Online lead Generation Sucks!

In most industries, online lead generation is a big business.  If you start a company and prove that you are able to generate a steady stream of leads for a particular product or service, you will find a ready market willing to pay you for the leads you generate.

From financial services, to health care, to automobiles, to online education there are hundreds, if not thousands of companies on the web trying to capture enough information from potential customers to sell. For example, last year I was doing some research on home mortgage rates.  I found a site that asked me to register to check rates in my area. Within the first 30 minutes of filling out that form I got calls from 3 mortgage companies; 3 more called me within the first hour.  How many times are they actually selling that lead?

LEAD GENERATION & THE HOME IMPROVEMENT INDUSTRY

Recently I read a blog Lead Quality: Time To Lower Standards by Todd Bairstow at Keyword Connects.  Todd’s company is a well-known lead provider in the home improvement industry.  The premise of Todd’s post was that that compared to other industries, lead generation for the home improvement industry is way behind the pack.  He made an observation that while attending a national convention of lead generation companies with over 3500 attendees, only about 50 served the home improvement industry.

The US home improvement business is close to a $300 billion industry.  For most home improvement contractors, steady lead generation is their top business problem.  Most contractors struggle with generating significant traffic to their own websites, let alone developing leads from that traffic.  So with the need for online leads so great, why wouldn’t more companies jump in to fill that void?

Todd quoted the CEO of Bankrate.com , who when asked what he thought the next hot market for lead generation would be said “no one has been able to crack the code or build a sizable business in the home improvement space.”  According to Todd, there are two reasons why the home improvement industry has not generated the attention of the big players in lead generation.

First, he says that there aren’t a lot of national players willing to buy leads. In fact, Home Depot and Sears really are the only two national players that buy online home improvement leads.  Because the industry is so fragmented, selling and supporting countless local companies is a major undertaking for a lead generation company.  I have to agree with this observation. Baristow went on to note that the other reason there aren’t more lead generation companies serving the home improvement industry is that home improvement business owners’ demands about lead quality scare most lead generation companies away.

High Demands = Low Quality?

It seems as though in the industries where online lead generation services have really taken off, the thirst for leads is so intense that the lead buyers will accept an enormous level of bad contacts from the companies that they buy leads from.  Buyers typically don’t challenge sellers who use aggressive tactics to capture contact information (i.e. “leads”) that may or may not refer to actual human beings interested in the buyer’s product.

In short, to meet their volume needs, clients in these industries are able to tolerate a significantly lower bar on lead quality in order to keep the lead flow coming in.  Go back to the mortgage example; had I put my name in as Fred Flintstone and used a fake phone number, those 6 mortgage companies still would have paid whatever fee they paid to get that information — and never thought twice about it; chalking it up to a cost of doing business.  They know that they’ll get a few clunkers but overall there must be enough good ones that come through to make it work.

What kind of demands would a home improvement business owner make to a lead generation company?

Well how about the following:

The lead needs to be a homeowner
The lead actually wants to set an appointment for an in home demo
The lead wants to buy the product that my company sells
The lead can afford to pay for the project

Actually, Todd only specifically mentioned the first one — I added the last three, just from personal experience.

THE NEW HOME IMPROVEMENT LEAD GENERATION

Competition is becoming more and more fierce in the marketplace and businesses are fighting not just for market share, but often to just survive. Everybody is dying for a piece of the pie.

The good news is that no matter what the marketplace means to you, it’s a really big pie. Regardless of what trade you work in, there are always going to be more people in your marketplace who want and need your services than you can handle.

Your challenge is finding them.

That’s where we come in. We have taken a proven, tried, and tested lead generation tool and perfected it over the last 7 years.

The Social Dynamic Sales System shows you precisely–literally step by step–how to use one of the most effective and yet most under-utilized lead-generation strategies available for generating fresh, new leads for your company. We have completely reengineered dinner seminar marketing to work for you and it’s a Predictable, Sustainable, Scalable System you can use for your business.

If you like what you’re reading so far and want to leverage Dinner Seminar Marketing using Direct Mail, then schedule a free, complimentary strategy session with me, Rylee Meek, who currently is using direct mail and dinner seminars to generate leads and revenue for a few of our businesses in home remodeling and the solar industry.

Oh and just so you know, it’s generated over $70 million in revenue for us in less than 7 years.  *Disclaimer: Results will vary.
Over the years, Sales Organizations have relied on a suite of tactics that have worked reasonably well. Telephone cold calling, door-to-door canvassing, direct mail, newspaper, TV, radio—they all still work up to a point, but results are slow and percentages are low. You probably use some of them, but so do your competitors.

Search Engine Optimization, usually referred to as SEO, has also been around for a while. In fact, over the past few years SEO has been the rage. But let’s face it: only one company can be at the top of the Google rankings at any given time. So if your website is nowhere to be found on the first page, good luck in getting there, regardless of what the SEO consultants are telling you.

Even more importantly, your rank in the search engines does nothing to establish you as a trustworthy or even competent business ; even if your website does appear in the first few pages, you’re just one among many.

Our system will show you how to use one of the most powerful lead-generation tactics out there today: dinner seminar marketing. Despite how other industries have thrived with dinner seminar marketing, most of your competitors haven’t even thought of using dinner seminars to generate leads.

We’ve made it easy for you to be one of the first in your marketplace to embrace this tactic. If you follow the advice in this article, you’re also going to be the best at it.  Results are quick, they come with a spectacular ROI, and the process immediately establishes you as a trusted, go-to expert in your field.
Despite the relative dependability of the well-known tactics listed above, NONE of them creates the powerful, immediate credibility you get when you demonstrate your expertise with your prospects face-to-face.

Think about it. Telephone cold calling, door-to-door canvassing, direct mail, newspaper, TV, and radio are all forms of interruption marketing techniques. They convey your message, whether the recipient wants to hear or see your message or not. To make matters worse, the message is about you—soliciting their business. That’s why these forms of marketing have such low response rates.

The Social Dynamic Selling System is a value-based approach to lead generation. It combines a free dinner with an informative seminar to get your prospects to know, like and trust you. From there turning them into paying customers is easy.

Here’s what to do next…

Click Here To Schedule A FREE Strategy Session (no pitch) with me, Rylee Meek, where I will show you how I’m using Direct Mail to generate leads and revenue for my businesses in the home remodeling industry and in the solar industry.  I will also walk you through the Social Dynamic Selling Journey Map that you see below.  There are 6 steps to getting a direct mail campaign off the ground successfully.

Oh and the company that you choose to buy direct mail with matters.  Over the last 7 years, I’ve tested dozens of companies and on our free strategy session I give access to my direct mail company who I rely on to send out over 100,000 direct mail pieces per month!

To your success and abundance,

Rylee Meek

P.S. I can also review your direct mail marketing piece with you and give you instant feedback on it from my experience of sending over 10 million mailers.

*Disclaimer: Results will vary.