Whats harder, getting leads or selling leads?
- Thread starter demigr
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kulwantnagi
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Getting quality leads and converting them into buyers is a complete science.
Which can be learnt after too many hits and trials.
Which can be learnt after too many hits and trials.
It depends on the type of industry the buyers and sellers are in. Also whether or not it's B2C or B2B, online/offline. There are many different lead gens to go after and just as many client variations in need of leads.
Most of the lead gen I've done was for Realtors and for Dentists. I did some in the dating niche, but in order to really penetrate that market, et al, I would want a higher budget that I currently have available. At least $1k a day.
I still do lead gen for a few high end Realtors and I can say they pay $50 to $500 per lead depending on whether it's a cold pre-qualified lead or a mortgage approved buyer. I get $50 up front on all of the leads, but when I bring them a mortgage approved buyer or a seller that they get under contract, then I get an additional $450 at closing.
To say one is easier than the other can't be said I think. I had a Dentist roll over for me after five minutes on the phone and he started paying me a flat $50 fee for a general dentist lead, and pays me 10% on restorations that can go into the 10's of thousands. I've had other dentists make me work for it much harder. The same goes for the prospects. Some lay down right away and others make you work for it.
With B2B. I have an abundance of experience from back in the '80's when I had a manufacturing facility in Vegas that made and distributed computer supplies for the mainframe and mini-mainframe markets. We built the finest money could buy and sold direct to the user. Lots of government and corporate contracts. Longer term relationships, bigger orders, but setting up the sale could take months. These bigger clients were all on big mainframes like the IBM 4330's, 4340's, a few had those monstrous Crays' (NORAD, NASA, Bergen Brunswick, Boeing, Ford Aerospace, et al. I also had a phone room that dialed for dollars with the smaller B2B clients, most of them on mini mainframes like the IBM 34's, 36's, and 38's, DEC PDP 1170's, Honeywell, Burroughs, and such. The bigger they were, the more work was required, but a bigger payday was the reward.
In my opinion, one is not easier than the other. Both require a good formula to attract clients, and a good formula to maintain the business relationship to sell the leads to. Whether it's online or offline.
Most of the lead gen I've done was for Realtors and for Dentists. I did some in the dating niche, but in order to really penetrate that market, et al, I would want a higher budget that I currently have available. At least $1k a day.
I still do lead gen for a few high end Realtors and I can say they pay $50 to $500 per lead depending on whether it's a cold pre-qualified lead or a mortgage approved buyer. I get $50 up front on all of the leads, but when I bring them a mortgage approved buyer or a seller that they get under contract, then I get an additional $450 at closing.
To say one is easier than the other can't be said I think. I had a Dentist roll over for me after five minutes on the phone and he started paying me a flat $50 fee for a general dentist lead, and pays me 10% on restorations that can go into the 10's of thousands. I've had other dentists make me work for it much harder. The same goes for the prospects. Some lay down right away and others make you work for it.
With B2B. I have an abundance of experience from back in the '80's when I had a manufacturing facility in Vegas that made and distributed computer supplies for the mainframe and mini-mainframe markets. We built the finest money could buy and sold direct to the user. Lots of government and corporate contracts. Longer term relationships, bigger orders, but setting up the sale could take months. These bigger clients were all on big mainframes like the IBM 4330's, 4340's, a few had those monstrous Crays' (NORAD, NASA, Bergen Brunswick, Boeing, Ford Aerospace, et al. I also had a phone room that dialed for dollars with the smaller B2B clients, most of them on mini mainframes like the IBM 34's, 36's, and 38's, DEC PDP 1170's, Honeywell, Burroughs, and such. The bigger they were, the more work was required, but a bigger payday was the reward.
In my opinion, one is not easier than the other. Both require a good formula to attract clients, and a good formula to maintain the business relationship to sell the leads to. Whether it's online or offline.
I'm not sure what you mean by selling those leads to a CPA Network. With lead gen in the CPA industry you are driving traffic to a site (either your landing page for a presell or a direct link to the offer) that converts your traffic to a lead. Sometimes you collect info from the lead before sending them along to sign up for the offer. Either way, the lead is considered a viable lead the second they sign up for the offer with the advertiser.
In the offline lead gen world, one prospects the businesses, gets past the gate keeper, and negotiates a contractual commitment with the decision maker. Some do this by phone, others in person. I think you'll find that one needs to be prepared to deal in both environments. What I have found to be most successful in the offline world is a method I used for decades and that is to give them a taste of the product, in this case some leads. Once they know they are of great quality and easily convert for them, then you can write a very lucrative contract.
In the offline lead gen world, one prospects the businesses, gets past the gate keeper, and negotiates a contractual commitment with the decision maker. Some do this by phone, others in person. I think you'll find that one needs to be prepared to deal in both environments. What I have found to be most successful in the offline world is a method I used for decades and that is to give them a taste of the product, in this case some leads. Once they know they are of great quality and easily convert for them, then you can write a very lucrative contract.
I thought that an offer in the CPA network to purchase leads meant that you generate the lead on your site and then sell it to them. If I am understanding you correctly, its simply driving traffic to THEIR landing page and being paid once that traffic completes a lead form on THEIR site, right?
So if you are generating leads on your own site, there really is no need for CPA. You then need to market and sell those leads on your own similar to the fashion you described for offline leads, except it wont be face to face and pretty much through phone/email.
Again, thanks for the insightful info, its been quite helpful!
So if you are generating leads on your own site, there really is no need for CPA. You then need to market and sell those leads on your own similar to the fashion you described for offline leads, except it wont be face to face and pretty much through phone/email.
Again, thanks for the insightful info, its been quite helpful!
In some cases CPA networks will run a leadgen offer that allows you to api post the leads to their pingtree, I think this is what you are referring to @demigr .
In my opinion its more difficult to find good buyers. Many of our customer at Lead Wrench ask for referrals to buyers in their particular vertical. It's easy to find middleman brokers, but to step into the big leagues and go direct, its a whole different ball game.
In my opinion its more difficult to find good buyers. Many of our customer at Lead Wrench ask for referrals to buyers in their particular vertical. It's easy to find middleman brokers, but to step into the big leagues and go direct, its a whole different ball game.
This is exactly correct. It's important to note the ancillary values of generating and selling the leads yourself. For starters - you own the lead data and can market to it over and over again. Build your own list, an asset, that can generate revenue for you far beyond typical click arbitrage. Further, by owning the leadgen landing page you are able to modify/tweak the conversion funnel to get better results in real time without relying on a 3rd party that doesn't know your traffic the way you do.
Questions/Comments:
1. At $1,000 a day, you see a positive ROI? You must or you wouldn't be doing it. Makes me want to hear more details.
2. Why aren't you selling a course on how to do this? Sounds like a product to me.
3. Does that big brain get heavy sometimes?
The knowledge and experience you possess blows me away.I've only done a little marketing in the dating niche. For about 8 months or so last year. During that time, I averaged around 60% ROI or 160% ROI, depending on the view one chooses. My budget was around $4500 a month and I was on monthly payments with my networks.
ROI = ( (Earnings) - Initial Invested Amount) / Initial Invested Amount) ) × 100
In truth, according to my profs at Wharton (and what can be found in a balance sheet and P&L), an investment of $1000 that returns $1600 would be a raw" ROI. It does not reflect true ROI because it hasn't been calculated into a cost sheet analysis which should demonstrate a billing period of 30 days and reflect the cost of operations in addition to the investment. I believe this is a common mistake among most marketers.
I averaged a positive raw return of around $.60 on the dollar, spend $1.00 and earn $1.60. However, the cost of doing business was running me additional 22% in technology, outsourcing, and various other costs.Therefore i was actually spending $1.22 to earn $1.60.
As well, keep on mind that I only got up to an average $150 a day in spend because i was waiting 30 days for payment at first. I did get this to 15 days, but you still are waiting for your money before you can reinvest. Many new marketers forget this at first and run out of money before they can get a check. At $1000 daily spend and a 160% return, one can get weekly payments and then scale much easier and get the cost of business reduced by scale to a significantly lower percentage. Cost of business doesn't rise much when you are scaling because most of your outsourcing costs remain the same until you get much, much bigger in scale of creative and technology needs.
Now I wasn't spending a $1000 per day. If I were to get back into the dating vertical at $1000 a day spend, I would be okay with those returns because business costs are a reverse sliding scale as volume increases making the return increase and making the niche lucrative enough to scale.
Keep in mind, some of us don't have a second job and depend on some of our online income as salary, as is the case for me. Therefore, not all of my earnings get to go straight back into investment.
I've been trying to recover from severe financial losses since 2008 and this has caused restrictions in my budgeting since. I am hopeful I can get past all of that by Spring of 2015 so I can put my skills to work at a level that will get me back to where I was in 2007 before the crashes in the markets and real estate. I've been walking on a tight rope since 2008.
I see so many courses out there now, I don't know that I have anything to contribute that isn't already represented. I do have a couple of continuity sites I am trying to get launched that will focus on training, but as for a singular focused course, I would want to provide the very best and not blend in with the crap courses out there.
3. Does that big brain get heavy sometimes?
It's the single reason I spend my life walking on my hands
. There have been plenty over the years that have said I have a big head. Old knowledge and ages of experience do help, but being current and staying on the bleeding edge is demanding. I read, study, and implement my knowledge well, but there are many out there that are far superior to me in that respect in the on line marketing arena.Thanks for your detailed responses, TJ.
Reading your posts is always so enjoyable. Ergo, I shall elicite a couple more from you:
1. What type of work would you outsource for lead generation?
2. In your opinion, which (if either) is more challenging to those of us fairly new to the industry - CPA or lead gen? To be honest, I'm not sure that I understand any vital difference between the two.
Re your continued learning and action-taking, I honestly don't know how you find time to do everything.
Reading your posts is always so enjoyable.
Ergo, I shall elicite a couple more from you:1. What type of work would you outsource for lead generation?
2. In your opinion, which (if either) is more challenging to those of us fairly new to the industry - CPA or lead gen? To be honest, I'm not sure that I understand any vital difference between the two.
Re your continued learning and action-taking, I honestly don't know how you find time to do everything.
Thanks for your detailed responses, TJ.
Reading your posts is always so enjoyable.
Oh azgold, you're such a schmoozer.
With outsourcing, I first determine a viable angle, landing page, etc. I do all of the work myself, creative requirements, collection of tracking data, deployment refinement, etc. In other words, I develop a winning campaign and then have a small group of individuals make a set or group of sets of campaigns built around my researched winning campaign. Then I deploy them all, kick the losers to the curb, determine the refinement needs of the ones that break even and win, and then re-deploy them until they start to burn out. Once I know I have a set of campaign requirements that perform, I can tweak them after burn out and deploy yet again.
It's kind of like the inventor that develops a marketable product themselves and then contracts a group to get it distributed and sold.
CPA is Cost Per Action, therefore one can consider that any online Lead Gen activity is a type of CPA as it always falls under the premise of CPA. Lead Gen is simply collecting and selling data from an individual that takes a specific action like filling out a form, or joining a site, or supplies data about themselves in exchange for something they require, need, want, etc.
Example, PPL (Pay Per Lead) is a form of CPA, with the “action” being the delivery of a lead. One can deliver leads to online companies and to offline companies.
Don't get hung up trying to see or know a set of rules that give an absolute to the definitions of Lead Gen. There are truly hundreds of variations of lead collection and delivery.
At the moment, I don't get it all done. I am currently rebuilding my war chest which doesn't allow for as much outsourcing as I would normally be comfortable with. Just know, when one can outsource to their hearts desire, then scaling becomes so much easier and the volume of revenue can expand exponentially and a greater rate than most marketers truly understand. This is how marketers get to join the ranks of the $10k a day club! That's just a few million a year and I would say there are many hundreds of marketers in those ranks. There are a select group of marketers out there playing with $20 million a year and up.
Schmoozer? Me? Naw, just a big fan.
Okay, I will just stick with the CPA label...although, when do I need to use a label, really? I've actually run a couple of those types of offers, never considering it lead gen specifically, anyway. As far as I'm concerned, CPA is lead gen. At least, most of the time. Isn't it? Any downloading, trials, samples, etc. require the inputting of an email address.
Like I said, I won't confuse myself further, I'll just call it all CPA.
When you were discussing your war chest and the outsourcing, I got a mental image of mutated, hunched-over minions in a subterranean sweat shop carrying out Lord TJ's orders, hehe. Love it! but I think maybe I've watched too many old movies.
Thanks, TJ. Awesome as always!
Okay, I will just stick with the CPA label...although, when do I need to use a label, really? I've actually run a couple of those types of offers, never considering it lead gen specifically, anyway. As far as I'm concerned, CPA is lead gen. At least, most of the time. Isn't it? Any downloading, trials, samples, etc. require the inputting of an email address.
Like I said, I won't confuse myself further, I'll just call it all CPA.
When you were discussing your war chest and the outsourcing, I got a mental image of mutated, hunched-over minions in a subterranean sweat shop carrying out Lord TJ's orders, hehe. Love it! but I think maybe I've watched too many old movies.
Thanks, TJ. Awesome as always!
CPA or CPL are payment types generally associated with sending a "click" to an offer owned by your advertiser/network.
Lead Gen is where you are sending a landing page form submit to the advertiser/network. Essentially you own more of the process in Lead Gen, which affords you more ability to monetize the data you generate (ex - shop the lead data to the best fit buyer to make more money, sell the lead to multiple sources when acceptable, email market to the users who submitted their information on your form).
Lead Gen is where you are sending a landing page form submit to the advertiser/network. Essentially you own more of the process in Lead Gen, which affords you more ability to monetize the data you generate (ex - shop the lead data to the best fit buyer to make more money, sell the lead to multiple sources when acceptable, email market to the users who submitted their information on your form).
For me, Selling leads are harder than getting
Capturing leads is always depend on landing pages. Try to learn more about landing pages and start applying to get results. The main part starts after capturing leads and converting it to customers. This can be done by nurturing them wisely. Lead nurturing is a process, where a strange lead passes through various filters which help them to take an action or purchase on the website.
This is coming from an extremely biased perspective since I just do sales for a Data/Lead gen company that provides the leads for me to sell. A little background of why I think this way though, I got into this recently because a friend who owns call centers decided to start selling leads. HIs call centers are Auto Warranty and from his websites/forms he generates those and data for other vertacles. He has freinds that run other types of phone rooms that were buying and reselling his data for about 2 years after he opened his last call center (and when he started generating his own data/leads). He would make some money but wanted to maximize that aspect of what he was doing. He decided to sell directly to the phone room/vertacles/industries that his resellers were targeting and started a lead selling biz.
He hired me with little instructions besides a run down of the current data we are selling, the type of customer to go after and some very basic advice for finding customers. "This is homeowner data so target solar rooms, mortgage and alarm rooms....maybe check Craigslist hiring and keyword search for places that have these rooms and are hiring and call them". It's been a PITA going through Craigslist finding people to call but has been productive. I've tried some other things that are showing promise as well.
Anyways I say that to show I have no clue about the actual generation (I didn't set the websites up or drive the traffic) but judging by how it's automated for him and how it's been a challenge finding customers I would say it's harder selling them.. or at least thinking of places to sell them to and how to quickly compile a targetable list of prospect to sell leads to.
TLR - finding people to sell them to (from a guy who only does the selling)
He hired me with little instructions besides a run down of the current data we are selling, the type of customer to go after and some very basic advice for finding customers. "This is homeowner data so target solar rooms, mortgage and alarm rooms....maybe check Craigslist hiring and keyword search for places that have these rooms and are hiring and call them". It's been a PITA going through Craigslist finding people to call but has been productive. I've tried some other things that are showing promise as well.
Anyways I say that to show I have no clue about the actual generation (I didn't set the websites up or drive the traffic) but judging by how it's automated for him and how it's been a challenge finding customers I would say it's harder selling them.. or at least thinking of places to sell them to and how to quickly compile a targetable list of prospect to sell leads to.
TL
R - finding people to sell them to (from a guy who only does the selling)Getting leads is always easier than selling the leads. The reason is ai have just discovered that I am soo good when it comes to the behind the scenes things. I will always put my best. But when it comes to the selling part of it, I am so much unease. However, I can not fully say that I can not sell the leads. I do believe that we are here to learn and therefore when I am presented in a situation where I have to know this thing, I am so sure that I will learn and have everything at my fingertips.
I do agree with @Dr. Forum finding quality leads is like a gold mine. Selling lead is easy. There are plenty of networks, groups, social pages and CPA networks want to buy these.
badboy_nick
Affiliate
Let me chip in my two cents as I got a lot of experience in this industry - top notch input already btw from the others!
Finding or generating good quality leads is easy - it's all a question of keeping your acquisition cost under control as good leads are expensive. Best way to generate them is through Adwords PPC and BING PPC. Email is OK as well but requires more tech setup.
The main difficulty therefore is finding buyers. You will find plenty if you offer to take a back-end deal (only if they make a sale) ... but not that many willing to SHARE the risk equally with you and pay you per lead.
Also don't forget that once you DO find a buyer paying you per lead, you need to ensure you can deliver the promised volume each day (otherwise he will have expensive sales staff sitting idle twiddling their thumbs and needs to source leads elsewhere) ... and you need to stay competitive and keep your costs per lead down in order to make a profit.
There will also be rejections for invalids and hoax leads while making sure your lead quality stays high for the buyer to make a profit.
It is therefore a LOT harder to find a good buyer with good terms to generate quality leads, as solid buyers are much harder to come by.
Hope that helps
Finding or generating good quality leads is easy - it's all a question of keeping your acquisition cost under control as good leads are expensive. Best way to generate them is through Adwords PPC and BING PPC. Email is OK as well but requires more tech setup.
The main difficulty therefore is finding buyers. You will find plenty if you offer to take a back-end deal (only if they make a sale) ... but not that many willing to SHARE the risk equally with you and pay you per lead.
Also don't forget that once you DO find a buyer paying you per lead, you need to ensure you can deliver the promised volume each day (otherwise he will have expensive sales staff sitting idle twiddling their thumbs and needs to source leads elsewhere) ... and you need to stay competitive and keep your costs per lead down in order to make a profit.
There will also be rejections for invalids and hoax leads while making sure your lead quality stays high for the buyer to make a profit.
It is therefore a LOT harder to find a good buyer with good terms to generate quality leads, as solid buyers are much harder to come by.
Hope that helps
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