Do you know the difference between a cold lead and a hot lead? In a nutshell, a cold lead is when you reach out to people to tell them about your product or service, and then you ask them if they’re interested. A hot lead is when someone contacts you.
Thankfully good salespeople have done away with cold-calling, but a modern example of generating cold leads are businesses and companies that use digital advertising in order to capture prospective clients data. This includes Facebook ads, Instagram ads, emailers or PPC (pay per click) ads on Google. When people click on these ads, they’re taken to a landing page where they input their details such as their name, date of birth, profession, email address and contact number. Back in the day, if people had responded in this way it would have been seen as a “hot lead”, but these days it’s still a cold lead, as not all of the people who respond to these ads will actually be interested in your products or services. According to recent studies, only one or two out of every ten people who respond to your digital call-to-action-ads will actually buy from you.
A lot of companies out there are spending a lot of money generating these types of cold leads, but then they can’t understand why they aren’t converting. So how do you take these so-called “cold leads” and turn them into “hot leads”? Below I share how you can do just that…
RUN AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS:
Before you try to sell anything to anyone, it’s essential to run awareness campaigns so that your target market can get a sense of who you are and what you do. You can’t run ads and expect people to sign up or buy your product or service if they don’t know who you are. Targeting the right people is also incredibly important. If you do this right, and you keep on pushing out content that speaks to them (and to what you do), you’ll pique their interest.
Produce as many 1 minute videos as you can and keep on pushing them out to your audience. Eventually, you’ll dominate the media space that you’re in and your followers and the people interested in what you have to say will continue to grow exponentially.
EDUCATE & ADD VALUE FIRST:
Your awareness campaign should have nothing to do with selling. When you advertise on social media, instead of having a call to action that will benefit you, include some sort of education for your viewers. For example, the Facebook and Instagram live that I do every Sunday night could be seen as an awareness campaign. Every week I share my wealth of knowledge and tips for free. If people consume this content that I put out every week and they find it valuable, then eventually when I do put out an advert advertising my products or services, these people would be much more likely to sign up. The lead would then be a lot warmer than it would have been previously.
PRODUCE A PODCAST:
Leading on from running an awareness campaign and producing valuable content, you could produce a podcast. This not only keeps you in the public eye, but your prospective clients will start to see you as the expert in your field, and your credibility will also skyrocket. On my podcast, I interview various successful people. These types of interviews offer excellent exposure to the person I’m interviewing as well as me. You’ll also be able to leverage off of one another as I could ask the person I interview to share the podcast with their audience, and this would allow me the opportunity to tap into their network of followers.
Having a podcast can also be the gateway to you, building a relationship with someone that you’ve wanted to do business with. If I approached the CEO of a company and asked to meet with him to discuss my products and services, chances are he’d say that he didn’t have the time. But if I approached him with a pitch, asking him to be on my podcast to share his story, chances are he’d be much more inclined to make some time for that. After sharing their story with me and my audience, I would develop a bond with this person and further down the line if I were to approach them to do some business together, I’d have a much higher chance of converting them into a paying client.
* If you follow my advice above, then eventually you’ll start getting messages from people saying “Hi, I’ve been following you on social media for a while and love the content you’ve been producing. I think my employees could benefit from your services. Can we meet up to discuss possibly doing business together?”
From cold leads to hot leads- just like that! It may not happen overnight, and you’ll have to invest a great deal of time and effort to get to this point. But when people start contacting you instead of the other way round, it’ll all be worth it.
Watch my video on how to convert cold leads into hot leads here.
