All Lists are NOT Created Equally
This is a crazy statistic! 68% of businesses struggle with lead generation. I have found that to be true with the client’s I’ve worked with over the past twelve years. In fact, I think the number might be even higher when it comes to generating high-quality pre-qualified leads.
When I owned my mortgage business, I bought lists from our local title company. It was a reliable way to capture potential clients. Even though I was limited in the criteria available to me, I knew that if I sent out 10,000 mailers that my list would generate 100 phone calls, and I’d close 15 loans or more from that list. I could count on it like clockwork. So, if I wanted to close more loans, I’d simply increased my mailers proportionally. When I started my coaching company, I struggled to find my audience, too. So, I went to a source that was familiar to me, but lists weren’t effective. There weren't enough data points to qualify a viable lead in the coaching world. There were too many characteristics I was interested in knowing about my potential customers that weren’t even options to choose from. As a business coach, one of the steps I take my clients through is defining their dream customer’s avatar. We go through extensive steps to know that person intimately. By the time we get through the process, my clients know their dream customer inside and out. They know everything about them like the subscriptions they read, events they attend, and where they shop. This information is useful to pre-qualify a lead because it indicates their buying habits and what is most important to them. But, traditional leads lists don’t take any of that information into account, they are just that, lists of raw data that have basic information like name, address, email address and maybe basic income information. When you purchase a list like this there are no indications that this group of people are even interested in your product or service, they just happen to share similar data points like living in the same zip code. If you have the ability to expand your search criteria, you may get slightly better results, but raw data alone will not pre-qualify a potential customer for you. So why do it? You shouldn’t. Lists can be costly and they are, for the most part, inaccurate and ineffective because they haven’t been properly scrubbed or updated on a regular basis. You may be asking, what can I do to find quality leads that don’t cost me an arm and leg or take hours of mining through profiles on social media platforms. The answer is a curated audience based on data points that matter to you. Building audiences isn’t a new concept. Facebook ads manager allows you to build look-alike audiences based on data you have on past clients or people in your groups. That basically gives information for the algorithm to start learning who you want to see show up at your conversion events. That can take time and your ad spend can be substantial. And...the leads may not identify with all of the characteristics you outlined for your dream client’s avatar. What makes a curated audience different is the exact characteristics you outlined about your dream customer have a profound impact on their buying habits. They are specific to the person YOU want to work with, not every Tom, Dick and Harry that the algorithm might find for you. A curated audience refines their interests to a degree that data can be used to create predictions about their interest level in your products or services. Did you know that there are more than 5,500 data points collected on each person who engages on a social media platform in the US, Canada and Europe? That’s a ton of information. Data companies literally know about all of our habits. They know what time of day we shop, where we shop, what we purchase, how much we spend, etc. I’m sure you’ve experienced how data works...you search for a pair of shoes online...then all of the sudden you’re inundated with shoe ads...AI is a powerful tool in the marketing arena...if it is working for you! It’s remarkable how much advertisers know about us from where we live, our income level, what causes we support, where we volunteer our time, what kind of car we drive, and so much more. Siri and Cortana are always learning. And, all of this data has a meaning behind it for potential marketing campaigns. As a small business owner, you can leverage this data to define and curate an audience composed of your dream customer’s data points, too. You can design a comprehensive description of the person you most want to work with. But, up until now, it’s been an unaffordable option for most small business owners. That’s what’s so exciting about the innovations in digital marketing. Small businesses can now curate a precise audience filled with their dream customers and market directly to their pain points with your unique solution to their most pressing problems. You no longer have to settle for half baked lists with outdated information or waiting for an algorithm to supply an audience of people who hang out with your customers. You actually have the power to create a precise audience of living and breathing people who:
Meet your customized criteria
Have an interest in your product or service
Can afford to pay you
Let’s face it, 5,500 hundred data points are a lot of information to sort though, and much of it doesn’t pertain to what you need to know about your dream customer. But, let’s say, you had access to 550 data points, you could put together some targeted campaigns to get your dream customer’s attention….couldn’t you? Over the years, each time I witnessed a client fail, the missing link was not being in front of the RIGHT audience. I knew that there had to be a more sophisticated approach to lead generation than endlessly mining through profiles on social media, cold calling via Direct Messages, using CRM integrations to provide lists of cold prospects, or paying buckets of money for ads that didn’t convert. That’s why I started researching this idea back in 2018. I wanted to help my clients get better results in their business. I wanted them to experience the time and financial freedom they were working so hard to attain. I wanted to shortcut their track to success by giving them tools that would help them convert potential clients into paying clients. If you’re tired of doing the same old things and getting the same disappointing results, let’s chat about how one curated audience could change your life and business forever. There is an easier way...