge on how to advertise and promote themselves to get new clients/customers. Then next, if you can generate high converting leads, why would they not want to buy them from you?. Would a Dentist prefer you to sell those leads to one of his competitors? Would a roofing company that could make $15,000 or more from one job, prefer to not pay you say $100 for each qualified lead you send them? And so on. Another very valid reason for a business to be willing to pay for leads, is that they might be listed on page 2 or worse in Google search, so will get virtually no results from search results. But we can supply them with leads that those on page 1 in the 3 pack are not even getting.

I am not familiar with business in Egypt, (but I have visited your country) but the main market for lead generation is really service based business's. We would likely service around 30 different business types, going from lawyers to snow removal (you don't have much snow in Egypt, lol, but it is very much in demand service in some US states during the winter months. It is removing snow from driveways and roads)

Business's offering emergency services like Lawyers, Dentists, Plumbing, Electrical, HVAC, Roofing Repair and so on are some of the best business categories to target, as they are services that prospects often need RIGHT NOW. For instance if your air conditioning just stopped and its a 100F in the shade, you want it fixed now, you are likely not in the mood to spend the next hour or so doing online research. Same with a toothache, sink overflowing and so on.

But other non emergency business types are good prospects too. These are business's like house renovation, kitchen remodeling, pool installation, chiropractor, insurance and perhaps a 100 more others. In these cases we are seeking to capture the lead and pass it to our client as soon as they show interest in that particular service. We want to get that lead to our client before that prospect turns up at their competitors door. Leads should be exclusive, you only sell them to one business in your local area, so your client has the highest chance of closing those leads.

We mainly sell live phone leads, these are live phone calls routed direct to our clients through our tracking numbers, so 100% fresh and right at the moment of prime interest. Once your Ads and tracking systems are set up your lead generation is virtually on autopilot, even to the weekly billing for leads you have passed on. Hope that helps you.

Cheers
Lindy

From the information you provided I suggest you first look at Demand Generation vs. Lead Generation for two primary reasons:

1. Demand Gen can be based on contacting clients that need sales yesterday, i.e. the target market.

2. Demand Gen is fast ROI for you and your clients which sets the stage for your business to enter your marketing or sales process and Lead Gen.

Where is your target market for Demand Gen? Try your local Chamber of Commerce or the equivalent of it in Egypt. Explain you are a new business and explain you need help. In my experience they are very helpful when it comes to local businesses that need new clients.

Hello Gordon

I wasn't picking on you, I said I could not understand your answer, that part of my reply to the OP is even in the part of my reply that you reposted. Your answer to him was then much more confusing when you suggested "Maybe cosmetics, supplements, clothes might be right for you", AND "although I'm having trouble coming up with a business that would PAY you for leads, because if it were that easy to find these people why would they need you?"

Obviously if you take both those statements at their face value, both would be 100% wrong. Then I said "Perhaps Gordon's answer is unclear and he is addressing retail products, as you did mention cars and tv's". So then I was just trying to clear everything up for him.

To answer some of your other comments to me, I often give some details of our business size to both encourage people on what you can achieve, I tell people about some of my life and that I only made US$408 for my whole first year in IM. But I also mention figures to validate my answers, that I actually know what I am talking about, that I have the real life experience to help.

Gordon, my experience ranges from starting out on my own and making less then US$8 per week, to the present, 14 years later, of me being the CEO of an online business with sales of more than US$400,000 per week. This is not from some large public company but from a business owned by my Dad, Anna and myself. As well as the online business's that I reference we also own a number of B&M business's, with figures that I do not include with the online turnover, so we have a lot of business experience. BUT, my Dad started from scratch on his own, I started from scratch on my own, we started like everyone else, from nothing.

It doesn't matter that we are now " a LARGE FULL SERVICE agency with many employees", that just gives me the real life experience to answer some of the questions people ask.

In this case re a lead generation business, it doesn't take "people manning the phones, and a very large budget to work with." Perhaps you don't understand how lead generation works? It can be easily setup and run by one person, it does not require large budgets or staff to answer phones.

It starts with how the OP suggested he would generate leads - "to get online customers for using adwords and FB ads". Then my advice on how we do it is that we are generating live phone leads from those (and other) resources. We sell the live phone leads as they have the most value to our clients. So to do that our ads contain a tracking phone number specific to each client. We get the tracking numbers from Twilio, about US$2 per number per month and a few cents per call.You can likely start with US$20 credit in your account and top up as required. Then next we use a software that automatically diverts any calls made to the tracking phone number to the clients phone number (so the client is answering a live phone call from prospective client/patient/customer). Features depend on the software system you use, but can track all calls being passed on, track calls that were answered or not answered and so on, even to recording each call for proof of delivery but also to fine tune how the leads are being answered. There are a number of software available and they are not expensive. Some like the one we use can even bill the client for each call transferred to them, or for a monthly fee. So we are not needing staff to answer phones, we don't even call prospective clients that we want to sell leads to. We set up the Ads and tracking system and divert a few live phone calls to them. Then we follow up by email to sign them up to our lead generation service. We make clear we are offering them the leads at a certain price, but if they are not interested we can offer them to one of their competitors. We only have to redirect the tracking number to do that.

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Cheers
Lindy

I am not the OP but I wanted to thank the people posting in this thread because I am also looking at getting started with lead generation and these ideas are really helpful.

@LindyUK thank you for the idea on how to sell to the client by sending them a few calls then contacting them to offer to sell more leads to them. I think that is a great idea. How long do you wait from when you send them the first call to when you ask them if they want to buy leads from you? Do you do it via email or call them?

Thanks!

Thank you for that information. That is very helpful! Then you do your lead generation through ads instead of building a website and ranking it in search engines? Like Facebook ads? How much do you usually spend on one type of business to start getting leads? Do you do an image ad or text ad and do you do more than one per business or only the one to start? I am trying to start this with as little investment up front as possible then if it starts working I would put more money into it. Thank you again for taking the time to give this information. It is so very helpful.

If I am taking over the OP thread I can move it to a message but I figured the information may be helpful to more people so I thought it would be better on here.

Thank you for all of that information. This is very helpful to me. You mentioned that you do call tracking. Do you record the calls? Do you charge for every lead or only leads that turn into sales?

You mentioned that some or all of your ads lead to landing pages or websites. Then you build a website or landing page for a generic type of business like YourCityRoofing.com then when you have the client do you put their name and information on that website or keep it generic? I had thought that putting information like licensed insured and bonded may be helpful for getting more calls but if you do not know the end client how would you know to put that info?

Thanks.

Thank you very much for taking the time to give me that information. What kind of business did you try for your first lead generation business? I think this is the last question I have lol.

Thanks appreciate your effortI

Thank you for taking the time to give me that information. It is very helpful to me. I am looking forward to trying out lead generation and your information will be helpful with that.

Think in terms of what problems require immediate solving:
People who need emergency plumbers, emergency dentist appointments, people who've had their store windows broken or the store/house partially burned need someone to come secure (put windows/boards in windows).


But why would you limit yourself to that?


People who are looking for a mortgage can take months to actually start the application, but mortgage people are willing to pay for leads all the same. And they will keep paying as long as your leads are good enough and they are good enough (i.e., as long as they can close a good number of them).

Things like the emergency needs like you mentioned would be better with google adwords type ads then right? For example if the person has that emergency need they likely are not thinking about it on Facebook but are searching for it on google and then that is where the adwords ads would be helpful right?

I originally wanted to build a website and rank it but these days those websites even if in the first one or two ranks they are still lower on the page below mobile local maps results and the google search ads. I would not really be able to do the local maps ranking due to it not being a real business with a location that google would be able to mail the postcard to to get an address listed on the map so then the google search ads would be the best way to go with that right?

Thanks for the information. I think I will try that. I just need to pick what type of business to try first. I am looking forward to see if it works. I may try two different types of businesses first that way if one does not work out I will still be happy that one did.

Wow Lindy UK. Just Wow.

This thread is indeed very helpful and informative. I have been looking for something like that for my business too, and you guys helped me a lot