Posted by Margaret Jane spent years doing SEO for high end clients and she was brilliant at her job.
She worked hard to get her clients’ sites ranked high to generate increased income for them.
But each time one of her client’s websites hit the first page of Google, she was fired. They figured they didn’t need her anymore.
That’s why she was continually having to find new clients.
The better she did her job, the faster her clients’ sites got to Page 1 of the search engines, the faster she was no longer needed.
It was incredibly frustrating for her. Worse yet, the sites would eventually fall back off of page 1 once she stopped doing the SEO. That’s when she would get a call from the old client, telling her that she must have not job her job correctly. That’s right – clients thought SEO was something you do once and then you’re set for life.
Margaret knew there had to be a better way. Each new client meant a ton of hours spent working her SEO magic to rank sites and also to kill it for them on social media platforms. For each new client she would:
- Improve their website loading speed
- Implement site links, meta-tags, html and so forth
- Target keywords, brand names and niche-specific terms
- Publish quality keyword-rich content
- Implement backlink and citation strategies
- And more
There was no residual income in this work because once clients saw their income rise, she would have to get a new client and start all over. Typical clients paid her for 4 to 6 months. Then she would chase new clients to replace the income she just lost.
She knew there had to be a better way.
And this is when she turned the tables. Instead of ranking clients’ websites, she would rank her own local sites and rent them out to clients.
A client would then have to continue paying to continue receiving the new business the site brought in each month. And if they stopped paying, she could simply replace them with another local business.
These sites would produce leads for the business owners who were hungry to grow their enterprises and happy to pay for a steady stream of new leads.
Its amazing what rethinking your business model can do.
Now instead of continually finding new clients and ranking new sites, she could build her own sites, do everything she would normally do to get them ranked, and then easily keep them ranked with monthly maintenance. Clients would have to continue paying her if they wanted their phone to ring with new business. And if they stopped paying, she could easily offer those same leads to their competitor.
She built herself 10 websites in this manner – all in the plumbing niche – in 10 different cities.
She now puts in about one third the time she used to spend ranking sites for others. Remember, once the sites are ranked, she just needs to keep them ranked by updating content and a few other things.
And because they’re all in the same niche, every site she did took less time than the one before. It’s amazing what an expert you can become at ranking a certain type of site in a certain niche. The method becomes almost cookie-cutter-like.
Here’s what her business model looks like now:
1: Build a website
2: Rank it in Google and on social media platforms
3: Generate leads
4: Find a local business owner to sell those leads to and get paid every month like clockwork.
5: If a business owner stops paying, approach their competition and strike a deal with them.
She’s been doing this for almost 2 years now with 10 websites and she’s had 11 clients. One of her clients retired and sold the business, and the new owner didn’t think he needed new business to survive. That’s when she made a list of his top 5 competitors and started phoning, and in less than 24 hours she had a new contract.
It’s incredibly powerful to be able to tell prospective clients that you can provide a certain number of leads each and every month, but that you can do it for only ONE client in the city. Scarcity and greed will light a fire under those business owners. In three of her cities she accidentally started bidding wars for her services, resulting in even higher revenue for herself.
Do you need a cash windfall? Some business owners prefer to pay for an entire year at one time, especially if you can show them a nice discount for that annual payment.
Another huge advantage to this business model is that the lead generation is propelled by free organic traffic.
People are actively searching for keywords in Google because they’re ready to hire someone right now to fix their problem.
These are live-quality leads that spend money and make business owners extremely happy they’re working with you.
The trick to free traffic is you must invest time in getting your site to rank well. But once you do, maintenance is easy, and you can continue to get free traffic with little or no effort.
Of course, if you’re good at paid traffic, you can always use that route, too. Paid traffic can be especially effective when you need to quickly increase the number of your leads.
Margaret Jane chooses to use only free traffic generated from optimizing her sites to be on page one of Google. She chooses markets that are large enough to get plenty of leads, but small enough to have less competition for ranking. In other words, no huge cities and no small towns, either.
And for those marketers who don’t like to sell, this method uses only attraction marketing (people who WANT the product or service you’re offering, such as plumbing) and no interruption marketing (getting people to buy something they don’t necessarily want).
When you first get started and you have no track record to prove you can provide leads to these businesses, you might offer free leads for a week just to prove you can do it. Or you might ask for a percentage on closed deals for the first month.
Once the business owner knows for a fact that you can bring the business, it’s time to iron out a flat rate monthly deal in which you are paid automatically on subscription. This way you know exactly how much money is coming in and when you can expect it.
Margaret says it’s important to use tracking so that you’re able to show the business owner how valuable your leads are. If the business is closing $20,000 of business per month with your leads, they’re not going to have any problem paying you 10%.
Unlike social media or SEO, this business model makes it clear to the business owner just how much return on investment they are receiving.
In fact you’ll become the business’ most valuable asset and in many cases they’ll do whatever it takes to continue working with you. When you’re able to double or triple their business, you have a customer for life.
Margaret says to pick one niche and become an expert in that niche. If you don’t know basic SEO, take a course. It’s not all that difficult to rank sites when they’re location based, such as ‘plumber Akron Ohio’ and ‘mortgage Salem Oregon’.
Here are a list of the top niches for lead generation:
Insurance – this might be the biggest lead generation niche. Target one or more sub-niches because when someone is looking for insurance, they have a specific need to fill.
Home services and remodeling – this is a broad category including services such as painting, plumbing, landscaping, tree care, heating and air services, electrical, carpentry, remodeling, decks, driveways, roofing and more.
Legal – you might choose a subniche here such as family, criminal, health care, etc.
Plastic Surgeons – this is an excellent niche because of the high price paid for even simple procedures.
Loans and credit cards – this includes mortgage, business, student, home repair, auto financing and credit cards catering to specific demographics.
Education – you might provide information on student loans and scholarships that can be applied to any university and then supply these leads to either online or local colleges.
Real estate – a huge and hot market. Providing quality leads to a real estate broker or a mortgage lender (or both) can be extremely lucrative for you.
Senior care – assisted living, home care services and senior care facilities are one of the fastest growing markets thanks to baby boomers.
Drug rehabilitation – this is a niche that is underserviced. To keep their beds full, treatment centers need that phone to ring and you can help them.