The Local Lead Gen Craze
The Local Lead Gen Craze
Local Lead Gen is a great business to get into, especially for internet marketers. With the skill set of affiliate marketing, and the unsaturated local markets, local lead gen is a great way to build a solid business that can be sustained and consistent (lack of consistency is often the problem with affiliate marketing).
I have been doing local lead gen for a while now, and have some solid clients. It’s a great gig. You bring people leads, they pay you for leads, they convert the leads and everybody wins.
However, it seems that local lead gen has become a sort of trend in the internet marketing industry. This is great, because there are plenty of local markets to go around for everybody. But, there is one common misconception and that is that local lead gen is easy. Local Lead Gen is not easy! There are a few things everybody thinking about getting into local lead gen should know.
1. Find Clients: Finding clients is not as easy as walking into a local business and saying, “hey, I’m an internet marketer and you can use my help.” Finding clients is probably the hardest part of the process. You need to convince them that you can deliver leads, and then, once those leads are delivered, they need to know that the leads are good. This brings me to my next point.
2. Determine what constitutes a lead: In affiliate marketing, you are paid per action. You, and your potential client, will need to decide what constitutes an action. Do you they want a phone call? Do they just want someone to request more information? Do they want to make the sale and then pay you a percentage? This is another tricky aspect of local lead gen.
3. Make sure you deliver good leads: Typically, in order to get a good client to understand your value, you will need to bring them some good leads right off the bat. This can be tricky. It’s hard to prove to a business that the leads they bought from you are leads that convert into sales for them, especially since you will most likely not be in control of completing the sale. They might blame you even though it was them who botched the conversion. Remember, it’s not like affiliate marketing. There is no network to eat the cost if the company isn’t satisfied with there leads.
4. Track your leads: It is of the utmost importance that you track your leads efficiently. There are tons of ways to do this. At this point, most companies have websites. You will have to decide if you want to use their website, which can lead to you needing to rely on whoever manages the website to make changes, put in pixels or anything else you request, or, you can create your own sort of landing page. Additionally, you can set up special phone numbers or email addresses that prove the leads came from you. Essentially, what you need to do is figure out a way to ensure that the leads that came from you are accredited to you. Also, you want to put the leads in the best position possible to convert. As I mentioned before, you usually aren’t in control of the conversion but the better you make the chance of that conversion, the more money you will get out of the company.
Every company wants costumers. All you need to do is convince them that you can deliver. It’s easier said than done, trust me. The internet is still foreign to most local business owners, and they will most likely not understand exactly what it is you are doing. But with Facebooks new ad rules, Adwords love/hate relationship with affiliates, and the end of rebills…local lead gen is a great way to build a good business that is scalable and consistent.
Great post, I have noticed a lot of talk about local lead gen as well. I’ve done some work with local companies and generating clients is definitely NOT easy.
Great post.