4 Ways to Generate Leads on a Tight Budget

By Monica Rodriguez

Less Money Invested Means More Work From You 

Generating leads is going to involve getting people to visit your website and then having them convert (buy, subscribe, sign up, etc.). A big part of the process is getting people to visit. The rest is targeting people so that visitors become leads. After all, there is no point in attracting people if they stand no chance of ever buying. In this article, you will learn how to generate leads, and you will learn why “Trust” plays a very subtle role in the whole process.

Let’s face it, there are plenty of ways to generate website traffic for very low costs. The downside to using these methods is that they are very time-intensive and labor-intensive. It seems that larger blue-chip companies can pay for all the work to be done for them.

In short, if you wish to scale up your business or improve your conversions, you need to start investing more money. However, if you follow the suggestions on this article, you can stick to a very tight budget and still enjoy overwhelming success.

 

1 - Ask People To Refer You And Pay Them After Making A Sale

A great way to generate leads on a very tight budget is to pay for the leads “after” a sale has been made. When you send your sale-confirmation and receipt to your customer, include a referral request in the email. This is where you offer a special sales link or code. The customer passes the code around to his or her friends.

If his or her friends use the code to make a sale, then the original customer gets a percentage of the profit in store credit. To sweeten the deal, the code you send to the original customer contains a discount. The original customer passes around the discount code, people buy, and the original customer gets paid. This means the original customer is happy because he/she gets store credit, the new customer is happy because he/she received a discount, and you are happy because you have paid a lead only after a sale has been made.

 

2 - Hiring Salespeople On Commission

The rules are simple, the salesperson is given whatever literature and marketing tools are required, and the salesperson is only paid if a sale is made. This works if the person you hire is a freelance self-employed person. It seems unfair at first since many people will work and receive no money in return, but the people who are successful at selling your products will be able to make large amounts of money in whatever time-frame they operate.

The less-cost-effective method is to have salespeople send you leads and then pay the salesperson whose hot leads turn into sales. This is less cost-effective because it still leaves your team with work to do. Another issue is how demoralizing this may be for freelance salespersons when they hand you a hot lead and the hot lead doesn't convert.

  

3 - The “Call For A Quote” Method (RfQ)

Frankly, the RfQ method is a very ineffective method for getting people to buy from you, i.e. there are other more effective ways. However, it cannot be denied that every single call you receive via the RfQ method is a very hot lead. By calling, the potential customer is indicating that he/she is already sold on the idea of buying and is now trying to find a price.

A good sales department should be able to convert these hot leads. Tactics such as starting low and then selling extensions and gaining up-sells are one way to go. Another method is to offer to beat a competitor’s quote. Again, the only downside to this method is getting people to call, so make sure it is a free-phone number, and make sure the quotation phone number is highly visible on your website and sales literature.

 

3 - Getting Warm Leads With PPC Ads 

You can gain warm leads by setting your PPC (Pay Per Click) demographics, your keywords, and your locations to target a very select bunch of people. In addition to this, you create ads that target your consumer while scaring away or alienating other people. There is nothing wrong with setting up numerous types of ads for numerous different keywords, and running them all at the same time, but where each has a small daily budget so that the entire campaign doesn't cost too much. 

Work towards paying less per click. Set your click-bid limits on the lower side, and maybe start your first few weeks with a low daily budget limit too. Do not compete for the top spots, and do not compete for the peak times. In fact, you may wish to have your ads auto-pause during peak times so that you are not competing when clicks are at their most costly.

 

4 - Set Up An Arrangement With Your Competitor

 Let’s say that you run a small company of proofreaders. Maybe there are five of you including yourself. Proofreading is one of those finite professions where scaling up is impossible without hiring more staff. The trouble is that when you hire more staff and you stop receiving new leads, then you fall into debt rather quickly. This means there is always a balancing act that dictates how much you may scale up or expand your business.

Some finite businesses set up customer sharing schemes with their competitors. In simple terms, if you receive a customer and all your staff is busy, then you pass that customer over to your competitor, and they do the same when they are too busy. The scheme can be as complex as a referral charge and percentage fee system, or it can be as referring customers over to your competitors by name. In this case, you receive warm leads and they receive warm leads whenever the market is hot.

 

Conclusion - Trust Is Required, Trust-Building Is Toxic

Turning somebody from an interested party into a lead requires a little selling, and for any degree of success (a conversion), some sort of trust is required. Yet, trust-building is almost always toxic because it is used so often by scammers, spammers, and fraudsters. Look online for an article about building trust online or offline, and you will read a laundry list of techniques that spammers/scammers use and that we are all sick of.

However, you can use people's flawed notion of trust for your benefit. For example, we all know that most medical students use essay writing services at least several times during their education because the practical side is so time-demanding, and yet doctors are the most trusted in our society. We all trust teachers, but if you are over the age of 35, you probably know a teacher personally and also know that he/she is a complete moron. The point is, do not try to build trust, exploit that of other people such as customer referrals, freelance salespersons, and even of your own competitors.

Mónica Rodríguez is a writer, art historian, and editor at LendGenius. She specializes in Art History, Art Conservation, History, Literature, Finance, Tech, Wellness, and Travel. In her free time, she's usually roaming the halls of the museum or the local bookstore surrounded by stacks of books.

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