How to Generate a Never-Ending Avalanche of Super-Qualified Leads Who are Looking to Buy Exactly What You Are Selling

Two-thirds of these sales are generated through a two-step process. The first step is to collect a qualified lead. The second step is to deliver your sales pitch.  Maybe you will deliver your sales pitch with a follow-up sales letter.  Or maybe you will deliver your sales pitch with a personal spoken sales presentation – either over the phone, or in person. That will depend on the type of product your are selling. The point is, you want to collect your qualified leads as cheaply as you possibly can.

But before I launch into how you do that, let me note that lead generation programs generally will not work well for low-priced items with small profit margins,  such as magazine subscriptions – because the economics don’t work out.  But if your profit margin on the product you are selling is $100 or more, a two-step or multi-step sales process is usually best . . . because once the item you are selling crosses this price threshold, you’re going to lose most of your impulse buyers. Plus, your bigger profit margin means you can now afford a multi-step, drip, drip, drip marketing approach. Okay, so let’s cover first the classic way this has been done in direct marketing for decades – even before we had the internet and before we had computers.  

What you did – and what you can still do very profitably right now – is run a little ad that says something like this:

Get Your Free Book

Faith & Freedom:

The Christian Roots of American Liberty -  Just Call 1-000-000-0000 - This 354-page book documents the strong Christian faith of America’s founding fathers. More than that, this book proves that the source of America’s heritage of liberty is the Bible and Christian theology.  This book refutes the myth promoted by the ACLU that Christianity is the enemy of freedom and proves that Christianity is the source of our civil liberties

This ad also had a little photo of my book.  And notice that the word “Free” was in red.  This was small ad — about 3 1/2 inches by 2 inches.  Nothing at all fancy about it. I ran this little ad in Christian magazines and publications.  And I built a very large mailing list this way.  In fact, I used this list to help me build the Christian Coalition in the 1990s . . . which grew into one of the most powerful political organizations of that decade, raising $27 million dollars a year.  Plus . . . I used (and continue to use) this list to market all kinds of books, products and causes that are of  intense interest to Christians.  This list has generated tens of millions of dollars over the last 15 years or so.

Now . . . let’s check on the economics on what a lead generated this way can be worth.  Let’s say it costs me $500 to run the ad.  I then would receive 1,000 requests for the book.  So it cost me about 50 cents a lead, factoring in just the cost of the ad.  But I had some other costs as well.  I did not use a toll-free number, so I did not have that cost.  But, once the volume of calls got too heavy, I paid a service bureau $1.50 to capture the name, address and contact information.  It also cost me $3.50 to fulfill on the request . . . because there was the cost of the printing the book, the book-rate postage, envelope and cover note.  So the cost of generating the lead was $5.50. 

But . . . look at all the ways I can use this lead.  I can market all kinds of similar products to this name.  I sold, for example, a video series on America’s Christian heritage for $97.  With follow up sales letters, I was able to persuade about 20% of these names to buy this video series.  I was able to build a big part of the 2,000,000-member Christian Coalition with these names.  I was able to rent these names to other Christian organizations and businesses about once a week.  In all, I calculated the one-year value of each of these names to be about $50.

 In other words, I would pay $5.50 for the lead.  And on average this lead would return $50 in profit to me during the course of the next 12 months.  And, over time, each of these names would return on average about $100 in profit to me.  So that’s a pretty good way to invest $5.50.  $5.50 turns into $50 in 12 months . . . and $100 eventually.  Probably a lot more than that.  But I stopped calculating.  That’s a whole lot better return than I ever got by investing in a stock.  Mutual fund managers boast when they can return 15% a year on their investments. So that’s the classic way lead generation programs work in direct marketing.  And, by the way, this still works just as well today.

Now . . . think about this. Suppose you use this exact same approach, but you remove the $3.50 it costs to fulfill on the book . . . because you fulfill the book electronically over the internet.Instead of delivering a printed book by way of snail mail, you deliver it in the form of an ebook over the internet. So now, instead of your lead costing $5.50, your lead costs only $2.00 – the cost of the ad plus the cost of capturing the name over the phone.  But now, let’s say you eliminate the cost of the phone answering service and instead send your lead to a landing page on the internet that you have built specifically for this purpose.  So now, instead of a lead costing you $5.50 each – a lead costs you 50 cents each.  Now – even at $5.50, these leads are extraordinarily profitable.  But at 50 cents a lead . . . well, you can do the math.  Your lead is now just one-tenth the cost it used to be in the old days, before we had the internet.  Can you see why online marketing is so lucrative and frankly, so easy?

Now, the one cost you really can’t get away from is the advertising.  You have to pay for that – whether it’s with print ads, or online advertising, or with direct mail . . . or with sweat equity delivering fliers door-to-door or or doing PR campaigns to generate free media coverage, or whatever.  But the point is, you’ll have to pay for advertising one way or the other to generate your leads – either with cash or with sweat equity.  But once you’ve figured out how to capture the names, addresses and contact information of your qualified leads cost-effectively (just like I described), you now have a near limitless resource for future profit.   You now have a business that can grow almost infinitely.

Now this is essential.  You need to keep offering your qualified leads products that are very similar to whatever the free product was that brought them in to start with.  Okay, now let’s go back to my little ad that offered my book for free – FAITH & FREEDOM: The Christian Roots of American Liberty.  Let’s look at what it is that made these leads work for just about any Christian product or cause that I wanted to sell to these leads.  Specifically, let’s look at what we know about people who answer an ad like this:

1)     We know these names are committed Christians because I am running this ad only in publications that are read by committed Christians.

2)     I know that they are responsive to direct marketing offers because they have just answered my direct marketing offer.

3)     I know that this is a new name.  Remember, your strongest names are always your most recent names – those who have responded to an offer recently.

4)     I know they have bought something through the mail because that’s how Christian magazine subscriptions are sold.  They are sold by direct mail.

5)     I know they wanted my book because they just went to the trouble of picking up the phone and ordering it, or they just spent time to go to a computer and landing page and have filled out the information.

6)     I know that their address and contact information is accurate because they want to receive my book.

In other words, these are just about the most qualified leads you can get if you are selling information products aimed at Christians. And it turns out these names were also great for building the membership list of the Christian Coalition . . . and for many other conservative and Christian organizations as well.  Plus, I never need to pay to rent a list.  Renting a list, remember, can be pretty hazardous.  Unless you have a lot of experience, it’s very difficult to really know what it is you are renting.  You can get burned by renting lists if you’re not an expert.  So this method of building your list of super-qualified leads is just about the safest system for building your list known to man.  And it’s pretty simple and easy, as you can see.  In fact, I don’t think life gets a whole lot simpler and easier than this.  Okay, so how do you start out if you don’t have a big advertising budget – which most of us don’t when we are first starting out?  And what businesses might this work well for.  Well, let’s say you are an attorney, or an accountant, or a realtor, or a dentist.  Let’s say you put an ad in the Yellow Pages where all your competitors are running their ads.  By the way, one of the best ways to figure out where to run your ad is to find out where your competitors are running their ads.

You then run your ad there. This allows you not to have to re-invent the wheel. Your competitors are running ads in those places because their ads are probably working. So now your market research is basically done.  For the purpose of this illustration, we’ll say you are going to run your ad in the Yellow Pages – right where all your competitors are running their ads. But your ad is not going to look like an ad that’s run by your competitors.  And your ad is not going to look like all those high-design ads that are produced by ad agencies.  Those ads do not work very well. 

Your ad is going to say something like this.

 The Nine Most Common Costly Mistakes

People Make When Hiring An Attorney

 Call 1-000-000-0000

To get your FREE special report

Or get your special report online by going to:

www.xyzxyz.com

And you can have your report right now.

 And that’s it.

 Now you know the following things for certain about people who answer an ad like this:

 1)    They are actively interested in finding a lawyer.

2)     They probably need to find a lawyer right now.

3)     You now know how to reach this person.

 You can now get on the phone with this person and start a conversation.  You can also put this person on your list to receive your monthly newsletter – which will be packed full of useful information on how to avoid costly legal problems.  Now . . . your ad will be even more effective if it zeros in more precisely on exactly what it is your searcher is looking for.  Most people are not just looking for just any lawyer, they are trying to solve a particular legal problem.  So if you are a divorce lawyer, and if you only want to hear from people who need a divorce lawyer, then the headline of your ad should say . . .

The Nine Most Common Costly Mistakes

People Make When Hiring a Divorce Attorney

Something like that.

By the way, your competitors are going to hate you for running ads like this because they will interpret these ads as criticizing them.  But who cares?  An ad like this will pull at least five times better than all the other ads for attorneys you see around it in the Yellow Pages.  

If you’re a realtor, the headline on your ad would be . . .

The Nine Most Common Costly Mistakes People Make When Hiring a Realtor

And you should test this headline against . . .

The Nine Most Common Costly Mistakes People Make When Buying a House

     Call 1-000-000-0000 To get your FREE special report.. Or get your special report online by going to: www.xyzxyz.com And you can have your report right now.

The reason you’ll want to test these two headlines is that “people by results, not features.”  They don’t by drills, they buy the holes that drills make.  So, yes, people do look for realtors, but only because they want to buy or sell a house.  Notice that there are really only two things that matter in these ads:  1) the attention-getting headline and 2) the offer of the Free report.   “Free” is just about the most powerful word in advertising and marketing.  If people are looking for the information you are offering, free is the right price for everyone.  That’s how you build your list of super-qualified leads.  Now, keep in mind  that some products and services are “need it now” products and services.  Others are not.  If someone is looking in the Yellow Pages for a lawyer, or a plumber, or a dentist, they need it or want it now.  People look in the Yellow Pages for services they need or want now.  So if you are a “need it now” businesses, you must be set up to follow up instantly with your lead with a phone call and with email.  And have a letter ready to mail that day.

And, as always, be sure to add your leads to your printed monthly newsletter list that arrives by postal mail – the cheapest, most cost-effective and most productive marketing you will ever do.

To Your Success in Business and Happiness in Life,

Ben Hart - Your 21st Century Marketing Coach . . .because everyone (even Tiger Woods) needs a coach

www.MarketingRocketFuel.com

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