Adam Force: How to Get Leads That Matter to Your Bottom Line

Over 61% of marketers have reported lead generation to be their #1 challenge. In fact, nearly 53% of marketers spend more than half of their marketing budget on their lead generation efforts.

These days, people talk about so many gimmicks to generate leads. However, most times they bring leads that don’t really do anything for their bottom line.

Throughout this episode, our founder – Adam Force, who has been down this road for more than 20 years – gives you the straight talk on what actually matters. And this doesn’t just go for a specific kind of business – instead is applicable to almost every business, from consultants to eCommerce businesses and more.

So, brace yourselves and show us the heat.

Throughout this Episode, Adam Sheds Light On:

How difficult it is to generate leads, especially with a pretty limited budget?
The importance of brand strategy in lead generation
The importance of positioning in lead generation
How to figure out a strong brand positioning that helps you position yourself as unique and different?
Lead generation isn’t about focusing on the right platform completely- instead it’s about understanding your audience, focusing on their pain points, and building something that actually helps them solve their problems.
How important it is to understand the end-to-end customer journey and be patient with the entire process rather than asking your customers/service to book a call or purchase your products?
Lead magnets help target people who’re in the early stages of their customer journey – people who are not ready to make a purchase yet.
How does strategic planning help save top dollars?
Even when you’re offering something, it’s important to consider what format you should be focusing on.
And when you finally have a strategy that actually delivers results, how important it is to consistently use it to generate high-quality leads?

Conclusion

Generating leads is hard, and if you want to don’t really want to spend thousands of dollars on lead generation, it’s important to take into consideration the entire customer journey.

Rather than pitching your offer directly or asking your clients to book a strategy call with you via paid ads, we’d advise you to offer them something they can’t resist. At the same time, we’d advise you to take into consideration whether something you’re offering is worth the time and effort it requires you to invest.

Adam has shared some brilliant insights throughout this episode and I’d suggest you tune in – it’s a complete game-changer.

Want to Generate High-Quality Leads?

Book a call to chat with Adam at: https://studio.changecreator.com

Episode Transcript (unedited, will likely have typos):

Adam G. Force 0:00

How do social entrepreneurs and small businesses create an authentic brand people love so they can get the edge they need to stand out, create Predictable Revenue and compete against the big guys. That’s what we’re here to discuss. I’m Adam forest, the founder of change creator and this is the authentic brand mastery podcast.

What’s up everybody. Welcome back to the authentic brand mastery podcast brought to you by change creator. This is your host out of force. And if you missed the last episode is with Deb coviello. We talk about all kinds of great leadership insights, what a big category, big topic, but she has a very unique background and experience where she shares insights that she supports entrepreneurs, CEOs, C suite executives with that can really help you on your journey. So if you missed that episode, definitely worth going back and hearing what she has to say to help you as a leader of your business. So right now, we, you know, I talked about our Brand Studio. And we’ve been, it’s been a real wild ride. So we are at full capacity, if no more spots available right now. And it’s been a lot of fun. So we’re kind of diving into a bunch of projects, but we are going to open our doors, I’m literally in the interview process bringing on some new people. So you know, we’ll be able to expand for a few more clients. And we’ll see maybe in the next month or so, but I do have a baby girl being born in May. So we’re gonna slow down just a little bit. And hopefully keep things moving, but won’t be able to take on too too many clients, because I am a part of that process and a lot of cases, and I’ll be taken some leave for for that whole thing. And that’s going to be exciting. Anyway, enough about me. What I want to talk about today is a question that came up from somebody that I work with on my team. You know, we people tend to understand, well, I understand how to nurture a client, you know how to how to get a lead and nurture a lead, sorry, not a client. You know, there’s different ways to do that, whether it’s emails and all that kind of stuff, conversations content, but how do we get leads? That becomes the question, you know, so how do we get leads? And so I will talk about that. Today, I’m going to talk about how we get leads, whether you’re a agency service company, you know, you’re doing stuff like we do here, with web design, branding and all that. Because that’s a very different sales dynamic, but then also ecommerce, right? So I’m going off the cuff here today, I don’t have like a content plan where I’m going through bullet points, I haven’t thought through the content, I just know, that’s the question we want to answer. So I’m going to dive in, and I’m going to answer that question, how do we get leads for our business? And I know some people are in a place where they have the money to really go after it. And others are saying, How do I do it? You know, for very little or no money? So we’ll get into some of that. And we’re gonna break it down in this episode. Okay, show me the heat. On no, you’re gonna do. All right, let’s get into how we get leads.

Yeah, I think, you know, one thing that people miss out on when it comes to getting leads is the part that they don’t like, there is a planning process to getting leads, it’s really hard. And I’m going to use a paid approach, just as an example right now, but it’s very difficult to get leads. When you’re, you know, let’s say you’re spending money on ads, you could spend a fortune burning money, trying to get leads that are qualified, meaning the right people, right, because you can probably get a bunch of people that just don’t make sense. And it’s frustrating that happens to especially in the service sector. You know, you get MLM marketers, and all that kind of stuff. And it’s because you’re missing a couple key things. One, you don’t understand your brand strategy. When I talk about brand strategy. There’s components to a brand strategy and part of it is who your customer really is, what their day in the life story actually is. And the positioning is another element of that, which applies to your marketing right? So when someone like I read somebody the other day on Instagram, they’re like, oh, brand strategy is not what we sell and how we sell it on and like that’s just such baloney is bullshit. It’s not what we sell. But it contributes to how we approach those things to make the sales possible. That’s why we have a brand strategy. It’s not just the foo foo, like stuff on the soul of the brand, which is very important. But it does, it’s because of these elements that make up a brand strategy that we actually can sell. So let’s just talk about the customer and positioning because this is really important. When you know your customer, and you know, your positioning, the marketing starts to work, and you bring in qualified leads, okay, I’m using paid marketing approach, because it’s just a simple thing you pay for ads. And when you have these things, right, you know, the right audience, you have the right positioning, all of a sudden, they’re gonna connect, and you’re gonna bring in the people that you are actually looking for. So, positioning is really, how are we talking about the product in the marketplace, that’s going to make sense for the customer that we want to attract. And we need to know who that customer is, you know, so they need to know what makes us different. And positioning can be defined by going through a pretty heavy process. In the past, they’ve had things like positioning statements. But I have found those to be less and less effective.

You know, you can’t just make up a statement, and suddenly have your positioning worked out, it just doesn’t work that way. There are questions to ask. And you, you when you are early on in the process for anybody that doesn’t have a lot of sales, let’s say you’re under $10,000 a month? Well, you probably have loose positioning in the sense that if you don’t have enough customers where you know, well, who is the customer that understood your product quickly and bought it right? If you have enough of those. And when I say enough, let’s just say you maybe changed my $10,000 a month, maybe just let’s just say, if you had at least five customers, 10 customers or 20. And you have a certain group of them, let’s say three or four that really just got it quick became fast adopters, you would look at them. And you would say, Well, what do I understand about them? Right? And you want to write down everything you know, so like you you start understanding, here’s their situation, right? So for me, if I had a customer in E commerce, I might say, well, they do really well in wholesale. They’re not really into the tech stuff. They bought things like you know, quick funnels, but they never really built something out or figured out how to really get it to work for them. And so I’m like writing all this stuff down. And then we say, well, what are the alternatives that they have, if they don’t work with you? What are the alternatives, and this goes for ecommerce products or services, you’re positioning for the product, or the offer that you have, right? And you start kind of mapping those things out. And as you really start figuring out the positioning, that makes you different, you start figuring out how to talk about this to that person, right, all of a sudden, it starts getting synergistic. And so if you’re going to get out in the marketplace with anything, I’ll go into different avenues right now, let’s say you do paid advertising, I know paid advertising on Facebook very well. And you can literally get in front of the right people, you test your messages, different variations and stuff. And but you know how you’re positioning your offer or your product, right, and you will be able to connect and make the sales. And it informs how you approach the ads to get those leads. Now let’s say I just want to build my email list, I’m trying to get those leads. So I can nurture them through my email series, all that kind of stuff. And I don’t have a tonne of money. But I want to do like a lead magnet, alright. But the more we have that positioning and the audience to find and those types of things, we’re going to be able to create a lead magnet that is more appropriate to actually attract the right customers, right? So you don’t just make stuff up that you think would be great. So you know, there’s a lot of different approaches to these things. But when it comes to getting leads, I’m a big fan of paid advertising because I don’t like to run around different Facebook groups and you know, DMing people and like all that kind of stuff. That’s just, I have I have tested like cold outreach, using Sales Navigator, and Apollo and things like that to build a lead list, but honestly haven’t done enough of it. Where the success factor was worth the time. I could fill my roster just running ads, and I like I like to focus on one way to do something and figure it out period, right. I don’t like having a lot of distractions. And so I decided that was the way I wanted to do it. And I know that if I have the right offer, and I know how to position it and I know whom I owe audience should be that I, it doesn’t matter what platform or approach that I take, I am able to go anywhere and make it work, right. The platform is just the medium to make the connection with the people. So if it’s not working on Facebook, it doesn’t mean it’s going to work on tick tock, right. So if you’re, if your offer is not right, or you’re not positioning it right, and you’re not talking to the right audience, it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on, it’s not going to work. Right. So don’t get confused thinking that one is better the other what, what you could say today is that Facebook may cost you more to reach 1000 people, that’s a CPM, right and get a lead. And it may cost you more to get acquired. And then you could go to tick tock and say, Well, my offer sells on Facebook, it works, right, I get leads, I get sales, but then I go over to tick tock and I can do the same thing. But it’s cheaper, because it’s a little more wild wild west over there right now. So you can get more reach for your money, more leads, potentially at a lower cost and stuff like that. But if you don’t have something that’s working, it doesn’t matter what platform you’re on, it’s going to be a challenge. So I like to get leads in a couple of ways. One, I offer value use value for somebody in exchange for an email, email is the currency in this situation, right. So there’s the difference here, though, versus getting somebody to just put money down. Okay, there. So let me break this down. So like, let’s say I’m thinking of services agencies and things like that right now. So if you have a lead magnet, this could also go for E commerce, you can have a lead magnet an E commerce to to build an email list, we do email stuff for ecommerce using a offer as well write a high high value offer. And we have up to a 90% conversion rate for emails in E commerce space. Okay, so I know it can be done because we do it all the time for clients. All right. And so you can make an offer of use value that they’re interested in that’s related to your product. And for services, it could be a lead magnet, like a checklist or a report, whatever is related to your your ultimate result that you offer people. And instead of trading for money right out of the gate, the currency here is the email.

But you always want it to be in part of a process that gets to the sale. So it becomes a stepping stone. Because when you’re offering like a lead magnet, that’s very different when you say, Hey, here’s a free training. Here’s a free report, here’s a webinar that is bringing in a different dynamic of customer meaning where they are in the purchasing timeline. So they’re earlier on, if I run a promotion and say, here’s the training, that’s different than saying, we offer done for you services, learn how it works for you, and book a call, that’s a direct to sale. So you could still get leads there because they’re going to opt in to learn how it works for them, whether it’s video or whatever. But you’re also bringing someone in in the frame of mind that is like, I know, this is a service, I know they’re going to sell me something I’m just seeing now if it’s for me, when you say here’s a free training, here’s a lead magnet, you’re bringing in a customer who’s not in the position who’s ready to buy, meaning they’re not they don’t have that pain point yet, right? Let’s say maybe 2% out of the whole bunch that you bring in like two out of 100 might be there. But mostly you’re gonna bring people who are curious. They’re like, oh, a free training a free report. Let me check it out. And you’re not framing them framing up their mindset up front as a lead who is ready to buy, they are curious, and it will take longer for them to become ready to buy. So you still because they’re earlier in that consideration phase they might they might not even be problem aware. They see that your free report resonates with them because you positioned it right you got the right customer or audience, but then they’re gonna say okay, this is interesting. Let me check it out. They read it and it’s okay, cool, cool. Now they start getting your emails and they see maybe some follow up retargeting, ads on Facebook and stuff like that. And then after a couple of weeks, they become that person, you help them get there to become further down the purchasing timeline where they’re ready to buy, right, a smoke the more the hotter someone is meaning the further along that timeline to become a buyer in that ready to buy position. That percentage and pool of people is smaller, so smaller and smaller and smaller. So when you’re running ads when you do a lead magnet or training so you can have a lead magnet as a Facebook funnel so like your home profile While I have it right on the top banner, you can go to my Facebook personal page, Adam force. And you’ll see I have three bullet proof strategies to double your ecommerce revenue, I have it right there on the top banner, and then they can go to the website and I have a lead magnet there, right? So the lead magnet is across these touchpoints to capture the earlier bigger pool of people earlier in the purchasing funnel, and also a bigger pool of people. And they get into my network into my world where I could talk to them more, right, and they could see what we’re all about. But they’re not ready to buy yet, right? Maybe some of them but not all of them. Then I also run ads to get leads where I’m saying, hey directly, here’s the services, learn how it works for you check it out, you opt in with the email, you learn how the services work, they may not book a call, but I still got the lead. However, with a lead magnet, like a PDF, I could spend less than $10 to get that email could be five could be $3, if you really nail it down. And my ecommerce clients were paying $1 To get an email lead, right. So it just depends on category and all that stuff. And how great the offer is. Now, for my def why business, we pay a lot more just to get an email, I could pay 70 to $100. Right, and you’re gonna add them That’s insanity. Alright, you don’t want to pay more than $20 for an email like that. But that’s not true. Because I could spend $70 to $100 all day long, if I’m bringing in clients that want to spend 15, or $20,000, right, because these are, it’s going to cost you more to get somebody who is in that ready to buy pool, because that’s a smaller pool of people, it’s not necessarily low hanging fruit. So you’re gonna end up spending more upfront, but the quality of that customer is very different. So you have to understand the different stages of the customer that you’re going after, it’s good to have both. So getting leads, there’s different kinds of leads, I have leads coming in for that direct to sale, which are very high high value leads, because they’re like ready to buy, they’re looking, they’re interested, they know I’m selling something, and then I have people who aren’t ready yet there’s a bigger pool of people who are curious or interested, they’re in the E commerce space. And so they are grabbing the free report learning what we’re all about how we do things and what’s in that report is related to the services that we provide. So they can get their feet wet, get acclimated, learn how this works for them. And then we nurture them with emails and different touch points and content to bring them on board when they are ready. Right. So two different areas of people. And you know, without getting too deep on everything, I’ll I’ll stop there. But when it comes to leads, it really is just about offering something for that email currency. Later, they could become a customer. But there is that earlier stage buyer that’s curious, interested, maybe not even problem aware yet. And so you’re going to help them understand the problem they have. And then they learn, learn learn become a customer could be six months down the road. And then you have also leads that are very hot, because you’re tapping into a pool of people that are ready to buy, they have a pain that is so itchy. They’re just looking for someone to help them out. Right. Okay, so it’s like, those are two different worlds of leads, and you treat them they’re different conversations, different approaches and things like that. So yeah, you could set up those lead magnets, webinars, training, all that stuff, you could run a summit, like I don’t care how much everything has a cost. Alright, so the cost to do a lead magnet is two hours of my time to put it together another two hours to set up a couple emails and a way for people to opt in. I could take that lead magnet, put it all over my social media networks, banners everywhere people go, and that brings them into my world with a focus on what I offer. Done. That’s a low cost. The high cost is like people are going to get so many emails when you run a summit. It takes a huge effort to put together a summit. Okay? So just because it may not cost you a lot of money, it costs you a lot of time and energy. So what if you get all these emails but that stuff doesn’t really turn out to convert or they’re not all the right people and all that kind of stuff. So really be considerate of your time and energy and how you’re you’re using it because you only have 100% time and energy and every time you put it towards one thing it takes away from another thing. So decide on what’s important to you. I always tell people focus on cashflow period. So, for me, I tap into the early stage stuff with the lead magnets and I go direct for that sale. If my offer is good, and I have a position Write to the right audience. I know it will sell. If I’m not selling, I need to revisit how I position it, maybe revisit what the offer is. Once you have services or a product or an offer that sells like three to five times, I think you have a repeating pattern and you can continue to sell it. You can continue to sell that. Alright, so anyway, those are my thoughts. I

hope that’s helpful for you. If you have questions, you can just reach out to Adam at change creator.com And if you’re an E commerce brand looking for help to really drive the business revenues up and get those emails in and get that those dollar signs clicking yeah reach out to us we’ll we can get you on a waitlist at least at this point and get you set up. Alright guys catch on the next episode. Thanks for tuning into the authentic brand mastery podcast. Don’t forget to stop by change creator.com For more information, fresh articles content and our services if you’re looking to build a brand that people love, and please stop by iTunes, leave us a five star review. We appreciate your support

Transcribed by https://otter.ai