In today’s episode, we are going to discuss STEP THREE of The Hirsh Process: Lead Generation. Find out how our process for creating a lead generation strategy is different from anything else out there and how to leverage valuable content like webinars, quizzes, challenges, etc. to set yourself up for more conversion, more influence and more impact.
Key Points:
1:48 This is where The Hirsh Process really begins to work for our clients and where you can get smart with your ad budget
2:50 The Dirty Little Secret behind most Million Dollar webinar campaigns – and why you aren’t getting that kind of ROI (no it’s not because your ad budget is too small)
3:43 One of my favorite tactics to lower your cost per lead (hint: starts with the letter ‘L’)
5:45 Industry cost-per-lead standards to keep in mind if you don’t have your own benchmarks yet
7:41 Where should the bulk of your ad spend budget be going?
8:35 The 3 questions you need to be asking as you re-assess your lead generation strategy.
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All right. In this episode, we are going to dive into Step Three, or phase three, of The Hirsh Process, which is lead generation. This is, honestly, what most people start with when they start Facebook ads. This is very targeted towards somebody who’s selling a digital product or a service, so keep that in mind if you have products or you’re in eCommerce or a service-based business. But this is still relevant to everyone.
[00:00:30]
The important thing with The Hirsh Process is like, depending on your business model, you might put more emphasis in one step than another because you have a difference. But for most of my clients and the people we work with, a lot emphasis goes into step three, which is lead generation. This is where you’re going to get people’s name and email address, typically in exchange for something of value, such as webinar, a challenge, a video series, a quiz, any of those things that you are giving someone to start basically at the top of your funnel.
[00:01:00]
Most people start here. They start Facebook ads and they say, “Okay. I am going to run ads to my webinar. I better turn on my Facebook ads.” It’s important just noting at this step that you’ve gone back and done step one and step two, which is strategizing and knowing what success means and you’ve gone through those questions. If you haven’t listened to that episode, go back and listen to it.
Then you have put time and energy and money into step two, which is visibility. You’ve done value content, Facebook lives. Step two is ongoing, so don’t feel like you have to do step two for a certain amount of time before you can get to step three. I just want to make sure that you are doing it at the same time, if that’s what you have to do because you are a new business or a brand, but don’t dive into step three because here’s where step two helps step three. The visibility helps the lead generation piece.
I’m going to use webinars as an example because we drive traffic to so many webinars and it’s something that a lot of our clients do. You can use any of your lead generation funnels for this.
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What you do is, obviously, drive cold traffic, meaning people who don’t know your brand or are familiar with you, to this. But also, you can take the audiences that you created from step two, so people who are watching those videos, who are clicking on your blogs, who are engaging on your page, all of those, what we call, warm traffic audiences, and retarget them to step three.
[00:02:30]
Especially in like if you have a webinar, this is very powerful because that way, somebody who signs up for your webinar will have already had a touchpoint with your brand in some way and you know that and you’re retargeting them to sign up for your webinar, which means they will most likely cost less, as the cost per lead, and they’ll be a more qualified lead once they get on the webinar because they already know your name and your brand.
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One of my biggest pet peeves in marketing is what I talked about in the very first episode, which is how people put cookie cutter solutions. For example, when somebody has a really successful webinar campaign and they make millions of dollars off of that webinar campaign, something you often don’t see is that a lot of the people signing up from that webinar, for that webinar, are coming from their existing following, and they’re more likely to convert.
What happens is they get on, they make these millions of dollars, and they’re like, “My webinar’s converting at 10, 15% of live,” and then somebody goes and does it and they don’t have a following. Then they end up feeling like they’re failing or their funnel sucks and it really just could be a matter of how warm the traffic is that’s making that difference. It’s really important for you to realize that.
The next thing that you can do with lead generation is use the data, so not just retargeting, so not just actually only taking those audiences and retargeting them, but use the data from step two from that visibility phase where you ran traffic to Facebook lives and web traffic, whatever it was, and you continue to do, and use that to create really powerful audiences.
One of the top converting audiences across the board for our clients is a lookalike audience of their 95% video views. Somebody who’s watching 95% of your videos, of your Facebook lives, are really, really engaged audience. A lookalike means you told Facebook go find me a million, two, three million more of these people, and usually they are top converting audiences.
[00:04:30]
Use those audiences, use that data, to create lookalike audiences that you can leverage for your lead generation because it will lower your cost per lead here and it will set you up for better success, and probably bring in more qualified audiences.
Use, not only the data, but then also use the planning, go back to step one, and make sure you understand how many leads you need to reach your sales goals. That’s really important here to go into step three where, if I asked you how many leads are you trying to get a month and a day, you are able to answer very quickly for me.
And we know that number for every one of our clients without exception because if you don’t know that number, how are you going to know if your campaign is successful? You need to know what’s the max you can pay for the lead in this step and how many leads do you need to get in the door to reach your sales goals? Remember that from step one when you get to this step.
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The unfortunate thing is a lot of people start their campaigns without understanding and it’s very crucial that you understand that. As you get more data, we’ll go into this in step five, but as you gather more data, you’re going to get a deeper, deeper understanding of how much you can pay for a lead. In the beginning, you might have to go off of industry averages or industry standards, so I’ll just tell you some. An average cost per lead for an opt-in, like for a checklist or a PDF or just a simple download, is anywhere from like $1 to $3, maybe a little higher if you’re in B to B, but that’s average. Then webinars are a lot higher, or things that are asking … not a lot higher, but are higher, things that are asking … are more of an ask for the person.
So, a webinar, you’re asking someone to come live to your webinar and take an hour out of their day, so it’s going to be more costly, but it might be a more effective way to deliver content because they’re going to be more engaged. That’s why so many of our clients do it. We expect anywhere from $3 to $8 per lead for a webinar conversion.
The one thing to keep in mind here too is the different types of businesses. If you’re targeting people who have other businesses, so if you’re in the B to B space, like you’re a business coach and you’re targeting other business coaches, anyone that’s targeting other entrepreneurs, you’re typically going to pay more cost per lead, so you’re going to pay more in this step, but your sales conversion will probably be higher because it’s easier to sell to those people, but it’s harder to convince them to get their email because they know what you’re doing.
If you’re in the business to consumer space and you’re targeting consumers, it’s usually cheaper in the lead generation, you’re usually at that $1 to $2 like … any of my clients who have under $1 are mostly targeting consumers. But the sales percentage is usually lower. It’s harder to sell to a consumer, they have a hard time even parting with $20. You have to compensate for that there, and it usually weighs out.
[00:07:30]
But it’s important to remember B to B marketing is totally different than B to C, and that’s what this process really makes you look at and realize and why I’m so anti-cookie cutter marketing.
One thing I wanted to note here is that, the bulk of your ad spend budget goes into this step. 75 to 85% of your budget should be going into this lead generation because this is where you get people in the door, you get their information, and they basically enter your funnel.
[00:08:00]
Now, that, again, would change, depending on if you’re eCommerce or not, like it would be a lot less here and more in the next step, which is just directly to the sales ads. But if you are targeting people to a funnel, like a webinar, 75 to 85% of your budget goes here. Remember, 5 to 10% of your marketing budget goes in step two, which is visibility.
The next step we’re going to talk about is the sales ads, is the make money sales phase, which is where the retargeting comes into play. That is going to be in the next episode, if you want to tune into that. But for now, really look at your lead generation and, bottom line, your lead generation strategy, I want you to look at it and ask a few things.
Are you testing enough? Because this is where a lot of … instead of going and creating new funnels and creating new strategies, what you can do is create new ads here because your ads will saturate, depending on your budget, they eventually will saturate, some in two weeks, some in three months. It depends how much you put in, how big the audience is, all those factors.
But what often like we will do for our clients is a new ad every week. We’re never going to turn something off that’s working, but you need to be ready for constant new creative here and constant new things. This is where you can put that creativity in, rather than new funnels ’cause right now we’re perfecting a funnel with The Hirsh Process.
I want you to look at that. I want you to know, do you know what success is here in this lead generation phase? How many leads are you trying to get and at what cost per lead? And then, finally, are you using the data that you have, both through retargeting from step two, but also lookalike audiences in this step to set you up for the most success?