Who's making money from using PPC to generate leads for their clients as their main business model?

The strategy is definitely doable and it's very scalable.

The best part about this type of lead generation is that you are in complete control.

I already do lead gen for businesses, but never focused strictly on local. I already do lots of consulting work where I get paid upfront for my services so I'm not quite at the point where I'm ready to walk away from that.

My strategy if I ever decide to take this approach serious is this:

1. Pick one vertical market. In the IM space, we call it a niche.

2. Research the crap out of that market so I know exactly what the customers are looking for.

3. Since I would start with PPC on the search network, I would do keyword research before building a site.

4. Build a micro site around the keywords packed with relevant content.

5. Build at least 3 landing page variations to start testing.

6. Install all my tracking including a call tracking number. Phone call leads are waaay better quality than web form leads.

7. Use a service like Info Free to build a list of leads starting with one local area. Call those leads and offer my lead generation service.

8. Drive traffic and focus on optimizing the traffic for not only conversions, but also lead quality. (Hint: You can determine lead quality by listening to phone calls. Plenty of intel to tell you what you could do better as well as advice you can give your lead buyers on how to close better. The better your leads are for them, the more you can charge. Just sayin.)

9. Once I've mastered the conversions and lead quality on the search network, I'd move to other traffic sources such as the display network with banners, Facebook, etc. Basically, I'd expand to as many traffic sources I could find to generate quality leads.

10. Once I get to a point where I feel comfortable with my profit margin, expand to a new local market and use all the data and intel I've collected to rinse and repeat.

Then I'd just keep expanding to scale as much as possible.

I might have missed something, but that's my plan if I ever decide to do it.

I know a someone that's doing over 2 million dollars a year with this method. Except he focuses on the education vertical. The approach is very similar though because I know his geo targeted campaigns are the ones that perform the best.

Hope this little bit of insights helps.

Local lead marketing is on a prepaid basis. You get the clients and they pay you upfront for your services.

But if you are not into the business and you are new to it than its a hard sale for you. But if you start off and you own the micro sites like SIPBOY said and you are driving leads to customers than its an EASY sale. You can work off a per lead basis and as soon as they decide they dont want to buy no more than you can easily go to someone else in the market.

Local lead gen is a great way to make a lot of money and utilize your PPC skills. Not everyone knows how to do what we do....

Take advantage!

Is some the strategies from 2008 outdated? Just curious

This only works if your selling leads to companies that know how to close and have the money today to pay you for the leads that you send.

If you already have a client in a field, then you know what converts and can sell to prospects in a different city/county. If you are just picking random niches from the sky expect to spend money on "test data" and realize that this model only works for people who know how to manage PPC campaigns.

This is essentially how I got started making good money for myself. However, I did not use PPC. I don't see anything wrong with PPC (thats a lie), but I do not view it as a long term plan for any business. Or maybe its just the niche I'm in.

In the niche I'm in, people pay around $200 just to get 1 appointment set. That job might not even sell, or it may sell for a low amount. So you can spend around $400-500 just to get 1 decent size job sold.

Although that still works in my niche as a business model, it sucks. The ROI is terrible.
Thats why I took a different route.

I figured for $500, I can rank 100 videos on youtube for 100 different keywords.
Or I could pay a CL autoposter and get hundreds of ads posted in my area every week (which has a much better ROI than google adwords).

Or I could outsource some SEO on my website for some less competitive keywords.

Or I could start building citations for my google places and getting reviews.

There were so many other things I realized I could do, that would provide a much better ROI if they were done properly. The problem is, its a lot of work for most people. I only have about 30 youtube videos up, but it took about 2-3 hours to make each one. This took me many months to accomplish. I didn't outsource anything but the ranking of the videos. All the content I did myself.

The CL ads I wrote and tested all of them myself. And it was A LOT of ads. THEN I outsourced the posting process.

I always did SEO myself when another company was also doing SEO for the site. I'd just target different keywords than the ones I gave them.

Google places I did all by myself, and building those citations sucked (I'm doing it for a new site right now and hate it).

The point is though, once this is setup it generates more leads for a better ROI. Its a true sales funnel and the foundation that all businesses need most. When PPC stops, business stops. But how exactly does google places stop? Or traffic coming from youtube videos? Or specific keywords from your site on page 1 of google? Between google places and youtube alone, I don't touch a thing, and traffic always comes in.

For the amount of traffic I get from youtube in 1 day, I'd have to spend $1000 a day on PPC. Which is ridiculous. I'm sorry, but I just do not like PPC at all. Thats the worst ROI I can think of. I spent $150 on those videos, and lots of time (which YES, is worth money) but the ROI from youtube destroys adwords. I haven't touched many of those videos in months, and continue to get traffic.

BTW, I'm not saying don't use PPC. But as a foundation for a business, I strongly recommend against it. Or maybe I just suck at PPC that badly. I couldn't honestly tell you. All I know is everything else has worked for me just fine, everything but PPC.

-Red

I never charge upfront. I invoice pr lead.


I segment my clients througholy, they pick me and I pick them.


The prospecting proces of getting into a business relationsship works two ways. The prospecting phase, getting to the closing - is a much longer proces than the closing itself and much more difficult, due to the unknown factors in the new relation.


A lot of business people forget to prequalify their clients - and bump into unnes.issues, like lack of payment and questioning the quality of the leads (if thet cant convert them)


Our job ad lead gens is to provide the leads, not convert them.


As a rule of thumb - I indicate the pricepoint of the lead, by having the ppc cost added times 15 or 20 - this will give you an estimated price range to negotioate from.

EX; Dentists, costs 5 dollars in phily - I sell them for around 75 to 100 D.

I think that your method of acquiring leads for your client's may just run you dry the more the demands get higher.

You have no assurance that you will be able to generate leads for your clients since you are relying on a PPC model. You'll be paying for your own campaigns, and what if your client's aren't happy with the leads you provide?

Also, how would you qualify the leads you generate for your clients? I don't think a PPC campaign allows you to pre-qualify your prospects before you hand them off to your clients.