How to Generate Leads for Local Businesses Using Blogs – Case Study
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On 18/7/2012 (Wednesday), I have decided to do an online experiment – an experiment to help business owner to leverage on the internet and to collect local leads using blogs.
Business owners include plumbers, piano teachers, violin teachers, tutors, interior designers, carpenters, furniture shop owners, doctors, chiropractors and so on. The list goes on and on.
One of the major obstacles they face is getting new leads. Without new leads, there won’t be any new customers to sell to and their businesses will die a slow (sometimes painful) death. Most small business owners are very busy managing their daily business affair. So most do not have a proper marketing system to help them get new leads.
In Singapore where I am staying, the common online marketing strategies that business owners use are listing on coupon sites such as Groupon, listing on online classified ads and directories, using Google Adwords and Facebook Ads.
These strategies will ONLY work if you have a proper product funnel. Most just signed up for these programmes and hope they get LOTS OF Customers and LOTS OF $$$. But it seldom works this way. Let me share with you why. Listing on coupon sites like Groupon is bad for small businesses and most owners are going to lose money. Listing on online directories is not ideal too as their ad is competing against thousands of other ads. Most have underperforming ads. Using Google Adwords and Facebook Ads is going to burn a BIG hole in their pocket as too as most use them blindly by not optimising the ads, the squeeze pages and lowering the cost per click.
So possibly, using blogs to reach out to customers may still be one of the most cost-effective (I didn’t say free) methods to educate your customers, to get them to buy from you and to build a strong following.
So what is this online specifically about?
Even though I have started this experiment about 2 months ago and it is still ongoing, I really want to share with you what I did, the challenges I face, the results I gotten (small, big or none) and the steps I took to solve some of the problems I face. I am also sharing what I had been doing due to the good response I had gotten for the 3-parts Niche Tutorials.
When I first started, I have no idea if everything is going to be ok:
Honestly then, I have no idea if it would have worked or not. There were many factors to consider such as category of your niche, competition of keywords, type of customers, spending per customer, whether they will buy online and even if they buy online, what kind of products/ services they really want and how much they are willing to spend.
Looking through all these unknowns had given me a BIG headache and I was scared too – scared to have created an experiment which had a negative outcome and to hear my readers booing at me.
I was hesistant then but my buddy, David from “Learn Niche Marketing” encouraged me to start this experiment so as to prove that lead generation using blogs REALLY works. So now, I decided to create this case study and share it with you.
Well, since this is just an experiment and whatever happens, it will be for the fun of it, right?
Plus by sharing what I did, perhaps you will be able to tweak my methods and develope your personal strategies to help your local business.
Choosing my niche:
So I have decided to go into a niche which I really love – Math Niche. Having background in children’s education psychology, my strength (beside coaching and internet marketing) is teaching students and helping them to drastically improve their academic results within a very short time frame.
As the Math niche is very wide, ranging from pre-school Math to University Math, I must narrow it down further to Primary school Math. I chose this niche because I already know parents are spending a lot of money in this niche plus I have over 10 years of working experience with parents whose kids are in this age group (9 to 13). According to this article – Asia spending billions on tutors: study, Singapore spent US$680 million in 2008! Imagine how much more parents are spending NOW? Perhaps 1 billion dollars solely in Singapore? Who knows? :p
After doing more research and observing the local tuition trends, here is the demographic of my customers:
– Parents with children who are in Primary 5 and 6
– Parents’ age falls between 30 to 50
– Living in Singapore
– English speaking
– Internet savvy
– Already spending money on their kids by signing them up for tuition, buying Math assessment books, registering for motivational workshops. (monthly expenses per parent is estimated to be at least $100 per month and it can go up to over S$5000/ month considering the fees paid for more premium tuition services and other enrichment programmes.)
So the niche has been selected and I am going to set up my blog – my online vehicle for collection of local leads.
There will be a 3 key components:
– Free content as blog posts
– Subscribed content (Reader needs to opt in to get my free e-book)
– Paid content (Reader needs to pay to get it)
Now, let’s go!
Starting Your Offline Consulting Business, From Scratch
Hi, I’m back. Sorry for not having been updating my blog for a while as I have been pretty busy being a stay-at-home-dad and spending lots of time taking care of my daughter. Being a parent and juggling my online business is not easy and I have made some tough decision to take things slowly and focusing on what I feel is more important to me right now.
So now, I’m back and I promise to share more about what I have been doing so you can benefit too.
I have received some emails asking me about how one can start building his offline consulting business and the questions which were asked were pretty similar.
Here are some of the questions:
– Where do I get prospects?
– How do I know what kind of services to sell?
– How can I get my first customer?
– Where can I learn about offline consutling?
– How do I make money from it?
During the past few months of “disappearing”, I was also helping out some of my students in their offline consultation business and they have successfully clinched their first projects with many more to come.
Here is exactly what my students did and this is something you can easily follow too, if you are looking for fast cashflow.
Step 1. Go through these 5 days free marketing e-course and watch the training videos at https://yoursalesplan.com/ (Just sign up, it is 100% free.)
Step 2. While going through the 5 days training, think of your direct network and those people who you know need online services.
For example, one of your friends, who owns a shop selling shoes, is keen to get an e-commerce website. Or one of your existing customers need a website to promote his home interior design service.
What you should do is to list down at least 10 names and the type of services they will require.
For example.
James – setting up a website
Susan – setting up a Facebook fan page
Travis – search engine optimisation service
John – redesign of his website
What this will do for you is to open up a list of business opportunity with the people You Know. And what matter most is they trust you and will more likely do business with you.
Step 3. Once your list is up, contact your prospects within 24 hours. Drop them an email like this.
“Hi James, this is John here.
How have you been?
I have recently started an offline consulting business and wondering if you know of anyone who will need more online exposure or will need a new website.
Thanks,
John”
You realise that in the email, you are not asking for business directly from James. It is less intimidating and intrusive. You are in fact askinf for referrals. And if James know of anyone who needs your service, he will know who to refer to. Yes, that person is YOU. And knowing James may need your service, he will know who to contact. And yes again, that person is YOU.
Step 4. The next step is to do consistent follow up.
When you are new and are just building your customer base, you will not likely have a proven track record. So you need to be genuine in helping your prospects out. Offer free consultation and show your prospects how much you know and care about his business.
However, having said this, not all your prospects will become your paying customers. Maybe only 10 to 20%. And this means that out of 10 prospects, only 1 to 2 will become your customers.
So the trick here is to keep on contacting more prospects.
Congratulation! Once you have reached step 4, you are and should be making some money.
What do you think of the 4 steps? How useful are they? Do you think it is easy for you to implement? I love to hear from you.
If you have any question regarding any of the steps, do leave your questions below and I will get back to you within a day.
Shocking! He Made $1000 in 5 Days! + Coaching (Last Slot)
Last week, I did a 5 day 1-to-1 email coaching with one of my students
and as predicted and guaranteed, he made $1000 in 5 days!
I am letting my student’s results speak for themselves.
Check out the email he sent me.
Click to enlarge.
Here is what he wrote in his thank you email to me.
“(I made) $1000
$500 for Web design and $500 for 3 months SEO.…
…John, thanks for your encouragement.
Will be meeting another client next week.
Hope can close another one next week.Thanks”
By following my taught method, Allan is going to close another $1000 deal next week
and that will be $2000 made in just 2 weeks.
Allan is not the only one who made money.
There are many more who made money.
One collected a $300 cheque on the 3rd day.
One collected $400 cash on the 4th day.
One more collected $100 on the 5th day.
And all of them are busy people like you and me
and they have their day job too.
If they can do it, so can you.
Now, imagine…
Imagine making $1000 a week and that is $4000 in a month’s time…
Imagine what you can buy for $4000 in your pocket!
Right now, I’m accepting another 2 more students for my paid email coaching program.
It won’t be cheap. I only want to work with serious people who are serious about
making money and making sure they succeed.
My 1-to-1 coaching programme is usually priced at $3000 for 30 days.
Read on to find out what my coaching programme consists of
and the Today Only Special Offer I am giving only to my subscribers.
In this coaching, you will learn:
all about offline consulting and it REALLY is the fastest and easiest way to
bring money (and food) home. (Proven by my student’s result)
My other best track record – one student made US$1000 within 7 days (while still schooling)
and of course, the other Italian student who made US$8000 in 30 days.
Today, I am going to handhold 2 more lucky students and
for the next 4 weeks, I am going guide them
in taking a step a day so that they will make their first sale
within the shortest time (preferably within your first 5 days).
And Offline Consulting is FASTER and EASIER than any other method
like affiliate marketing, product selling…
YES! Till you are going to make your first sale.
This is how the training works.
There will be one email a day.
Each day I will send you one email with the daily task and you
must complete it and submit your homework to me by the next day.
Yes, you have to take action, follow the steps I have told you
and complete all of them.
In that single email, you can also ask me questions related to the
daily task and offline consulting.
So, here is what you need to do to sign up:
Step 1: Make payment using the PayPal button (Today only special offer.).
Just for today, you can now sign up for my coaching at just $2000 for 60 days of coaching.
Step 2: Email me your PayPal receipt to askjohnyeo@gmail.com and we will start immediately.
Regards,
John
P.S. I will close my 1-to-1 coaching program once the last slot is filled up.
And there will be no refund for this as we have invested time in making you successful.
REAL Testimonial from my students who made REAL money:
I have heard that offline consulting is the fastest and easiest way to make a decent amount of money online.
.
Therefore, I decided to give it a try. However, I quickly realised that it is not as easy as I thought. I have tried for a few months and met a number of prospects but have never successfully closed the sale.
.
I am a subscriber of John’s newsletter. A few days ago, I receive an email from John, offering a 5 day email coaching for offline consulting.
.
And you know what? By the end of the email coaching, I have successfully closed my first client and I received a cheque of $1000.
.What I like about John’s email coaching is this:
.a) John’s method is practical and free of hype (unlike some of the WSO you find in the warrior forum)
.
b) Most importantly, it works!
.
c) John is very patient and encouraging. He also replies email very quickly.
.
I will definitely recommend others to take up John’s coaching.If I can already get so much value from John’s coaching, imagine how much more value you are going to get when you sign up for his coaching too.
.
Offline consulting is certainly one of the fastest and easiest way to make money online. 1 sale can usually mean a revenue of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars.
.
Thanks so much John.
Allan Lim
Thank you John
No doubt with this 5 day training you show me quality training and support. From day one you encourage me to succeed in this training.
.
You solve one of my big problems to provide my customers with a quality product and this encourage me to make my first sale.
.
Helping local businesses with their websites is one of the easiest and fastest ways to make money. In just 5 days I make my first $100 sale and this is a big step in my future business success.
.
Thank you again
Riaan
Join Now!
Is $5000 in Residual Income Possible? – Blogs Renting
When setting up a business for your offline consulting, it is important to remind yourself not to work yourself to death.
Many small business offline consultants that I know are working 12 to 18 hours a day to fulfill orders. They range from designing blogs to building backlinks for their customers’ blogs. For every project that they have completed, they take on another way and continue working to help their customers.
There is nothing wrong with this system, only if you really working and would rather spend time working than travelling or doing other things you enjoy more.
In today’s blog post, I would like to share with you a business system which can bring you passive income every month without you doing much work.
Well, perhaps you need to oversee the system and tweak it to be more efficient so you have even lesser work.
In the offline consulting niche, one has to understand that the purpose is to meet the need of your customers who are the business owners. Let’s narrow down and I personally prefer to work with small business owners mainly for these two reasons.
– Small business owners are either a one-man team or has a few staff and they can make decisions faster.
– Small business owners have many many tasks to handle daily and they are always more than delighted to have you coming in to help them and most of them really appreciate your help.
One of the needs of a small business owners is tight budget and they lack IT expertise. Even if they know how to set up a blog or site, they will not have time to do it because they have other prioritites such as fulfilling orders for their own customers.
So, imagine this, what if you can provide a service like this
– ready made site with ready content
– all you need to do is to change the contact to that of your customer
– you can help upload the images for your customers
– your customer can rent your blog and decide after a few months if having online presence works for him.
In my coaching, I have taught my student this method and he ended up making US$8000 in residual monthly income within 30 days. So anyone can easily do it, including you.
So what should you prepare now, even if you want to test it just for the next 30 days.
Remember now is the testing phase and you got to keep your cost low.
You need to have a reliable hosting such as Hostgator. Use the coupon code “1centoffernow” to try it for just one cent for the next 30 days.
Next, you can use free WordPress themes. There are tons of them. All you need to do is to Google “cake + free wordpress themes” if you are targeting home bakers. If you are targeting dentists, Google “dentist + free wordpress themes”.
Set up a blog and add about 2 to 3 pages so that there is content on your blog.
If you want to add more pictures, use stock free images.
Now, let’s work out the Maths.
Renting a blog at $100/ month with all the following services
– changing of contacts
– adding customer’s content such as text and images
To make $5000 a month, all you need to find 50 customers.
Here are some places you can find customers
– Yellow Pages
– Chamber of Commerce
– Groupon
– Business Directories
Next, changing contacts and uploading content are considered as eazy low level jobs and you can hire
a part time freelancer at about $400/ month to do it for you.
So you will still have $4600 passive month every month and there is no need for you to do much work.
Feel free to share with me your thoughts by leaving your comment below.
[Attention Offline Marketers] Make $500 With 1 Email? EBAY Marketing Blueprint Shows You Exactly How
My student, Aljiro did it again!
Taping onto the power of the largest online auction sites, he easily made over US$460 just by sending out ONE email.
2 Fastest (And Easiest) Ways to Make Money Online
from ravsitar
Recently, I did meet up with my students and we discussed about a very common topic which everyone loves to discuss about.
What is the fastest (and easiest) way to make money?
Won’t you want to know? If yes, read on.
Read more
[Subscribers Only] BCM Offline Consulting Training – Part 2 + Contest
2012 is coming really soon and we want to help 5 lucky subscribers to blast their way to into a MORE prosperous New Year! This is the reason we are offering this contest.
The Prizes:
We will be selecting 5 lucky subscribers to take part in our BCM (Blog Cash Mentor) offline consulting training.
What is this contest about:
In this contest, the 5 lucky winners will be working with our team till you make your first $100.
Who are in our team?
They include myself and my other students who have successfully made money by offering offline consulting.
How to join:
Joining this contest is really very easy!
To stand a chance to win one of the 5 slots, tell us “One reason why you want to take part in this training”
Your reply should be
“I want in because [[your reasons]]
We will be choosing the winners based on the quality of your answers.
A bad reply is like:
“I want in.”
“I need money.”
“I am broke.”
A good reply is like this:
“I want in because I have been dabbling internet marketing and I know the basic knowledge. Now, I just need someone to guide me.”
“I want in because I am willing to work hard to commit to the programme and do whatever it takes to get me there.”
Post your reply in this thread below.
=> Contest thread
(You will need to sign up as a forum member to post.)
Dateline: 31/12/2011, 12 midnight EST
