There are so many ways you can generate leads for your business that there are countless books written on the subject. So many that you would assume lead generation would be a no-brainer for companies.
Reading these books will lead you to believe all you have to do is follow one or more of these tactics, and you will have all the leads you can handle. I suspect that many of you have already read some of these books as I have and the results weren’t what the book promised.
The book was probably awesome, but lead generation is hard. In theory, it all makes sense. But in practice, most businesses don’t consistently execute because they get distracted. Without consistent execution, most of these tactics just don’t work well enough to grow your sales significantly.
We all get distracted with delivering products and services to our clients, dealing with problems, writing proposals, liaising with clients and dealing with internal politics.
There are so many tactics to try. Some include:
- Asking for referrals
- Social media updates
- Cold calling
- Cold email
- Pay Per click advertising
- Email Marketing
- Letter box drops
- Direct Mail
- TV advertising
- Radio Advertising
- Billboards
- Webinars
- YouTube Videos
These are just a handful of the many hundreds of tactics used today. But my experience tells me that so many businesses are still struggling with lead generation.
It isn’t because these tactics don’t work because most do. Some work well, and I find that if a business executes a tactic on a consistent basis, then they will get a result.
The problem that arises once you have a tactic working for you is how scalable is the tactic.
How many leads does your business need to bring in to achieve your sales goals? Do you even know this statistic? If you don’t, then I suggest you find it out fast as without this number you’ll never give lead generation the attention it needs.
Once you know this number, you can work our your shortfall of leads every week. Once you know the deficit, then you can start creating a strategy to fill the gap.
Of course, you can use multiple tactics to fill in the gap to arrive at the required amount of leads you need every week, but then you have to master various marketing activities, and we all know that mastering one is pretty hard.
After chasing leads for the best part of 20 years for the businesses I have worked in I have tried almost every tactic. I have tried partnerships, letter box drops, newspaper advertising, cold email, cold calling, Google Adwords, referrals and the list goes on and on and on.
I have come to the conclusion two things about lead generation if you want to grow your business quickly.
Scalable Lead Generation
Your lead source must have the ability to go from 1 lead to 100 leads with the click of a button. If you can’t do that, the growth of your business will be limited by your lead generation activities.
Automated Lead Generation
Sustaining manual prospecting is hard. Cold calling, asking for referrals, blogging or any other activity that require you or your team to do something are all difficult. The problem with manual prospecting is when your team gets busy the prospecting stops. When the prospecting stops the leads stop coming in, and your funnel goes dry.
A lack of new leads causes slow sales growth.
When I say automated, I don’t mean it doesn’t take any effort. I’m not a proponent of sitting on the beach while you make money. What I mean is you set it up once (this takes time), optimize the process over and over again (this takes, even more, time) and allow the optimized system to work for you as you monitor it.
The opposite is when you are the system. You have to do the work, and if you don’t do the work, then the prospecting stops.
The automated way is where you set up a system, and the system does the work. You monitor and optimize the system in a fraction of the time it used to take you to do the manual prospecting.
Finding a lead generation source that is both scalable and automated is the holy grail. Most lead generation tactics are either one or the other, but very rarely is there a tactic that is both.
Facebook Ads are Scalable and Automated
Facebook Ads is the holy grail I’ve been looking for. Facebook Ads can be both scalable and automated.
Scalable
Facebook Ads are scalable because there are over 1.5 billion people on the platform. No matter where you live, there is a whole bunch of people using Facebook every day. The average person is on the platform for over 40 minutes daily.
There is no other platform that I know of that has that many people using it every day. Think about it. The only other platform that has close to that number of viewers is maybe the super bowl, but that is just one day of the year and the cost to advertise is not affordable for the average small business.
Facebook Ads are affordable for any sized business and is guaranteed to have your target audience.
Targeted
Facebook allows advertisers to show their ads to their niche only. Unlike most advertising platforms where you have to show your ads to a wide range of people. Facebook allows you to target specifically your niche.
By tracking every interaction a user makes on and often off the platform, Facebook has gathered an enormous amount of data on each user. Facebook tracks actions like, comment, likes, views, shares and even what you browse off the platform. This data determines which ads are shown to which users.
And Facebook puts that power in your hands as a marketer.
Automated
The Facebook Ad platform is as close to automated as you can get. You just set up your ad campaign and then turn it on. Facebook will show your ads to its users, and you watch the sign ups, checkouts, sales and view come in.
I know it sounds too easy and too good to be true. It is that easy in theory, but it takes a lot of experience and time to get your campaigns working correctly.
The key to Facebook Ads is to be continually optimizing your campaigns by using the data you’re collecting to make changes to the campaign and then running it again.
Optimizing is where the work is. Optimization is what it takes to make the platform successful for you.
Conclusion
What you need in your business is a scalable and automated lead source. One that you can go from 1 lead to 100 leads with the click of a button. One that does not rely on you to do the work to generate the leads.
I find Facebook Ads is the best solution for B2B and B2C businesses right now.
It is not a get rich quick scheme. There is no secret sauce, it just takes basic marketing principles, a lot of optimization and a resource to execute the campaign.
If you do the work, you will be able to achieve a lead source that is both automated and scalable.
Let me know in the comments if you have tried Facebook Ads and your experience. Also, if you have another lead source that is also scalable and automated let’s discuss that too.
