Albert Einstein once said (allegedly), “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
While there’s certainly something to be said for the every-day grind of lead generation — creating content, publishing content, driving traffic, watching the metrics, and doing it all again tomorrow…
…there’s also a time to breathe, take a step back, and figure out if what you’re doing is working. Or if maybe there’s a better way.
That’s why you’re here, right?
Because you want to mix things up, try something new, ensure that you’re not ignoring effective strategies that could grow your business faster.
Not to worry.
We’re going to give you 9 lead generation hacks in this article (with examples) — try ‘em out!
And here are some of our other blog posts that you might be interested in…
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Let’s start with what is arguably the most important question regarding lead-gen: why are people going to become a lead for your business?
WHY?
What I can tell you for certain is that they’re not going to give you their contact information for no reason, out of the kindness of their hearts.
Think about it.
On HubSpot’s blog, do you think you’d be more compelled by this…
Or by this…
Well, it depends on what you’re looking for. The first option is general — if you trust HubSpot and you’re familiar with their brand, then you might be willing to sign up via that form.
But if you’re new to HubSpot or a first time visitor? Don’t count on it.
The second option is much more specific. And that makes sense because it’s part of an article titled, How to Write a Blog Post: A Step-by-Step Guide [+ Free Blog Post Templates].
In marketing speak, the 2nd opt-in is called a “lead magnet” — it’s a free resource or bribe that convinces people to give you their email address.
And it’s way more effective than simply saying, “Please subscribe.”
You can create multiple lead magnets on your website — for pages that get a lot of traffic or as a part of your sales funnel (more on that in hack #3).
If you’re trying to generate leads online, then we definitely recommend creating a lead magnet that will appeal to your target market.
(You can create forms and automations to deliver lead magnets with ClickFunnels)
What kind of lead magnet?
Here are some questions to get the brainstorm going…
Note: A free trial or free coaching or consulting session can make a great lead magnet for your homepage, but for other parts of your website that get traffic, it’s a good idea to match the lead magnet to the visitor’s intent.
We have a more detailed article about lead magnets over here if you need additional help.
If this is your first time to our blog, go ahead and hover your mouse over the top of your web browser.
Something like this should have popped up.
That’s called an exit-intent popup — it appears when someone’s mouse hovers over their web browser, which sometimes indicates that they’re about to leave (hence the name).
So… why?
Because before someone leaves our blog, we want one more chance to provide them with free value (which builds goodwill for our brand) and snag their email address.
Does it work?
Yes it does — especially when your lead magnet matches the visitors intent (i.e. they came for the lead generation hacks, but they stayed for the headline cheat sheet).
In fact, WP Beginner added an exit-intent popup to their website and it boosted their lead-gen efforts by a whopping 600% (from 70-80 daily new subscribers to 445 – 470 new subs per day), according to ConversionXL.
So it’s at least worth a try.
To be clear, though — this was not a site-wide popup. It just appeared on pages where the offer was relevant. That’s an important nuance; the offer should match the page.
Take your lead magnets and set them as exit-intent popups wherever they make sense on your website!
Before you can generate leads, you have to drive traffic.
People have to visit your website — and you either have to pay for them to visit (ads) or use some good ‘ol sweat equity (collaboration with influencers, for instance).
But visiting isn’t enough. They also have to give you their contact information.
That is a much more difficult thing.
And any marketer who’s worth their salt knows just how big the gap is between driving traffic and generating leads.
That’s where the sales funnel comes in.
Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of sending traffic directly to their website and hoping that people will subscribe.
But it doesn’t work.
It doesn’t work because websites aren’t built to convert — rather, they’re like digital brochures that allow visitors to browse and peruse… but ultimately don’t guide people toward any specific action.
But a sales funnel?
That’s magic.
A sales funnel is just a series of pages that are crafted for one purpose: to guide people toward taking a very specific action. Buying, opting in, registering for an event, etc.
And they get a much higher conversion rate than websites.
This is what we specialize in at ClickFunnels — helping entrepreneurs build high-converting sales funnels. Here’s an example of what our Tripwire Sales Funnel looks like, which is great at turning cold traffic into leads and customers.
There’s also the Squeeze Page Funnel…
The Application Funnel…
And 20+ other sales funnel templates we provide which are built to generate leads and make sales.
(You can try us for free here)
If you want to learn more about creating high-converting sales funnels that are worthy of your marketing budget, check out our sales funnel guide.
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Assuming that you’ve created a compelling offer to generate leads (something we’ve discussed in detail over the last 3 points), the next most important thing is that you’re driving the right traffic.
As an extreme example, if you target people who aren’t dog owners with advertisements for dog food… they’re not going to be interested no matter how good your sales copy is.
This is where understanding your target market and creating something called the Dream 100 comes in.
First, you should be able to answer these questions pretty specifically about your target market…
If you can’t, consider taking the time to create a customer avatar.
(Learn more about that over here)
Once you understand your target market — or, as we like to call them, you dream customers — then it’s time to ask another question: where do they congregate online?
Because if you know where they already hang out online, then driving them to your sales funnel (and thus generating leads) is as simple as putting your message in the right places.
Create a spreadsheet and make some lists. To start, try and get at least 5-10 for each of those questions. You can add more later.
From there, the goal is to reach out to those places and either pay to drive people to your sales funnel (via ads, influencer marketing, etc) or negotiate in some other way (influencer collaboration, guest blogging, being a podcast guest, etc.).
The traffic you drive from those efforts will ultimately become traffic that you own (i.e. your email list) if your sales funnel is set up to convert.
Hack #5 is some wizardry for turning influencers in your niche into your biggest fans…
In the last lead-gen hack, we talked about earning traffic rather than paying for it.
That is, befriending influencers in your niche so that they talk about your brand for free.
So… how do you do that?
Obviously, it’s more complicated than just saying, “Go make some friends!”
In Traffic Secrets, Russell Brunson — our fearless founder — explains his method for reaching out to influencers and building rapport.
It consists of three phases.
By the end of those three phases, you will have likely built an army of influencers who love your products or services.
At this point, the influencer might promote your stuff simply because they like it. If they don’t, you can ask them more directly much like you’d ask a friend (“Hey! I just launched this new service. What would it take to get you to share it with your audience?”).
To learn more about this process, pick up a free copy of Traffic Secrets.
How cool would it be if the influencers in your market were selling your products for you?
That’s sort of what we talked about in the last hack… but building an affiliate army is a little bit different.
Affiliates are people who promote your products and services and receive a commission for each sale they make — ClickFunnels affiliates, for instance, make up to 40% recurring commission!
And that’s totally worth it.
Just look what happens when you type “ClickFunnels review” into YouTube…
You get bombarded by people who are ClickFunnels’ affiliates… people who are going to encourage people to sign up for ClickFunnels so that they can make some money, too.
See how effective this can be?
To build an affiliate army of your own, you can use the 3-phase processed we explained in hack #5 to reach out and then you can use ClickFunnels to create affiliate accounts so that your army gets paid on time!
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Hosting a giveaway can be a great way to create a big influx of leads.
The only problem with giveaways is that they sometimes result in an influx of unengaged subscribers… people who just signed up because they wanted to win, not because they’re going to be interested in your content.
The solution is to give away something that only your target market will be interested in.
For example, if your target market consists of B2B business owners who are under 7 figures, then you might give away a one-hour consultation with a well-known coach in that niche. If your target market consists of stay-at-home moms, then you might give away a year’s supply of diapers.
Point is, the giveaway needs to draw the right people.
Also, make sure that you allow for plenty of time to promote your giveaway to get as many people signed up as possible — run ads, collaborate with influencers, tell your affiliate army, run some PR announcements… do everything in the wheelhouse.
Do it right and you could walk away with several thousand new subscribers!
Okay — I was waiting to tell you this.
But I actually generated 132,400 leads last month for my business. The month before that? Nada. This was something I did literally overnight. And it had nothing to do with lead magnets or affiliate armys or sales funnels. High quality leads, too.
Want to know how I did it?
Of course you do — because you came here to learn how to generate leads… and I just made you a pretty crazy promise.
I created genuine curiosity.
(No. Unfortunately, I did not generate 132,400 leads last month)
And it’s almost impossible for humans not to follow-up on something that they’re curious about… something that scratches an itch.
When you’re crafting headlines or sales copy for lead-gen, remember this lesson: curiosity is king.
Consider this headline…
Or this one…
Weird, right? But also interesting… and kinda makes you want to read it.
That’s the power of curiosity.
Check out the video below to learn how Russell changed only a headline to take a landing page from $24.85 per webinar registrant to $5.84 per registrant.
Note: Of course, you should also be able to deliver on the curiosity that you create with your sales copy. Curiosity will get people to click… but honesty and real value will get them to stay.
We’ve saved the best for last.
When it comes to generating leads, nothing has been as powerful for us over at ClickFunnels as webinars.
They draw massive attention, generate tons of leads, and give you an opportunity to make sales as well.
Here’s an example…
A webinar is simply a live or recorded video training where your target market how to do something that they want to learn how to do.
But you’re probably wondering about details…
Well, we have free Webinar Sales Funnels over here… AND we have a webinar script over here for $7 that we’ve dubbed the “Perfect Webinar Secrets” (because it’s THAT good).
It’s worked for us. It can work for you, too!
Hopefully there were some ideas in this article that you haven’t considered before… More importantly, we hope that you take action on a few of them!
Because the gap between building a successful business and not building a successful business can only be cleared with consistent and intentional action.
Choose a lead-gen hack, try it, and keep going.
Eventually, you’ll surprise yourself with how many leads you’ve generated!
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