I'm pulling up a chair and a bowl of popcorn to watch this one... this is similar to the business model I have been working on.

I understand if someone doesn't want to respond publicly. A PM is fine too. I'm hoping to get some of these questions answered. Any takers??

OP,
Hope that helps.. Find my replys in blue.
Robert

Well this is quite the plan you have here. Let me get this straight though, you are looking to start a "Lead Generation Business" to deliver targeted and/or qualified leads to businesses that are willing to pay for them...Correct?

The first things I need to ask is....do you actually have the ability to generate leads for businesses or do you just have the confidence that you "should" be able to generate leads if all goes right...??

IF you can generate leads(Facebook, Google search, PPC, craigslist, etc), then all of the rest is pretty easy in my opinion. If you only think that you should be able to generate leads, then it is still easy but the be more money out of your pocket actually generating the leads through more trial/error. If you are just entering into this with no proven ability to generate leads or even traffic from (FB, Google search, PPC, etc), then you are really going to be spending a lot of money through learning/trial and error.


I terms of your actual plan you listed...You have outlined a hell of a lot about the initial steps to scraping, categorizing, prospecting, pitching and closing your potential clients. Not that all of this is not important and crucial to a successful business but there are a few steps that I would just not do in my opinion.

Step 1, identifying businesses that meet criteria of being able to have a budget for lead generation services....great.

Step 2, This step seems to be quite extensive and un-necessary to me. The business pain points is that they need more clients/customers at a reasonable acquisition cost. For lead generation, you need to know that they are willing to pay for leads, that they have a small understanding of what their customers are worth, how much they are willing to pay for acquisition costs and what services they want to target, grow or concentrate on....

Step 3, Again this seems quite extensive and un-necessary to me. You are going to be providing them leads, not helping them with their web presence, social media, etc. Collect contact info, contact business and pitch your "Direct Client Acquisition Platform" to provide them with leads to their business for a set fee, a % fee a what ever fee. Do they want more leads? Yes, well you have the platform to provide them...simple. Problem, they need leads..Solution, your platform provides them leads(without them lifting a finger). In terms of PPC or FB, either way you need some type of only presence for them to "See' your landing page, pitch, video etc that explains/sells your lead generation service. For me, I do FB. Find the business you want to target, find them on FB, find their owner, managers etc on FB. Create a FB ad targeting ONLY THOSE 4 ppl or 1 person or what ever. Ad asks if they want more leads for their named business...ultra targeted and extremely inexpensive, since the demographic is under 10 ppl. penny a click and you only need 1 click to have your target audience see the ad, landing page, video, phone number to call you. Simple, cheap and targeted.

Step 4, Explain that your system will provide them leads and that you need to discuss what services that they are interested in getting leads for and if you can provide those leads. Nothing more, nothing less. As for free leads or a commitment. Are you planning on signing these businesses to a contract or getting money up front? If not, then there is really no commitment other than the quality of your leads. Since they will not pay if you do not deliver leads, nothing to pay for. If you want to give them 3 leads for free to see the quality or if they are on target...that is easy to do. Any more than that should be a special case...

Step 5, If you can get and deal with a % revenue deal..Great. The problem with that is you are now relying on the business to do their job well. If you send them 100 leads a year and they only close 1 deal, you are only getting paid for that 1 deal since they could not close the other 99. That one deal might be a $500,000 deal and you get 10% = $50,000....which is a great deal. You are still relying on them to close the deal AND you are relying on them to provide you with the deals they have closed, the revenue numbers, the updated financials, etc etc...A lot to manage and maintain. If you go pay per lead, you would have gotten paid for all 100 leads you sent even if they close zero. At $500 a lead, that is $50,000. With no worry as to the businesses performance or management of their revenue numbers, etc. I do both and I like the Money potential from %, I like the ease of per lead.

STep 6, This is entirely up to your and your confidence. For me, I enter new niches, locations etc all the time without ever producing a lead first. Finding clients that are willing to pay for leads is the easy part. SO again, I ask if you can actually produce lead for anyone at all? IF so, sign up a client and get to work. If not, find a few niches are thinking of generating leads for....setup your properties, campaigns etc...start generating some leads and then go hog wild talking to businesses that might want those leads....will not take long before someone snatches your leads up.

Step 7, This is very important to really make oddles of cash....You can easily just set up mediocre campaign after lead gen campaign, cranking out leads for X dollars. The real money is knowing which campaign to scale further, what to tweak to get 25% more leads a month and what other online methods can ramp up the lead generation even further at a reasonable cost.

Lead gen is a good business and I hope you have success doing it...

RKCastillo, definitely has a good way to do it. To take it a step further, if you are using something like ACT(analytic call tracking) you can start up your lead gen campaign with 1 phone number but have it use the round robin feature. So you can set it up to forward to 5 different potential clients numbers. When a lead calls your virtual number the round robin feature kicks in and who ever picks up first gets the lead. What this does is allows you to see that business X and Y are always picking up, while Z never seems to....Well there is no reason to offer Z the leads, waste of time...but you know that X and Y are more hungry for new customers since they pick up every time.

Now if you wanted, you can offer the leads to both businesses X plus Y and continue to use the round robin system. Then expand on business X and Y by attempting to get leads for other services they might be interested in...instead of 1 new client, you just got two new clients.



Shockwave also has an excellent point about getting some business from homeadvisor or other online service directories.

As for how good the Lead Gen business is....

I have a joint venture with many people around north america for doing lead gen services with them. One joint venture just closed 6 new contracts for various services, real estate, law, medical...all without even having a lead gen campaign started for any of these businesses. They are hungry for leads and willing to pay....Also, signed another business that is going to do a % deal on commissions which are on services that range from $150,000 to $1 mil+. Again without ever providing any free leads, having leads before hand or even having any properties built.

If you can deliver leads, you will be confident to be able to talk to anyone about getting them leads. Everything "usually" falls into place from there...

The biggest thing that you will need to grasp is that a Lead Gen business has nothing to do with SEO, websites, ads, Facebook, mobile, videos, PPC, etc etc etc....

The ONLY thing that a Lead Gen business has to do with is...... LEAD GENERATION.

It does not matter at all how you go about generating the leads for a business to buy from you....it just matters that you have the ability to send them leads and the cost for you to acquire those leads are lower than the cost you are selling those leads.

So find a method that works for you and your skill set. Then go from there....

It's good that you have thought this out.

Now you need to focus on how are you going to get clients and put all your energy there.

Also, you should become your first customer and by that I mean build your own lead generation system so that when you are talking to future clients, you can speak with authority because you have actually experienced it.

[DELETED]

When you are targeting your Facebook ads, make sure that you are targeting the right set of audience; else you might not get any useful traction out of it.

Nice thread here. I'm subscribed to a related thread from a guy overseas using this model. I've also got something like this in the works and will chime in when I have a tip/idea/tactic to add. Subscribing to this one as well

My Bad, Bjallen is totally right....had my brain working backwards when I wrote what I wrote....Ring Multiple Numbers feature is what you want to use if you are going to drive out clients that are not taking the leads you are giving them due to not answering the damn phone....

I was asked by a friend that is interested in what my business does...."what method do I utilize to get leads for my clients?"

The answer was simple.....I use every and any method that is cost effective. So if you are really good at Adwords PPC, try that. If you are a whiz at LinkedIn, try that. Twitter, Video Ranking, Images, Email Lists, Media Buys....what ever you can get results(LEADS)....use that method.

Once you have mastered a particular method that you can get leads in your sleep....take some of your money and time to explore a 2nd or 3rd method. Then apply those methods to your current, new clients and your own business. There are tons and tons of places on and off the internet where people are looking for different services that they require. So the more methods that you can master, the more potential leads that you can send to your clients, and the more money you are going to make.

A second point is that there are tons and tons and tons of extremely low hanging fruit for almost every niche. It just takes a bit of out of the box thinking or some effort into researching the niche. I was able to find about 250 simple real estate phrases that get anywhere between 10-50 searches a month for a city of over 8 million in population. At even 10 searches a month times 250 phrases equals 2500 searches a month for phrases that have zero to extremely low competition. Even getting leads from 1% of that search volume a month is 25 leads a month. At between $250-$1000 per lead depending on the type of property type, that is between $6250-$25000 a month. And yes, in the luxury condo downtown market even a modest city can net $1000 per lead due to the high sales price of the property and the high competition for these types of leads. Even though there are tons of low hanging fruit if the time is spent to find it.

SO any method that works and why not take the low hanging fruit if it is there...

Please help,
I am interested in creating a lead gen business for local service companies for pressure washing. I have created a few sites in the past for this and I have them rank on page 1 usually in the top 3-4 for "pressure washing their town", "their town pressure washing", "power washing their town" and "their town pressure washing".
This was a test to see if I could do it repeatedly. The current phone number on the site is a fake number that does not go anywhere.
The analytics are ok. One site currently gets about 70 to 90 uniques per month and the other about 30-40 per month. Thses sites are design to come up just for that town. They do not yet come up for surrounding towns.
I was thinking of trying the call tracking number with the round robin option to see what companies pick up the phone most and then approach them.
Question: Do I pick local companies and set them up without telling them and see who picks up most and tell them those calls came from me? Or do I talk to them first? I like the idea of having it sell itself (show them the actual results.) If they are not interested I can go to the next on the list and politelty let them know that.
Question: If I have someone interested, what is the best way to charge them? A flat monthly rate? If so how much? $100 p/m, $200 p/m, more? less?
If I wanted to charge per lead, how do you keep track of the leads? and once again how much $?
Question: If I have someone interested do I offer to put their logo and pictures of their truck on the site? This way they will feel like it is theirs. If they stop using me then all I have to do is redirect the phone number and change the images and this should not affect the seo. Or don't even bother changing the site, all they really want is their phone to ring. However it might help getting people to call once they land on the page.
Question: I also have seen companies that do something similar to this but they have the same phone number on all their sites. How do they handle this? Do they all go to a call center and then what? How do they send these to contractors and monetize this?
Here is an example of a different niche.

BTW how is he getting Google reviews with stars showing up in his SERP? Is it Black Hat?
When you use yahoo "pest control johnston ri" you will see the black stars. I thing having the real gold stars from Google would make a nice difference on the SERPS. Does anyone think they help?

Well tarpontim1138....I could respond to your post with a 10 page response but instead I will try to keep it short and concise...

Awesome that you are ranking a few websites for the general words around pressure washing and a city. Take a second and think outside the box, attempt to rank for the 100s of other terms that revolve around pressure washing...There are tons of applications that utilize pressure washing services, target some of those long tail to increase visitor volume.

Second, until you get something that tracks the actual number of calls you are getting...you are just wasting your time. Your sites could get 1000 unique visitors a months and not generate a single call/lead. Go to twilio, buy a $1 number, forward it to your number and start tracking the # of calls. Even if you answer and say, sorry wrong number it is better than not knowing.

Once you KNOW you are getting leads calling your number, it is simple...call up local businesses and say, "Hey, I have a system that generates leads for pressure washing services that you currently offer. Are you interested in more people calling you about those services, if so...then let's get you signed up to start getting those leads forwarded to your business number." Do not mention you have a website, do not mention you do internet marketing, do not mention rankings or SEO. Only mention that you have leads looking for services that they offer and your internal systems can continue to generate those types of leads month to month...and if they want to sign up, great..if not ok on to the next business to call. If they want to qualify the leads, send them 1-3 for free if you really feel like it.

Pricing, I am not in the pressure washing niche so I am not sure of pricing for the service as a whole or any of the niche services like driveways cleaning with a pressure washer, window cleaning, industrial cleaning, etc. I would imaging it is either by time, Sq ft or hourly. Find out how much it costs on average for the service, find out how often someone might call back for repeat service and find out if there are upsells or add ons. Figure out how much a customer is worth to one of these businesses. Then if you can send them 1 customer a month, how much is a fair price for them to pay for that customer. If you can send 10 leads a month, simple multiplication. If the service is less than $250 for the average customer value, then I usually go with a flat rate model per month. IF it is more, then I go pay per lead.

To keep track of the calls, you can use any of the virtual phone services will do that as part of their virtual number. Or you can use something like Analytic Call Tracking which uses twilio numbers and does pretty much everything you need for tracking, billing, recording etc.

Do not even mention the site to them, it has nothing to do with your service from the customers perspective. You sell them "Lead Generation Services" or if you want to stay away from the term lead generation..."Client Interaction Marketing System" - The system that automates the interaction between your business and clients by having them call you directly...Fancy marketing way of saying it.

If they the same toll free number that looks like it services a bunch of towns/cities/areas, they usually either have some type of IVR system or a call center system. For me, I hate toll free numbers unless it is a national niche campaign. People are more likely to call a local area code number as they perceive it is attached to an actual local business in their area and not some scammy national business.

Stars in the search engine is a simple "rich snippets" piece of code that is added to their website. All it does it make it stand out in a visual way...sometimes helps sometimes does not.

SO you need a phone number attached to those sites to see if you are actually getting results "Leads". IF so, get selling your service...IF NOT, then figure out why people are not calling.

Duplicate post, arg

tarpontim1138, based on what you said, I'd just consider renting the site, and saying as much. If it's ranking and you intend to keep it ranking, then you'll just have the maintenance seo costs involved (if any).

What it's worth depends on whether they already have something like what you're offering (a website that's ranking). I've charged a lot for something like that, but it got a lot of traffic. For less calls, you need to bring the price down. I don't advise going below $99/mo.

Another plus is that you don't worry about how much the phone rings. If you talk to them in terms of lead generation, they expect calls to justify paying you. If you tell them you're renting a ranking site and they get a bunch of calls one month and fewer the next, it's unlikely they'll be concerned about paying you. Justify the lack of calls from lack of traffic / seasonality.

If you propose a flat-rate plus commission on sales, you can explain to them that you'll work on the site to increase conversion rates. But that's for another post :-)

Captain Courageous, what you've outlined is the basics of any lead generation business. I'd back up and look at how you can maximize gaining new clients. Also consider whether you're interested in B2B or B2C or both. Different industries get different type of leads and different volumes of leads.

If looking at B2B, you might want to read this: Lead Generation for the Complex Sale
Also, if you're able to generate leads for a B2B-focused business, then getting referrals for the next client is easier after you prove results.

If B2C, you're going to get less per lead but can make up the difference in volume.

Service industries obviously get leads from both markets, and I recommend you qualify the types of leads to get more money (business lead costs X, consumer lead costs Y).