Local Lead Generation Plan- People who do Local Lead Gen?

(Im hoping this is the correct section to post this in.) Had some questions for people who do Local lead generation. I have done research before posting this, Ive read many articles about it, from ShoeMoney's guide, to stuff here on BHW. But still have some questions, hoping someone can help. Theres so many different approaches people seem to do with local lead gen.

So basically I was wanting to give local lead gen a try, with something like Kitchen/bathroom remodeling in my local city/area, lets say Napa, CA. I would create a website for kitchen/bathroom remodeling and target my local area, with things like yelp, Google Plus businesses, local Napa, ca keywords, setup an address and google phone number, etc... So I would rank at the top for any local remodeling searches -I can totally figure that out, set up the site, rank it, and use some blackhat packages here on BHW if needed. Then call up businesses and show them that I rank #1 for all their keywords and will sell leads from my site, or sell the calls, etc...

BUT.... here's what I dont get. Doing this, would I be setting up a site pretending to be an actual local business like "Joey's Remodeling of Napa", using a virtual address, and making people think thats the business? OR would I be making a site that straight up tells people I simply locate them a remodeling business, finding them quotes, and DO NOT do it myself?


Thats what I dont get, what am I portraying myself as? Cause If I pretend to be a fake business like Joeys Remodeling, and forward my leads to another business, wouldnt the customer get turned off and leave, once they discover they are now dealing with some other random business that I forwarded them to? Instead of Joey's Remodeling of Napa. ....I mean if I called up Dominos to order a pizza, and they forward me to Round Table (as a customer lead), I would be angry. So I dont get how that works.


Thanks

Love, love, love this topic. Admittedly I haven't been super active in local lead gen for about a year (focusing on client work), but I think I am still pretty tuned in.

First, and (shameless plug), I wrote a pretty good post on it, but I think you prob have a lot of this stuff nailed down already: http://www.leanmarketing.ca/my-secret-formula-to-local-lead-generation/

I have seen and done it both ways, successfully. I think like you say, it depends on the type of business. Remodeling/contractors, there is a big trust factor. If you deceive them, and they catch wind, they are gone. Their is enough deception in the industry as there is, and people are easily spooked. If I were in that space, I would be honest. Well sort of. I would say that I have been in the industry 20+ years, and have curated a collection of contractors I trust to be the best in the space. Create a faux association maybe? Have the contractors put your badge on their sites? Create a REAL brand for yourself. Later, expand into other cities.

The hardest part IMO is dealing with the contractors. Defining the payment terms...ie what is a lead and getting them to pay. There is a lot of logistics there, and from I've seen, that is where most people fail. Sometimes it isn't even their fault, but rather the people on the phone, on your end of the contractors. They just close like shit. My best advice to you would be to sort out this stuff first, not last. Many have said to me, well once the leads are pouring in, who wouldn't want to buy them? Sadly, that is rarely the case. You actually have to do some hustling, and some just aren't into that.

It's not really as passive as people think, but if you're committed to making it work, you can be like a guy I know who sails around the Bahamas, while his sites pump out legal leads all day long.

Good luck!

Good insightful topic.

Have tried sellings the leads yet ? have you talked to any prospects yet ?

I have asked myself and my team the same question! A challenging one.
Home owners are skeptical to begin with about who they hire for anything these days, and if they have no one to ask they will rely on the reviews, but not national reviews, they will only rely on LOCAL reviews.
I also am having a hard time figuring out how to clearly define the grey area that we create when we become the middle man in all this.

Branded = Your creation from top to bottom. This can be just one location or scaled out - BUT - Responsibility for both parties. You brand your online entity to a local business that looks real, and you find the contractors who are decent enough to work with locally to WORK IN PARTNERSHIP WITH "ONLINE ENTITY" - This should work for the majority of the prospects, and they will say "ok, I see." and as long as the contractor or contractor's agents can close sales, and then FOLLOW THROUGH you won't be thrown under the bus or bashed online.

You can do what Home Advisor does and call the clients back to receive follow up reviews, or just get the reviews some other way. If the contractor is not closing the leads, they may tend to blaim you or the quality of the leads themselves. So if it were me, I would emulate Home Advisor a little with helping the contractors to dig in and find the problems with their sales funnel, sales process, or sales people (additional rates may apply, lol) - and it will help to actually have extensive knowledge in the niche or industry.

This would seem very promising if it takes off. Beware that Directories like BBB require you to pay dues PER LOCATION, and that BBB heavily influences buyer decisions, it sucks, it's like extortion! If you receive a call from the BBB then you will need to keep an eye out because the listing will be created by them, and bad reviews can be posted without your knowledge or ability to dispute them. Then your sad ass will have to pay them to do anything about it, unless you can rip the site, which I have heard rumors of.




To be honest, it does work. Before I started into IM and Local SEO I was actually a customer of a marketing company that did the following:

• They Offered up a guarantee that I would receive leads at an estimated volume based on the KW research for that market
• They Showed me the leads reports from a website of the same category in another state, it was impressive, hundreds of leads
• And they Then asked for $1000 up front (nothing built yet) with the promise of full refund if not ranked and receiving leads within the 90 days as promised
• The deal was that they would build a website in the target city, Brand it to appear as if it were a local company, and I would pay $1000 per month to have exclusive access to both email and phone leads
  
• I took a plunge and paid them... I saw what they could do (as they provided me with a reference of another guy in another state benefiting from their strategy)
  
• 3 months went by and I began to question their abilities (this was December of 2015) The site looked like shit, and they were advertising guarantees that we could not fulfill
• At month 4 I got onto their asses, after all it was enough time and I paid already
• At the same time I was marketing my own website that was 40 miles away from the one they were working on, and having absolutely no SEO or marketing experience I jumped in and watch some YouTube videos and began to play around with my own SEO, as you know if there are no leads for a contractor there may not be food on the table, so it was do or die.
  
• Within 30 days I took my website from page 3 to Position #2 on page #1, WITHOUT ANY REVIEWS on ANY Citations or listings, purely On page and Social Signals, and just the typical Web 2.0s that any inexperienced contractor would have. Boom, it worked.
• This was at month 5 so I rubbed it in their faces and they came up with excuses, I mean the update to Google, I will give them that, and their domain was new so I'm sure they had to hump it real hard out there. I know this now, I did not know this back then.
• At month 6 we finally saw results from these guys, they set up tracking number and email forwarders and the leads began to pour in. For them, it was working like a charm. For us, it was a qualification nightmare, and many of the leads were too far outside of our service radius. We began to get burned out.
  
• I strategized with them several times on how to take care of the excessive leads bleed-off. We thought about selling the leads ourselves to competitors in those areas, that never panned out, contractor to contractor is kind of cut throat and usually not trusted. We then said ok, split up the emails by zip codes, and we took our handful of zip codes and those were the leads we got, then negotiated a lower price per month.
• They were selling leads to multiple companies without our knowledge or consent, we verified this through the sales qualification process with the clients. Bad juju.
• Their entire website covered a major metropolitan area and the surrounding suburbs all showed organic ranking, one website NOT even a silo!
• I was blown away, and I still am to this day and that is why I chose to emulate this model, and sticking with the same industry as I am also an expert in. Now days I do NOT want to build the projects, I just want to be the authority for them and sell the lead service.
• This website now will brand the website with logos of the current company that it is under contract with, thus helping to alleviate the distrust of the consumer.

Here is where I want to take my Local Lead Gen Business Model