Creating A Lead Generation System For Service Companies

Lead Generation System

One that your company owns and can use in many ways and with many platforms.

A lead gen system that attracts the 90% of prospects you’re probably missing out on.

And it builds your active and engaged email list, which should be one of your most valuable business assets and sales generators.

This is a lead generation funnel.

It has a few parts to it.

The first part is to create a buyer’s guide for one of your key products or services.

As we said earlier and in other podcast episodes, about 90% of your prospects are NOT ready to buy right now.

They want to learn more about the available solutions and choices they have.

He or she who provides them that info is more likely also to get their business when they’re ready to buy.

Let’s look at few examples:

Is solar worth it? Make this a case studies guide. Show the math, including real-life case studies and testimonials.

Or maybe it’s a Buyer’s Guide to Solar lease, PPA, or Purchase.

For plumbers, you can make a Buyer’s Guide to Water Softeners & Whole House Filters or one for water heaters.

You get the idea.

Make these guides great. Invest in quality. Your brand is being represented. The quality of it will be the measure of the quality of work you do.

Write great comparison content. Share your knowledge and experience.

Create attractive branded graphics.

Make it a digital download PDF or an email series, like a 5-day email course [topic].

If it’s a PDF, then use it as a lead magnet.

As a simpler and cheaper alternative, you can just create a multi-day email series—something like a free 5-day email course on [your topic].

In either case, create a custom landing page with good sales copy offering the free guide or course in exchange for their email.

Be sure the course includes a call-to-action at the end, offering a free consultation, inspection, price quote, limited-time special offer, or whatever applies to the course topic.

Be sure to use a special call tracking phone number to track leads and sales from this campaign properly.

You can also take them to another custom landing page URL with additional information, a special offer, a contact form, and a call tracking number.

To deliver either of these free guides, you need an email marketing platform. We use AWeber. There are many choices.

You’ll set up an autoresponder to deliver either the PDF file or the entire email course campaign.

Apply a tag with a label that identifies each person who responded to this campaign. You can later send emails just to the people with this tag if you would like.

Once you have the free guide or email series and the autoresponder’s all set up, now it’s time to promote it and generate leads.

There are many ways to promote your free guide: 

• Add inline calls-to-action (CTA) about it on related pages on your website.
• Use popups on existing web pages that logically relate to the free guide.
• You can use Opt-in Monster programs to create popups, split-test different popups, analytics, and more.
• Promote regularly on your branded social media channels. Use custom artwork.
• Advertise on social media channels [Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc.].
• Advertise on Google Search or Display – must find low-cost long-tail keywords and keep costs very low.
• Advertise on YouTube and Facebook with video ads. These can be very low costs ads.
• Advertise on local radio. Be sure to use its own tracking number and landing page for proper tracking.
• Remarketing display and video advertising for those who visited your site or engaged with other ads.
• Email your existing clients who have not purchased the product or service you made the buyer’s guide about.
• Create a “product” of it in your Google My Business listing. Include the primary keywords in its title and description and link to the landing page from it.

An alternative configuration is to make the buyer’s guide a webpage on your site that anyone can access for free, but that offers something else as a lead magnet to get their email and send more info.

This alternative setup can now start ranking for dozens of keywords and drive organic traffic, and if you provided great content and still offer a valuable lead magnet, you can have the best of both worlds.

Lead magnets for this might be for case studies, financing comparisons, or product comparisons.

Once people are in your email platform and have received their free guide or email series, then move them to your email newsletter list and stay connected with them.

You can and should split-test the headlines and copy on your landing pages, opt-ins, popups, CTA’s, ads, and more.

Test everything one thing at a time to improve conversions all along the way.

So there you have it. They are the bones of your very own lead generation system that can produce a steady stream of highly qualified prospects who already know, like, and trust your company because you educated them for free and shared your knowledge, skills, and quality.

You can use it organically or in combination with online or even offline advertising.

You can track the results, test differences, and continue to optimize its conversion rates.

All the while, you’re also building your email list. And an active and engaged email list can become one of the most valuable assets of your company over time.