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.
The biggest problem newbies experience, is that after spending hours developing a solid landing page, getting a keyword list, finding the best offers, and coming up with a solid ad variation – they run their campaign, blow through their money without a single lead to show for it. They then quit on their campaign as they haven’t even sniffed a positive result from hours of effort. This happens to almost everyone – so don’t worry! The following is a list of key points that all newbies should strive to attain, and to know when their campaign really wasn’t a waste of time:
1.) Make sure you have a good niche! How can you expect to get hundreds of leads a day when you don’t even know if there is that many people looking to buy your product? Sure you can be the first to exploit a niche, but leave that to the big guys. If you are just starting out, you don’t need to make things any harder than they have to be.
2.) Find the leads! Regardless if you spent $100 or $1000 on your campaign, if you haven’t generated any leads – then all you know is that atleast ONE variable within your keywords, landing page, offers, ad variations, bid price, and ad position combination does NOT work. You need to distinguish what variables need adjustments and which doesn’t, and the only way to do this is to compare results between what is working. The problem is that if you don’t have any leads to use with your data – it’ll be very hard to make adjustments because in essence – you have no idea what is working. The first step in the right direction is to FIND as many leads as you can, and try to optimize your efforts to more leads in that realm. This is why it’s important to make sure you are promoting a hot niche. You KNOW the leads are out there… Go find them!
3.) Don’t give up – I can’t stress this enough. The only real money you lose is when you don’t learn from your mistakes. Keep grinding until you’ve tried every combination of keywords, ad variations, landing page, offers, position and bid price as you can.
The big thing ALL newbies should know, is that if you just keep at it, you will hit your campaign! Even if it takes 20 swings until you hit, that hit will be ever so sweet. Once you hit your first campaign, everything starts to make alot more sense in your mind, and your experience starts to kick in. Affiliate marketing is like developing an extra muscle in your brain. It’s tough at first, but once you get the hang of it – it becomes much easier to hit more campaigns. Enjoy the ride!
When mentoring publishers, I am often asked what is the biggest difference between when I started, and where I am at now. The answer, although seems quite simple, is actually what I believe is the key to success in this industry. I’ve been doing online marketing for quite some time (started in 2001) in all the different aspects of internet marketing and became really serious about search marketing specifically about 4 years ago. Below are some points based on my personal reflection between me now and then:
1.) Start campaigns with $1000 to spend, not $100! When I was starting off, I did the common mistake of depositing $100 into my Adwords account, and seeing where that got me. After I blew through the money in an hour, I would freak out and call my campaign a failure. This is HARDLY the case. There is a TON of trial and error in campaigns, especially when starting off. One ad group may get creamed and lose $80, while your other ad group may get a ton of leads for $20. The important thing to realize is that your statistics are worthless unless you have enough data to prove they do or do not work. 20 clicks and no conversions on an offer that pays $50 a lead does NOT mean it’s a failure. What happens if 2 clicks in a row convert? All the sudden your “failed” campaign is a huge success. It is important to make sure your keywords have atleast 70-100 clicks each before you make any decisions. In most cases, this will require more than $100 for your campaign to figure out. I’d say closer to $1000. Once I started depositing more money into my Adwords accounts, I started finding that MOST of my campaigns were actually having some sort of avenue to profitability. I found my converting keywords/ad variation combinations and scaled my traffic. This was only possible because I had put the proper amount of money into trial and error.
2.) If you’re not a designer, don’t create your own landing pages! There’s nothing wrong with admitting that a professional landing page designer is better at designing landing pages than you. Realize this, and accept it. A solid landing page increases your chances at success substantially. If you are truly serious about trying to succeed at online marketing, do it the right way. Spend the $100 and get your page done by someone who knows what they are doing. It could be the difference between your campaign hitting, or missing.
3.) Develop a healthy disregard for money. Don’t stress over a loss. Look at the situation similar to a college education. You are paying to learn. Be sure to reflect on every swing at a campaign, and develop a conclusion from your attempt. Document what you learn. The only way you really lose money, is if you don’t learn something new.
4.) Scale like CRAZY!!! If you find a particular keyword or niche that is working, SCALE! Do not hold anything back. Go after every single engine, every single language possible. Examine new traffic sources. You need to milk every cent of profit from you findings. You will find yourself in regret for not doing this when your niche dies down. Don’t leave a cent left on the table!
5.) Track your results thoroughly! This is the main reason why I made Bevo Media. I always found it a pain to track my results thoroughly, however it is of the utmost importance. I mean much more than tracking your keywords too. You should track your landing page and ad variations thoroughly. I built Bevo Media based on my needs as an affiliate marketer, and once I started tracking my results thoroughly with it, I found it much easier to draw conclusions about the aspects of my campaign that were successful, and optimized from there.
6.) DO NOT GIVE UP! A full time affiliate marketer, may as well be considered a full time ‘trial and error’ expert. 90% of the game is trial and error. Just keep trying different combination of keywords, landing pages, offers and ad variations. You are bound to hit eventually. Use your resources, such as your affiliate managers to let you know what niche is hot at the time. If you have a niche that is proven to be converting extremely well at the moment, then you know it’s working for somebody. It’s just the matter of figuring out the right combination within you campaign!
These are all points that have cost me both time and money to realize, and feel all newbies can get a jump start to success from my sharing. Do yourself a favor and take these points seriously. Don’t cut corners. Affiliate marketing is a dream job, but it’s still a job. Strive to be the best, but you need to earn it first. Lazy people do NOT succeed in life, no matter what the situation is. So work hard and celebrate after!
Here’s a tour of the Bevo Media Office in Del Mar, CA. For those of you who don’t know, we just relocated to the Southern California area. Del Mar which is where our office is located, is in north San Diego. My apartment is down the street on the beach of the beautiful town of La Jolla.
After 2 years of development, BeVo Media's expected open beta date is October 1st. BeVo Media is now accepting beta tester applicants. If you are a webmaster, search marketer, media buyer, or PPC Firm, you may be eligible to be a beta tester. Please contact ryan@bevomedia.com to get on the beta tester list.
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