This episode of the Hustle Less Profit More Podcast features an enlightening conversation with Phil Smith, a seasoned entrepreneur and lead generation expert, as he dives into the art of monetizing data in lead generation. Phil shares his personal journey of discovering the power of leveraging lead generation and provides invaluable insights on strategies for filtering and monetizing high-quality leads. Through compelling anecdotes and actionable advice, Phil emphasizes the significance of prioritizing lead monetization over merely reducing lead costs and shares practical tips on finding the right leads that convert into profitable opportunities. His refreshing approach to lead generation and data monetization offers a fresh perspective, making this episode a must-listen for business owners and marketers looking to increase revenue through lead monetization strategies. So, grab your earbuds and tune in to gain actionable tips and inspiration from Phil's wealth of experience!
Do you want to increase your earnings through lead-generation strategies? I will be revealing the key to maximizing your revenue through data monetization in lead generation. By implementing the solution I'll be sharing, you can achieve greater financial gains from your lead generation efforts.
My special guest is Phil Smith
Meet Phil Smith, a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, and author, renowned for his expertise in B2B lead generation. With a wealth of experience and a proven track record of working with over 10,000 clients, Phil brings a unique blend of industry insight and practical know-how to the table. As a sought-after consultant, he's a treasure trove of knowledge when it comes to lead monetization strategies. Get ready to glean invaluable wisdom from Phil's wealth of experience in the lead generation arena. It's going to be an eye-opening and enlightening conversation!
"Lead buyers, even us, we want leads every single day. Every single day. We can't stop generating leads or else you go out of business. So it's a great business to be in because lead buyers just never stop buying." - Phil Smith
In this episode, you will be able to:
Unleash the Power of Qualified Leads
When it comes to acquiring leads, Phil emphasizes the value of quality over quantity. His distinctive method of prizing quality leads--those who are sincerely interested, capable, and ready to take action--significantly enhances the potential of converting them into real customers. His elucidative insights on lead generation shed light on maximizing ROI by focusing on the most promising leads.
The resources mentioned in this episode are:
00:00:00
This is something, a little trick that we learned years ago with these platforms is a lot of people say, I want the best lead, and I'm going to be hyper focused or targeted for that lead. You know what you do? You pay a whole lot of money for that lead. Now your CPM rate skyrockets. But what you don't realize is that these platforms are really, really good at putting your ad in front of the right people.
00:00:22
They are you.
00:00:27
Most business owners and entrepreneurs are secretly sick of hustling. And if you are too, you're in the right place. Welcome to the Hustle less profit, more podcast with me, Mickey Anderson, where we're revolutionizing success because you should have it all. Business success, lasting wealth, freedom, and fulfillment. Join me on this quest to uncover the keys to defining and achieving success on our terms so we can all hustle less and profit more.
00:01:02
So if you've ever wondered what it's like behind the scenes for the big guns out there in terms of how they generate and monetize their leads, you are in luck. Today, I am so fortunate to be chatting with Phil Smith, serial entrepreneur, investor, and author. Phil's an expert in b two B lead generation, and I am personally so excited to pick his brain. He's one of the most sought after consultants, working with over 10,000 clients and counting. Bill, thank you so much for joining me today.
00:01:30
Yeah, thank you for having me. This is great. Now, for those of the listeners who maybe don't understand the difference between marketing and lead generation in particular, do you mind kind of defining and clearing up what the big difference is? Yeah, so it's funny, I first learned about the lead generation business in 2011. I just sold a company to an investment fund.
00:01:52
I joined that fund and someone came to us looking for an investment, and he said, I have a lead generation business. I'm like, okay, I understand lead generation, but what do you mean? And it was literally just a concept of generating leads and selling them. And for whatever reason, I never knew that beforehand. And I thought it was the coolest thing in the world because it just totally fits my skill set.
00:02:14
So I can do sales and marketing and not really need employees and build something up. So lead generation is just very simplified. As in my world is you generate leads, you monetize them, right? Whether you sell them off, you do affiliate marketing. Of course, you could generate your own leads for your own business.
00:02:33
But when we talk about the lead gen business, every single person that I know in there is all about just generating leads and essentially selling the data off they may do stuff with them on their own and build maybe some side businesses with the data on the back end. I've done that personally as well. But that's the key. With just straight lead generation, marketing is just a much bigger term, just the marketing world. When I think about marketing, I think about marketing for a business, right?
00:02:58
So whether you're doing social media marketing, pay marketing, branding, brand marketing, whatever it is, it's more marketing for a specific business, selling their product or service. And lead generation is more about just generating that lead and monetizing it. I love it. And somebody just recently, I don't know if you're an Alex Hermosi fan or not, but in his most recent book, 100 million dollar leads, he did a really great definition of what a lead is because I think that's a word that we use a lot, but a lot of people don't actually understand what makes a lead a lead versus just someone on the street that you happen to know and the way that he defined it, and I'd love to know if you agree, is somebody who gives you their contact information and permission to follow up. Is that accurate?
00:03:39
Yeah. I mean when we generate a lead, that's exactly what it is. They are giving us their information and we are turning and of course getting their permission. And then the difference between a lead generation business and someone marketing for own business is we have to get permission to allow other people to contact them and partner with them. And there's obviously legal ways to do that in the wording, in the form, et cetera, et cetera.
00:04:01
So a lot of companies that buy leads from us are different. Right. Some say I need them to check a box off manually and some say they just need to click the button with the wording underneath. Right. So legal reasons, it's going to be a little different for different companies.
00:04:18
The larger the company, the more strict they are, I guess you could say. But yeah, I mean that's exactly what it is in our world. But I will say I learned about him from his last launch book. I guess he just did a book launch or whatever he just did. So I saw a lot of people talking about him, had no clue who he was.
00:04:35
I never really did any research for him. But I have not read a book since high school, so I'm not a book reader. I'm in the process of finishing my first book, but I refuse to read it. So I have other people doing that for me. But I hate reading.
00:04:48
It's just my thing and I want to read my own book. Yeah. Everyone has their own way, for sure, of absorbing and getting information. And I think if you limit yourself to just books, then you're probably not going to have that much fun either. Now, when it comes to lead generation, obviously we could chat all day about the different methods of getting the leads, but I think there's one kind of big qualifier that we need to chat about is what makes a lead qualified.
00:05:14
So is there a process that we should be going through to make sure that we're not just getting any lead, we're getting the right leads? I know a lot of times we focus so much on getting enough leads. Yeah, I've seen a lot of companies make a lot of mistakes over the years in the way they generate leads, how they try to qualify the funnel that they build out. There's more mistakes happening, obviously, than someone running a solid funnel. And of course, myself, I built out my first funnel, technically in 1998, before it was even a thing, obviously.
00:05:45
And we were selling something called become an ISP, become an Internet service provider. We were selling dial up services in 1998, and we actually allowed people to buy into our points of presence, which was a pop network of dial up throughout the country. And people would pay money to basically build their own business around our infrastructure. And that's the first time I ever got into this type of stuff, this stuff that I do today. But when it comes to a qualified lead, that's always going to depend on the company itself.
00:06:15
Right? It also depends on the platform. There's platforms like TikTok. It's probably the worst platform for the b to B marketing. Right.
00:06:22
If you're trying to contact businesses, even if it's a consumer product, some work very well, like actually lending works, personal loans works very well on TikTok, as an example. But the different platform is also going to be dependent on a quality of the leads you're going to get when you generate that lead. The questions that you ask to try to filter them out is going to be very dependent. So from a lead generation company, there's always going to be those people that try to, because they want to sell more leads, so they'll push more unqualified leads in, they'll filter, sprinkle a couple in like an extra 10% of they know that aren't really that great because they just want to make more money. Lead generation business has some characters in it, but in terms of the questions that you ask, because even for us, we sell our own services, too, and it's very important how you word certain questions.
00:07:12
So, for example, one of the things that we do is when we force everyone to watch almost like an hour long video to purchase one of our services. We will not talk to them unless they watch that video. And at the end, it's the exact wording that you use in terms of see who can filter out and actually become a qualified lead. So, for example, if we had in there, do you have at least x amount of dollars to purchase our services? We asked certain questions about how, if they have the money or not.
00:07:43
But one question that we added, there's actually two questions that we added, when do you want to purchase the services? Right. And how much do you need to make to replace your current income? We didn't want to ask how much do you make? But we reworded the question and said, to replace your current income, how much do you need to make?
00:07:59
Because now you're going to tell me your income now. And then we realized 75% to 80% of our sales came from people that said ASAP and made over 50,000 a year. So then from us, we can now narrow it down and say, all right, let's jump all over these people, and the rest will obviously figure out. But if you know up to 80% of your sales is going to come from this two questions, these two answers, you got to jump all over that. And you set up as much automation to get them to move forward.
00:08:25
Right. So we're just all over that specific lead. So every company's got to figure that out for themselves. And how do you reword questions? How do you get the answers?
00:08:34
Or what answers do you need to figure out? Who is that person? But like you just said, absorbing information. Everything I do is all about what's happening today. Books are great.
00:08:46
I mean, there's nothing wrong with books. Of course, books are wonderful. I just can't read a so, but I like to listen to people that are doing stuff today, and I've learned the people that I need to follow, like being a part of working with Kevin Harrington, being part of mastermind, someone like an Onyx segal, I love watching him and what they're doing. So there's certain people that I just pay attention because there's so much information out there and there's so much bad information out there. You really have to narrow down who you're going to take information from and accept that and be like, all right, I'm going to follow these people.
00:09:20
The majority of my information is going to be from them. And of course, always keep doing more and more research. But there's so much bad information out there that you really have to be careful and who you listen to, because you can go down a path that's completely wrong or listen to people that are completely wrong and just destroy your own company. I think that's like a key takeaway for today as well, because just with the quantity of information we can get in the world at this point, it's unreal. And being able to have the, I want to say the confidence, but also the assurance that if you can find the one or two people who are going to ditch the 80% of the crap that you're going to find online and really get to the source of truth, the people who are doing it, who have the experience, who have the knowledge that can share with you and just let go of the rest, you're probably going to save yourself a lot of time and accelerate your time to success.
00:10:11
Like, so powerful 100%. I'll tell you this, because I was just at a mastermind last week. I was talking to someone about this. There are so much smoke and mirrors going on. There's so many speakers, and I'm not going to say a name that are big names out there that go up on stage and talk about stuff that I know that they're not really doing.
00:10:33
They love to talk about it, and it sounds great when you say the words, but they're not even doing it themselves. They're given all these details of what you should do, what you shouldn't do, and all this stuff. But there's so much smoke and mirrors going on. And I learned a lot about this since about 2018 when I started going to conferences and started meeting all these big speakers and all these guys that are out there talking. And then you start to learn some of them you become friends with.
00:11:00
You start to learn the back end of their business and realize, like, they're not even doing that. So it sounds great. Like, I could do it, too. I could sit here and talk to talk and make it sound amazing, but then I'm just going to basically be lying. And the problem is people take what they say and say, all right, I'm going to go do it now, but it's really not even something that they're even doing.
00:11:21
They don't even know if it works or not. It just sounds good. And I know it sounds bad that I'm saying this, but I'm telling you, I've seen this firsthand. And you got to be really careful. Even with these big name people out there, gurus, what do you want to call them that are really not in the weeds anymore.
00:11:38
They're just a talking head out there. They're making money, which is great for them, but they're not really doing it. Like me personally, we sit here and get our hands dirty every single day because we have to. Right? We do everything ourselves in house.
00:11:52
I'm still a one employee company. I've made the ink 5000 list five times. Fastest growing private companies in the country. I just got back a couple of weeks ago, actually. It's my.
00:12:00
San Antonio, it's where it was, San Antonio this year. And I'm still a one employee company. Yes. I work with people. Of course I have consultants, but we have a very small team.
00:12:09
As long, like, four of us, five of us, and that's it. And that's because we actually do the work every day. But everything's all about automation, right? Everything's automated, everything's scalable, which is the only reason why you can have a small team doing what we do. I love that advice.
00:12:25
I think before we dig into automation and data, I think it's like a great reminder of the world we live in. Today is sound bites. There's so many great, catchy sound bites out there, and if you're taking that as truth, you're probably in some trouble. And so it is really important. And I think it definitely reminds me of the importance of going face to face and actually meeting, shaking hands and connecting and working with people whenever you can, because it is really hard online.
00:12:49
Yeah. I can give you one great example that I even did myself, because I thought that everyone that told me what to do is correct. So once Covid hit in 2020, we were doing larger events, like 200 Percy events with Kevin Harrington. All that obviously shut down in March. We literally did an event that Friday, and everything shut down that weekend.
00:13:09
And so, like, all right, what are we going to do? So I said, you know what? I'm going to listen to what everyone told me and start a funnel that literally starts at, like, a dollar trial and better. 97 a month and 197. And upsell after upsell after upsell.
00:13:22
Keep going. So I did it. We did well. We did, like, 1.7 million in nine months, which is great. But what happened was, when we looked at the numbers over a six month period, I go, wait a second.
00:13:37
All I had to do was bring in one third of the leads to buy something at a 997 level, which is what we were before, right? So we're always selling at 997. So I lowered it to the dollar because everyone's saying, no, you got to do this. All these people at all these big masterminds and how you got to build out funnels. I'm like, all right, let me listen to them.
00:13:58
So I did it. All I had to do is bring in a third of the people at 997. I would have made more money. So we literally shut it down, went to 997, went to 3.8 million. We literally over doubled it.
00:14:09
Going back to the way it was before. And I'm like, I'm just going to stop listening to people. That was the last time. I was like, you know what? I don't care what anybody says.
00:14:20
I'm just going to do shit my way. That's how I've always been. I've always been a lone wolf. And I just figure it out myself. And everyone always asks me, did you read this book?
00:14:29
Did you do that? Oh, you must have heard so and so say. I'm like, I don't even know you're talking about. I figured all myself and just put my head down. And that's it.
00:14:36
And that was the thing I was like, because it never really truly made sense to me on why I would start so low and have to upsell after upsell to upsell. Because if someone's going to buy something for you, to be honest, I'd rather just charge more. And so what I did was like I told you, I started listening only certain people. So we're at Damon John's mastermind rise Nation in March, and Ryan Dice, who's one of the people running the event, which is part of digitalmarket.com, he's also one of the few people I actually listened to because I was part of war room mastermind since 2018, and they were running that. So Ryan told me, and again, this is one of those things that you don't know.
00:15:11
But he's like, oh. Because I always thought digitalmarket.com was charging a low monthly fee. And they were. And then he told me, oh, yeah, no, we stopped that. I'm like, it made sense to me because I'm like, yeah, I never understood, why do a low monthly fee goes, yeah, we just charge, we start like two grand, about that $2,000 now.
00:15:28
And he goes, the average is $25,000. I'm like, all right. So I literally went from 997, I tripled the prices to 3000. We still get a discount of 2500. And we literally just didn't miss a beat.
00:15:39
The percentage is still like, that initial 1% that you're going to bring in from paid ads to $1,000 offer, 25 or 3000 offer. We're still right around 1% and we tripled the price. So then we learned that that's the concept that really happens, is that if you give people a lower option, they're just probably going to take it. But when you go and you say, here's the price, then you're still going to get around that 1% that just has that money and is willing to do it. And I'd rather deal with less people paying more money.
00:16:05
Just like Netflix keeps charging more money, keeps making more, they'll want to lose some, but who cares, because we're going to make more in the long run. So I'd rather deal with less people, make more money. Anyway. I know we totally went off topic. But really, this is the stuff we need to hear.
00:16:19
That's the whole point. The show is hustle less, profit more. That is it. It's like a mic drop moment for sure. I love that.
00:16:26
I think kind of two pieces, one that I took away is like sometimes you just got to test it to see if somebody's BS, that's it. And a lot of times it's just not going to work out. But the other kind of piece of that, that really made me think was, you can spend a lot of money and work hard to get a bunch of people at a low price, but ultimately, if you were to take that energy and effort on the higher price tickets and get the right people and then keep them, it works itself out a lot better for you as a business, for sure. Yeah. In the world that we live in, the people that spend a dollar or under $100 or even under $1,000, they're more of a pain in the butt to deal with, to be honest.
00:17:06
You're going to get better quality people that you're going to deal with at a higher price point, right? I mean, look at you walk in like Damon John's mastermind is 50,000 a year. War rooms. Mastermind. I was 30,000 a year.
00:17:17
You got a different person in that room, right? I mean, the conversation is different. Even go the ink 5000. You deal with those people, work with that group of people. It's a totally different conversation.
00:17:29
Everything across the board. And for me, I'd rather deal with better quality people that understand. When I say better quality people, what I mean is more business. Like, they understand business, they get business. I've had people say to me, oh, why would he give you $1,000?
00:17:43
If I could take my family out to dinner, I'm like, you're investing $1,000 into yourself to make more money versus, and you're comparing it to going out to dinner. That's not a person I even want to talk to. Right. So that's what I mean. They're just not in the right mindset because when you're not in the right mindset, you're never going to be successful.
00:17:58
Anything in life. Doesn't matter what you do. Right. You want to be an olympian. You can't say, yeah, I'll get to working out next week.
00:18:03
You know what I mean? It's not going to work. So I just like to deal with people have the right mindset for what we're trying to do. The kind of big takeaway that I'm getting from this conversation so far is that a lot of people are talk. And if you stay in the talk phase where you're just talking and learning and up here kind of in your head, you're not going to get much actually done.
00:18:22
And so it's better to do the work and surround yourself with people who are doing the work. And ultimately that's what's going to lead to the success that you're looking for. Yeah. If you look like you see on Facebook people that get motivated off those quotes, right? And I even see it if I post it.
00:18:39
And a lot of times you get a higher engagement with those. Or if you talk about a lot of money or show nice cars, you also get a high engagement, but also quotes too. And I see people that I'll say something as motivational like, oh, I needed that today or I'm motivated now. It's like if that's your response, then you were never motivated. Begin with and you're probably not going to be motivated tomorrow.
00:18:59
Motivation has to come within. You can't read something and say, oh, now I'm going to go become a millionaire because I read a post that had Matthew McConaughey on it. You know what, just like, or the rock or whatever. Right? Okay, now I'm ready to go.
00:19:09
It's like really? Right. Next week I have to find another excuse. So that's a problem. And I always believe that if you give people the opportunity to do something in life and achieve goals, that they'll do it.
00:19:19
But that didn't work out too. I learned that my twenty s and really I was shocked because I just looked at it how I saw myself, right. And that's how everyone sees the world typically, and how they see themselves. And I always just assumed that everybody would jump on every opportunity. They bust their butt every day, but, yeah, no, doesn't work that way.
00:19:39
This is the talk we all needed today. That's it. Just set the record straight. Enough of the fluff. Just do the work.
00:19:45
Be disciplined through the motivation. Just get it done. Show up and do it. I love it. So if we think about getting the work done, obviously, when we're talking about lead generation, there's some data that's going to come in.
00:19:55
We're going to get some information here. And I think a lot of us understand the concept of collecting data, but once we get that data, what do we do with it? And you mentioned about monetizing your data, and I think this is something that a lot of us just can't quite wrap our heads around. Do you mind walking us through what it looks like when you, as a lead generation business, are collecting the data, what you do with it, and then how you can monetize? So it's funny, when I joined Wolverine Mastermind, that was the first time I was part of a group that was all making millions of dollars, some billions of dollars.
00:20:27
So we went to an event in Beverly Hills, I think it was 2019, and they asked me to speak, and I'm not a speaker. I don't like to talk in front of people. I can do it at my own events. We've had eight events this year. I can do my own stuff.
00:20:40
But when I go to other people's events and speak, I freak out. I need to do shots of tequila before I get up there. I'm not even joking and even talking. Any room that's not my room. I get so nervous.
00:20:52
So I literally have pictures of me doing shots of tequila. 10:00 a.m. Beverly Hills. And I didn't even know what to talk about. I had no idea because I'm like, what am I going to talk about?
00:21:02
Facebook ads, Instagram, whatever. So what I talked about was monetizing data, and I just assumed that everybody in that room already knew what I was going to say, but whatever. I figured it'd be a little different. The concept of generating leads doesn't matter if you're selling shoes or if you're providing plumbing services. It doesn't really matter.
00:21:25
Even if you're a restaurant, it doesn't matter when you collect data, collect leads, whatever it is, you have customer data. The idea of monetizing that data for other services that obviously synergistic to what you're doing, I say, if you're providing plumbing services, go start selling medical equipment doesn't make any sense, right? But if you're a plumber, maybe you can sell a roof, right? If you're a roofer, maybe you can sell AC right to another company. You sell off that lead, or you generate that lead for them.
00:21:55
But here's what's happened. After I spoke for about 20 minutes, I go off the stage. This guy Michael Perlla, who at the time owned I love kickboxing as a franchise, and he was a first person up. And I just saw him because he's like a big guy, and he's not really an approachable looking person. He looks like he's just going to kick your ass if you start to talk to him.
00:22:14
So I see this guy get up, and it just caught my eye. So I walk down the stage, and I'm walking, and I get to the back, and one of my guys is back in the back of the room, and I start talking. I see Michael Perla, like a bull, coming, know, keeps coming closer, closer, closer. Keeps getting even closer, closer. I'm like, did I say something about this guy's wife?
00:22:34
Like, what happened here? I know I said some jokes, but did I piss guy up? And he walks right to me, go, Phil. Michael Perlla, that was absolutely amazing. I generate 70,000 leads a month.
00:22:45
We need to talk, because I never thought about monetizing my leads outside of what I do. I'm like, really? And he actually lives about 30 minutes from me. I ended up going down and meeting him. But over the next two days, because I spoke day one in the morning, the next two days, over 20 people came up to me separately.
00:23:01
Hey, man, that was really great. I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you. I was blown away.
00:23:06
Fast forward to the first rise nation mastermind in San Diego, march of this year, 2023. At the David John event, I'm sitting at the bar, and this guy Brad comes up to me. I've known him for years, part of war room. He goes, goes, hey, man, I just want to let you know. Do you remember when you spoke at war room a few years back about monetizing data?
00:23:25
I'm like, yeah. He goes, I just want to let you know, I finally implemented that stuff last year. I'm like, okay, so it took you three years. That's good. And he goes, dude, I added seven figures to my revenue because of it.
00:23:37
I'm like, really? I'm like, that's amazing. I'm like, I know it's possible. And I'm just glad you did it. I'm like, so drinks are on you today.
00:23:43
I just want to make sure, right? So Brad's just like, dude, this is absolutely amazing. It really does work. There's another guy met at traffic and conversion summit, San Diego around that time. It's probably about 2020 now because it was after or the end of 19.
00:23:56
And what happened was, we're at the bar, best place to meet people, right? So I'm at the bar, and he's telling me about his lead generation business. Now he just generates leads and sells them. That's it. So I'm looking at, he's like, yeah, my profit is not that great.
00:24:10
And I'm doing this, and he's showing me everything. I'm like, hey, why don't you try to monetize these leads to this vertical or this industry? I forget exactly what he did and exactly what it was, and I'm like, you should try that. And he goes, wow, that's a really interesting idea. I'm like, well, you just take this and just monetize it five different ways.
00:24:26
But what you do is you ask the additional questions on your form, but it's all dynamic. So if they say yes or no, you don't want to keep asking too many questions, you lose the lead. So you want to make source the ones you monetize the most and get as much data as you can without too much, right? And that's stuff you have to test. So a year later, at the next traffic conversion summit, I never talked to this guy again.
00:24:45
Throughout the year, I see him, I'm like, hey, what's going on? How you doing? He goes, dude, I got to tell you, I took your advice. I'm like, what advice? What are you talking about?
00:24:52
Remember you told me about monetizing data? He's like, yeah. He goes, dude, I'm doing seven figures a month now. I'm like, get the fuck out of. I'm like, all right, so we're going out to dinner.
00:25:01
You're buying, right? And it actually did happen. We went out, but I was like, dude, that's great. Now, I actually kept in touch with a little bit more after that one, but that's just two. I mean, there's more people I've helped reach even seven figures a month or seven figures a year just using that concept.
00:25:18
And a lot of companies are actually scared of it because, like, oh, I don't want to seem like I'm scammy or whatever, but when you're just helping your clients or customers out to just find other services or products that they could use. Listen, you go to Best Buy, there's links out to other websites. Amazon links out to other websites. Walmart, they have other buyers in their network or links out like, everyone's doing it. It's nothing like before Amex bought a lending company, I forget, but before that, they were pushing their product.
00:25:49
So companies partner up all the time to provide services that have synergies. So that's the best advice I can get. When you generate that lead, try to get as much data as you can so you can do more stuff with it. I'll give you a current example that's happening right now, then I'll stop talking. But we're doing health insurance leads, so affordable care act, or Obamacare.
00:26:08
So we generate that lead. Right? What else? Now, in order to get free health insurance through Obamacare, you basically have to be broke. I mean, it is what it is, right?
00:26:17
You have to be broke. What do broke people do? They do a lot of stuff, right? They have bad credit, they got debt. They probably want more free stuff.
00:26:26
So I got three or four things I can put in front of that person and monetize that lead. So you were already profitable in generating that lead and selling it, but now I got three or four more things. So even if you're generating 1000 leads a day and you just make an extra two or $3 per lead, it changes the game. Right. So that's basically the most important thing that we do with everything.
00:26:48
Every funnel, every time we generate lead, that's always front of mind, because that's going to be the difference maker for us in our competitive advantage. Oh, that's incredible. I think, like, mine just exploded at least twice right there. I think a lot of us just don't see the connection. We either think it's frowned upon or we think privacy laws, like, it's not allowed.
00:27:08
But I can see so many examples now as I'm just kind of visually looking through my day to day online purchases and the things that I've opted in for and how they're all connected. You're absolutely right. There's a huge opportunity there. So for me, my big question, because as a marketer, I know for us, usually it starts with an avatar. We come up with who's the ideal customer, and then how do we leverage that information to learn more and to build them the proper funnels and channels and whatnot?
00:27:30
When we're talking lead generation, does it start with an avatar and customer information? Like, how do you start the process. So in a lead generation world for me, I want a buyer first. I don't go generate leads and then go find a buyer. I go give me a buyer and I'll generate the leads for them.
00:27:48
So the newest one that we did is health insurance, right? That's the newest industry that we got into. And what happened was they told us it's basically, I think it's less than 30,000 in revenue or income per year. And there's a couple of things, but as long as the age, they really just care about the age because someone's too old, they get Medicare, right, or Medicaid. So they can't be on Medicare or Medicaid, and they have to be a certain age and generate a certain amount of income.
00:28:14
And that's really so. But in the average. See, that sounds great on paper, right, when I say that to you. But in the marketing world, it doesn't work like that, right? Because it's really hard to do income these days.
00:28:26
And with all the laws, with Facebook getting sued and, and this is something, a little trick that we learned years ago with these platforms is a lot of people say, I want the best lead, and I'm going to be hyper focused or targeted for that lead. You know what you do? You pay a whole lot of money for that lead. Now, your CPM rate skyrockets. But what you don't realize is that these platforms are really good at putting your ad in front of the right people.
00:28:54
They are. So all we do is we just open up for the age. And because you know what it does, it drives down your CPM rate. So even if it's not as target, it's not as good. Your CPM rate could be like a third of the price.
00:29:08
And I'm okay with that because they'll still try to figure it out. And you're just going to generate the leads and filter them out. Because, again, I like to generate more leads because I'll have more ways to monetize them. So even if someone comes in and says, oh, I'm actually not the right lead, but, hey, I actually do have over $10,000 in debt, or, hey, sure, I would like a free wifi because it's that grant going on right now to give away free Wifi. And you can make money on that, or cell phones and wifi.
00:29:36
I don't even know what it is, to be honest with you. All I know is that we're monetizing the leads work. I don't know the exact product, but you could back it into high interest credit cards. Right? Because that's what broke people do.
00:29:47
There's so many things you could do. So just because a lead, isn't that right? Targeted person. I still have other stuff that they might be interested on the back end. Anyway.
00:29:56
So when I was doing business loans for years, I started doing business loan leads in 2014. I was the same way. Right? I want target, target targeted. Then I realized we did it by mistake.
00:30:07
And how many things you learn by mistake? We actually did something totally by mistake, and we ran an ad completely open, like, meaning no targeting at all, like, zero. And all of a sudden, that was our best performing ad. And we looked at like, I don't understand, how is this working? But then we realized because the CPM rate was so low, like, oh, wait, this actually works because the CPM rate is just so low, and Facebook just figured it out and who to put the ad in front of.
00:30:32
So it actually worked out in the so. And we just collected as much data as we could. And I'll tell you, I have a business called loan Broker network, where we educate people on how to do lead generation in the finance industry. I generate a million business loan leads, and I actually built a business that does multiple seven figures a year off of my business loan leads. So what I started learning in 2017, I said, I have all these leads of all these people that are interested in a loan, but most of them are startups that don't even have a business.
00:31:02
So guess what? They probably just want to make money. So I just went and just built a course on how to make money in the lead generation business, and I showed them how I generated their lead and how they could just duplicate what I do and do funding, just like we were doing, and it just blew up. I literally just made millions of dollars off data I already had. So I went from just monetizing data and selling it off.
00:31:23
Sure, I was doing that, but then I got to the point where I was like, let me just charge $1,000. Even if one out of 1000 leads give me $1,000, I'm ahead of the game, right? But it actually did even better than that. We closed 3% of our leads. 3%.
00:31:38
So she paid us $1,000. Crazy. That was 2017. Obviously, I ended up partying with Kevin Harrington in 2018. It totally changed the game.
00:31:48
But that's how that current business started. Just because I had data, and I was like, let me just build a course. Let me just build a service for them and just see who buys it. If no one does it, no big deal. But if they buy it, she's going to make a lot more money with it.
00:32:03
So that's just another way to monetize data. Money in the pocket right there. I love it. I think that's one of the things that a lot of us mistakenly do, is we see, like, an end, right? We think, okay, I've got the leader.
00:32:12
I sold them on the thing. It's done. I think that's what sets you and the ultra successful entrepreneurs apart. That way of thinking of, like, it's not the end, it's the beginning of the next step, as opposed to us just kind of ending the process there. So for those of us who maybe are starting in this kind of lead generation process, and we're thinking, okay, so before, when I wasn't thinking about monetizing made leads, success was, I got the leads, they were qualified, and I sold them.
00:32:38
How do we measure success now that we're monetizing our leads and potentially looking for different ways to monetize these same leads? I mean, for me, it's always just revenue. How we do it is just revenue. I assume most companies would be like, all right, are we making a profit? Yes or no?
00:32:53
But in terms of, yeah, I'm trying to figure out another way that you would measure success. Of course, your lead cost is important. Of course, your conversion rates. I mean, you can go through your entire funnel and say, all right, what's my CPM rate? What's my click through rate?
00:33:07
What's my conversion rate? What's my CPA? At the end of the day, if they're buying stuff from you or if you're selling off the lead. But I never cared about, see, I'm not actually not a very detailed person. I'm just very overview, high level.
00:33:23
Is it working? Great? Because I could sit here and spend a lot. This is one of the things you can drive your lead cost down only so much. This is always my thing.
00:33:31
And people came to you all the time. You could be doing better. You could be doing better. I'm like, where my lead costs? Because that's what they focus on.
00:33:37
Oh, I'm a better marketer. I'll drive down your lead cost. To drive down your lead cost. Maybe you can get it down from, what, eight to 750, maybe $7, maybe six. How far can you go down?
00:33:47
But I guarantee you, if I put all my effort into monetizing the leads, I just built out a business off of current leads. That's in my first year. Like I said, 1.7 million. My second year, 3.8 million. So $5 million I built off a business off age data.
00:34:03
You're never going to save me $5 million on my lead cost. So I don't really, really care too much as long as it's working. I'm not going to sit there and care about the color of your button. This is where people talk at these events. You got to worry about the color of your button and this and that and the other thing and blah, blah, blah.
00:34:21
You know what I do? I spam the crap out of my leads, man. I email them three times in an hour. When they generate the lead, I hit them at least two times a day, maybe three times a day. I don't care because there's so much noise out there and if they hate me for it, I'm actually good because that means I'm doing my.
00:34:39
It's good. But you need to make sure they don't forget about you because they probably filled out five different forms, right? And now Facebook and YouTube are hitting them with all this different stuff. That's exactly the same thing with five other competitors. Right?
00:34:51
So I just hit them hard, hit them harder and hard. And I worry more about monetizing the lead. That's where I put all my effort in. I'd rather spend the time there because you can literally find a seven figure business off of current data that you didn't even know existed, instead of worrying about, how do I get my lead cost down fifty cents. Right.
00:35:08
I think that's brilliant, because I think a lot of us get caught up in that. We have to know, especially when you're talking lead generation and data and analytics, right? There's so much information. I know. I look at it and I'm super overwhelmed, and I think we get stuck in that well.
00:35:21
I need to know all of the details, but I love how simple you keep it. Now, what's the revenue look like? Look at the big picture. Don't get stuck in the mud, because otherwise you're just not going to see the bigger opportunities and focus on the right thing. I actually love that.
00:35:34
I talked to somebody two weeks ago. This is just fresh in my mind. And he showed me his Facebook marketing and he's like, I'm getting people to messenger for $0.11. I'm like, that's cool. I had someone run Facebook ads for me and he was getting leads for $2.
00:35:47
Cheapest I've ever seen in my life. $2. I told one of my guys that runs everything, actually, Alex, he's behind me. There I go. Alex, $2 lead.
00:35:56
How do we not make any money? Guess what? We didn't make any money. I spend $20 lead on YouTube, and we make a profit. I was getting $2 lead off this one guy's ads on Facebook, and we actually took us.
00:36:06
We eventually made a profit. It took like three months, though, to make a profit. I'm like, this is horrible. So when a guy told me, he's like, I got $0.11, I'm like, yeah, but is it converting anything? I can generate leads cheap, but is it the right lead?
00:36:18
So you got to be careful about affordable leads, cheap leads, whatever. Yeah, that was just fresh in my mind, so I won't throw it out. I think that's a good piece of advice because we can get caught up, but it needs to be cheaper. I need to keep pushing it down instead of like, let's look at the big picture, and is it actually doing what I want it to do? That's what it comes down to, for sure.
00:36:37
So when we're thinking about ourselves, so say, for example, because some of the audience, some of the listeners are business owners and they have their own data, but they've never thought about monetizing it. And now they've listened to this episode, and they're like, oh, crap. I have this opportunity. I need to start monetizing my leads. If you were to give them either a tip or a piece of advice when they're starting out, what would that be?
00:36:57
The easiest way to start is go to an affiliate network like CJ.com, commission junction, a share sale, a max bounty, any one of them are fine. And go see what companies are out there that you may be able to take your leads and push it to them. That's the easiest, simplest way because they're just a whole list of companies. So do a search for a different business that synergies to yours, or do you have a bunch of consumers? What's the common denominator with all of your leads?
00:37:24
I do a lot of the b to b space. So the common denominator for me is just businesses, right? So every business needs pretty much everything that a business could use. So that's easy. But if you had homeowners, right, and you're in the construction world, okay, that's a very specific person, which is fine, because homeowners need a lot of stuff, too.
00:37:44
If you have maybe new moms and you're selling products to babies, that's another world. But I'll give you an example. People that sell solar like to get aged mortgage leads because they've got a mortgage and now they probably got a house because it's aged. And now maybe they just moved in, so now they need solar. Just as an example.
00:38:05
There's a lot of those examples where you buy a leads from different industries. So for example, credit repair people only really want to fix their credit if they want to buy something. So buy a car, buy a house, stuff like that. Now I want to fix my credit. So those leads are good as well.
00:38:21
It's actually pretty difficult to run a credit repair ad and actually make a profit because the average person doesn't actually want to fix their credit just because it's a Tuesday, right. They want to fix their credit because now they need to. Student loan consolidation industry that you're just dealing with students, but that's dead now because they just give away. No one has to pay their student loans anymore. Great world that we live in, but all the broke people have to pay for anything.
00:38:45
But listen, each company just has to figure out. But an affiliate network is a great place to start because you'll actually kind of maybe open your eyes like, oh, wow, this company is on here. That would make sense. And maybe I could just drive traffic to them and send out an email. Or if you're an in house person, like, I had a windows estimate when I first moved to this house a long time ago and that guy worked, I think, for Home Depot or Lowe's, I forget.
00:39:11
But he started asking me other questions and I knew what he was like, hey, you know, I see you could use this or I see you could use that. And that's smart, right? As a salesperson walking in and as the company as a whole. Yeah. Let's see what else we can do for them.
00:39:24
Whether they do it internally or just outsource it to somebody else and make a percentage on the sale. Right. So there's a lot of ways to do it, but it also takes time and effort and you have to think about and put the effort in. And the average business owner is obviously never going to put the work in and figure it out. Of course, that's what I've learned.
00:39:42
But the people that do, and they just put that extra time. Don't watch Netflix tonight when you go home and actually start thinking about this. And you could add decent amount of money to your revenue, to your bottom line because it's just free money at that point. Yeah, you just got to do the work, right? That's the catchphrase or the tagline of this episode.
00:39:59
If you put the work in, you'll see success. You'll figure it out. Yeah, that's it. I can guarantee you there's a bunch of listeners who feel like they've just heard you at a talk and they're like, I got to meet Phil at the bar. I got to talk to Phil.
00:40:12
I need to work with Phil. Where can they find you online at the bar?
00:40:19
I just tell everyone to go to Philipsmith.com. I'm sure you posted somewhere, but it's written out up there. It's one l f, as in frank Philipsmith.com. That's it. And on there, there's a bunch of stuff me and what Kevin and I are doing.
00:40:32
And that's very, very simple. But at the end of the know, what I've learned is that take any successful business owner, they usually concentrate on what they're good at, right. If you're a chef and you own a restaurant, you're not going to go become a marketer, right? So you need somebody. Go get somebody to focus on it.
00:40:52
Find someone that will work out on a back end deal if it makes sense for you, or hire a salesperson to go out and do something, whatever it is, marketing or sales. But there's so many people out there. You can hire Vas to do stuff out of the Philippines who are really good for four or $5 an hour. It's so affordable to find people to do the legwork for you, for anything, that there's just no excuse anymore. 20 years ago, sure, it was a little different.
00:41:18
Everything had to be done in person, and things were different. But today, on how readily accessible it is to find people to do the legwork for you and how easy it is for everyone or acceptable to do everything remotely now there's just no reason not to do stuff. But this one little idea, it's not going to work for everybody, of course, but for the companies that do have that data, that larger customer base, or just generating those leads, there's so much more that you could be doing with them that you just don't realize. Even if you just had someone on the phone, there's a whole business model that I know someone did. They just literally just did outbound dialing or inbound, whatever it was.
00:41:56
They just had people on the phone that just asked all these questions and they just transferred out the data, right? Or did a live transfer. So they took that phone call and it connected somebody. They sold off the form. That's literally just a business in itself, you know what I mean?
00:42:09
Someone's out there just saying I want to start a new business. In this lead stuff, how do I get started? I mean, there's ten different ways I can give you like that on just how to make money in this industry. That's really easy to get started, really easy because data and leads are the easiest part. And what's even easier is actually the buyers.
00:42:27
Because here's the thing, when it comes to lead buyers, company that's looking for data and look at any business, what do you want? Oh yeah, if you give me leads, I'll take them. The lead buyers are the easier, so much easier to get because they need it. It's not like you're selling insurance and you sell life insurance once or you buy auto insurance once or you get one mortgage. Lead buyers, even us, we want leads every single day.
00:42:50
Every single day. We can't stop generating leads or else you go out of business. So it's a great business to be in because lead buyers just never stop buying. And if they do, they're probably going to go out of business. So it's just so easy.
00:43:02
That's why I said before, I just go out and find lead buyers for new stuff to do because I have someone ready to go. I love it. I think it's such good advice. I think there's so much opportunity out there and a lot of us just haven't even touched the surface of potential there. So thank you so much, Phil.
00:43:19
I learned a ton today. I feel like I'm really excited to sit down and re listen to this episode and jot down all of my notes and start digging into what I can do with my own leads and how I can start monetizing them along with generating more leads. Thank you so much for today. I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem.
00:43:36
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00:43:51
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