How to generate leads without using Unbiased
Pre-lockdown, when I used to tour the country in my role as roving marketing pundit, I’d occasionally get a rogue comment from someone who would pipe up from the back of the auditorium towards the end of the presentation. Let’s call him Kevin.
Kevin would suggest he didn’t need a website because he already had a thriving Facebook/LinkedIn/MySpace presence.
The MySpace bit I made up. Kevin wasn’t that bad.
I’d explain to Kevin that the reason his Facebook/LinkedIn page wasn’t cutting the mustard was because he didn’t own that Facebook/LinkedIn presence.
Social media platforms such as Facebook can change their rules (and do) whenever they like, thereby cancelling you and your business, diminishing your presence, your following, and everything you’ve put into developing that overnight.
Or even just hike prices to the extent that you lose your effective competitive advantage in generating leads.
Facebook did this in 2018 when it changed its algorithms to deprioritise business updates from its news feed, in a bid to encourage businesses to use paid ads instead.
But it’s not just social media platforms that do this. In April, Amazon slashed its affiliate rates by 50 per cent or more. Suddenly, small businesses whose models were based on receiving a cut of revenue from an Amazon sale if it was made through an affiliate link, were left high and dry.
Be the owner
And now we have the recent grievances from advisers towards Unbiased for changing the quality of its leads, providing dud enquiries, inaccurate listings (including firms claiming to be Chartered when they’re not) and most recently, for signposting its new matching service rather than the directory that advisers pay for.
It’s understandable that advisers are feeling frustrated if they’ve been relying on this. But, while this is learning things the hard way, there is a crucial lesson here: don’t build your business on someone else’s infrastructure.
Instead, own your own stuff. Your website and your email list are your most valuable business development tools. In the right hands.
The right hands need to make sure your website is fully optimised first i.e. designed to attract your ideal prospect and convert them into clients.
I don’t just mean through high-quality imagery and well written, jargon-free copy, although that’s very important.
It has to be OK under the bonnet too. Behind the scenes it needs to be technically set up to attract the right people, to capture their details when they visit your site, and nurture them through a series of automated emails until they’re eating out of the palm of your hand.
This is where your website is much more than a digital business card. It’s a bespoke marketing machine that can capture the attention of the right people like a moth to a flame and convert them to clients.
Digital advice
Stage two, should you choose to accept it, is to embark on more proactive lead generation, in order to attract a higher volume of people to your website. And this is now easy to do, because your website is already set up, so the hard work has been done.
To do this, you need a low-cost, high-impact campaign targeted at specific niches via a social media platform such as Facebook (it’s not all bad) with A/B testing.
Sounds hard, but once it’s set up, it can then run and run. You can turn it on and off whenever you need more leads. And without a dud enquiry in sight. And much cheaper than £45 + Vat per lead.
This is especially important now that you’re a digital adviser. In the new normal, when you’re no longer out and about, you need to make sure your online capabilities are spruced up and ready to go – and that no one can lay their sweaty paws on them and take them from you on a whim. If you’re going to embrace the new way of working, you need to do it right.
Faith Liversedge is a marketing consultant
By Faith Liversedge 20th July 2020 2:47 pm