Why Most Marketing Experts Are Dead Wrong About Lead Generation

Jennie Wright [00:00:02]:

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the acquire podcast. I’m your host, Jenny Wright. And before we dive in, I’m going to tell you that I’m, I’m really going to share today some of the myths and also some of the lies that I’ve been told, that you’ve been told, that people are still telling when it comes to list building, lead generation funnels, all that stuff. And as you know, Acquire is all about list building, lead generation funnels, and sales with a really direct focus on attracting your ideal client. And what I have found is this question keeps coming up in my head. It’s actually something I was thinking about for the past couple of days. And today, the day that I’m actually recording this is Thanksgiving in Canada.

 

Jennie Wright [00:00:46]:

So happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends. But I wanted to ask you, have you ever been working so hard to grow your email list and it still feels like you’re spinning your wheels? Because that was the feeling that I was thinking about over the past couple of days. I actually had a conversation with, I want to say like, what should I say? Almost like a, what’s the right word? Somebody who’s completely outside of this online world. So, I was explaining lead gen to a woman that, has like a, like a brick and mortar, not really like a business, but like more like a craft business on the side and explaining what lead gen was and list building and so on and so forth. So not a business that would necessarily benefit from having a lead magnet and so on, but a business like a business that would still benefit from list building and lead gen. And so she told me that she has been using Etsy and all these kinds of things, and it really hasn’t been working for. And I was racking my brain, trying to figure out some ideas for her. And so that is the inspiration behind today’s episode.

 

Jennie Wright [00:01:53]:

And so I really want to get into this and ask you. Couple of questions that have been like just niggling around in my brain, and then also answer some questions and really break this down. So if you’ve ever been told that building your list is about cranking out Facebook ads and creating complex funnels and automations, then this is the one to listen to. And maybe you’ve heard that lead generation is all about a numbers game and perhaps you have felt like I did. And like a lot of other people do, which is really disillusioned. And if you have ever felt like that, because I have, then you are not alone. And that’s, again, this is why I wanted to talk about this today. I want to peel back the layers.

 

Jennie Wright [00:02:37]:

I really want to call out some people’s views on lead generation, call it the myths, and really start by talking about what a lot of the marketing quote unquote gurus have been selling us for years and exactly what I fell for 12 years ago. It’ll be 13 years in about, I don’t know, 5 months or so. And this is what I fell for too. So I really want to break this down and I’m going to look at the conventional wisdom, on how you can grow your email list and what might be leading you down the wrong path. Okay. And also more importantly, in my, in my eyes, what you can do to finally see some really great and meaningful growth. Okay. And this, what I’m going to talk about covers all, like all ranges.

 

Jennie Wright [00:03:21]:

If you’re brand spanking new, or if you’ve been doing this for a couple of years, or if you are now leveraging different things to actually grow exponentially. And so the core thing that I want to talk about the first thing, this first, like this first part that I really want to get into is the lead generation lies and everything that we’ve been sold. And I swear that we go through these seasons where we see this happen over and over. It is rinse and repeat, even though it is obvious that it isn’t right. And I will tell you I fell for this. I absolutely did. It is specifically geared towards fooling new people into the online space. Now, the first one is myth number 1, I’m going to call it myth number 1, the bigger the list, the better.

 

Jennie Wright [00:04:08]:

Okay? I was told in my 1st year of business that I needed to get my list from 0 to 5000, that 5,000 people on my email list was this magic mythical number that was going to have me go from nothing to 6 figures. If I had 5 ks in my list, I was going to make 6 figures. Okay. And a lot of the summits that I was producing and also supporting to produce back in those days, there was this rule. It was this absolute rule. It was written into summit contracts. 21 speakers over 21 days with a 5,000 person list minimum, 2 solo emails, and 2 social media posts. Like, this was like the rule.

 

Jennie Wright [00:04:50]:

Okay? Which meant that if you were brand new, if you were just starting a business, you couldn’t get on summits. And here’s the part that felt really icky. We were learning how to do summits. I was in a coaching course, we were learning how to do summits, none of us had lists, okay, or if we did, it was like 12, like 12 people. And the people that were running this said, you’re going to impose a list minimum on your speakers because that’s how you’re going to grow your list. And you know what? I get the math of it, but also the math doesn’t math. And I’ll tell you why. And so they said, you might not have a list, but your speakers have to have a list.

 

Jennie Wright [00:05:27]:

And a lot of us were like, woah. Okay. But when I’m asking these speakers to be a speaker on my summit and they have to have a 5,000 person list minimum, And I have nobody. How, how do I like balance that out? It just doesn’t feel right. And we were just told to be in the step that we were in and, you know, don’t, you know, don’t question that. And so a lot of people didn’t question it and I continued to question it. And so this is actually where my list injection method actually was born from was this particular thing. Cause it drove me nuts.

 

Jennie Wright [00:06:01]:

And so I’ll give you an example. I decided to run my own summit. I was following the coaching and I ended up with 356 people. And I tell this story a lot. You may have heard it before. So I had 356 people register for my summit, which is not a great result, quite honestly. Okay. First of all, it was not a niche in summit.

 

Jennie Wright [00:06:20]:

I had no idea what I was doing. I had no end product in mind. We were just told again, follow the steps and all of this felt backwards to me. And when I explained it to my partner, cause I was actually really excited about it. When I explained it to him, he was like, this doesn’t make any sense. This is completely backwards. And he got me thinking, and this is where all this comes from. And so with my 356 people that I got from that summit, I ended up figuring out that I wanted to be a virtual assistant.

 

Jennie Wright [00:06:48]:

I felt like that was a really good sort of like foray into things. I didn’t think I deserved to be a coach right away. Cause I didn’t feel like I had learned all the ins and outs of the online world. Now I had been in the management side when I worked in different jobs previously in marketing, but I didn’t feel like in the online space. I knew all what I was doing. And so with 356 people, I was able to create a 6 figure income. Now it took me more than a year and I didn’t really grow my list much more than that because I was so focused on being a VA and all these different kinds of things. But what I’m trying to get to is the bigger the list, the better is all wrong.

 

Jennie Wright [00:07:27]:

You don’t need to have list minimums. You don’t need to have a huge list. You need an engaged list. Your real focus should be on creating a highly engaged list of interested people, of connections, of community, and forget all about these vanity metrics. Cause I will tell you that the people who have massive lists, some of them have either done a boatload of Facebook ads or ads to get them. They’re not a 100% dialed in some of those lists are like, or even, you know, if they’ve tagged them or whatnot, or if they’ve created sub categories within their lists, they’re not that engaged. Okay. So myth number 1, the bigger the list, the better.

 

Jennie Wright [00:08:05]:

It’s a total load of BS. And I just want to like, I just want to give you the opportunity to breathe for a second on that because it takes, it takes a bit of permission to realize that you just don’t need it. Okay. And so myth number 2 is you need some glorious fancy funnel, and this is not me shooting myself in the foot because I build glorious fancy funnels. They’re beautiful, and they convert. But what I’m but what I want you to feel is that you don’t have to have a 12 step funnel with all of the bells and whistles. And look, I love a good funnel because I make high converting funnels, but there’s a difference between a fancy funnel and a high converting funnel. And so if you’re just relying solely on funnel automations and, not building those authentic relationships that I’m gonna harp about today, then your list building is doomed.

 

Jennie Wright [00:08:56]:

Okay? The fancy funnel is not the, if you build it, they will come solution because you could have a gorgeous funnel and then nobody ever sees it. And so even though you think this might be the thing and a lot of people kind of, they get stuck. Right. So I didn’t have a website for this business for gosh, a really long time, an obscenely long time. And, and I was a little bit embarrassed, but I still managed a really successful business, but a lot of people don’t move forward because they’re stuck in these things. They’re stuck with building the fancy funnel. They’re stuck with the perfection. They’re stuck with building everything out.

 

Jennie Wright [00:09:37]:

They’re stuck with, I’ve got to build my social, then I build my list, then I make a sale. And you can stay in that forever if you allow yourself. Right? And so even though I’m a bit of a perfectionist in some ways, I believe that, you know, messy over perfect, get it done, get something out there and start creating those relationships and building sort of like a brand for yourself and then selling. And so your audience isn’t just data points. Your audience is emails. Your audience is people. They’re people that need to be nurtured and relationships need to be developed. And so fancy funnels don’t do that, but funnels that convert really, really well and speak to your ideal client and allow you to have a two way conversation are much more important.

 

Jennie Wright [00:10:25]:

And if you’re struggling with finding where that audience is and being able to communicate with them, this is where I would tell you to create a bundle product and get on bundles. And I’ve talked about this actually the previous solo episode. So not the one just before this, but the one before that talks about that. And so bundles are really great ways for people with small lists to actually grow and be able to, be able to get in front of their ideal client, even when their lists are super, super small. And so, you know, I really think that people need to understand that. It’s hard to get, it’s hard sometimes to get into everything. It’s hard to, it’s hard to build your list. It’s hard to have people tell you, you can’t be on something, because you just don’t have a list size.

 

Jennie Wright [00:11:14]:

So all that to say that I love when people can sort of overcome these things and these points that I’m telling you are to help you overcome that. And just as a plug, if you do want to be a contributor on a bundle and you have a small list, but you want to be, you know, you want to get some exposure. I’m running a consecutive bundle. It can like a concurrently happening bundle. You can actually apply to be a contributor. If you go to many bundles.comforward/beacontributor, you can actually apply to be a contributor for a bundle. That’s not going to tell you there’s a list minimum. Now you do need to promote and you do need to do the things.

 

Jennie Wright [00:11:49]:

You don’t have to have a super fancy funnel, but you do have to have put the thought into it to create something that people want and like. Okay. So function over it being too fancy. Now, myth number 3, and I really want to get through this one because, I mean, I use ads, but I will tell you it is not the end all be all, and this myth is that ads are the fastest way to grow your list, and you might be chuckling, I hear people chuckling in my head, possibly because it’s me chuckling, because I don’t agree with that totally. We see all these fluctuations all the time with the cost of ads. It doesn’t matter what platform you’re running them on, the cost per lead has been all over the place. 2 years ago, I was running summits with some Facebook ads for a client and it was costing us between $15.35 as a cost per lead. That’s insane.

 

Jennie Wright [00:12:44]:

Okay. And now right this moment, running ads to a summit, and again, these are all different niches, so the prices are different, but we’re looking at something around $5. And so right now, Facebook ads are working towards summits in particular niches, but that 2 years ago they weren’t. And also the time of year all matters. Right? You don’t run Facebook ads to a summit during American Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s. You’re, you’re just going to be like, basically just giving money to Mark Zuckerberg and nothing coming back to your business. As far as I’m concerned, this is my opinion. Okay.

 

Jennie Wright [00:13:22]:

So I get to say my opinion on this podcast. And so ads are incredibly useful and they should be used. And I have an amazing ads person on my team that I just adore that does a great job. And they’re incredibly useful, but they need to be used strategically. You need to be targeting, you need to be creating value upfront. If not, you are just creating a money pit. And I’m looking at how you can create sustainable long term growth through a meaningful interaction, a meaningful ad campaign, and not just throwing money at the problem. Organic is always gonna cost you less money.

 

Jennie Wright [00:13:57]:

Okay? That’s why summits work. That’s why bundles work. It’s through organic promotion with a already connected, engaged list. And that’s where it’s at. It’ll always be like that. Okay? Because again, the fluctuations in the algorithms, the fluctuation in prices, you know, not everybody can afford a $35 lead. Some people can only afford a $2 lead if that. Right? And so those fluctuations are really hard for a lot of people to balance out, but because of the high value in organic lead gen, that’s always where it’s gonna be, always.

 

Jennie Wright [00:14:33]:

Okay? Let’s actually, shift gears a little bit and talk about what’s working in today’s lead gen environment. And so we’ve busted a couple of myths, so I’ve already harped a bit. I’m going to harp a little bit more, but with a little bit of a direction that I think you’re going to like. And so we’ve called it all the lies. Let’s focus on the truth. Let’s focus on the forward thinking side of things and tried and true. All right. Now you might be thinking, I don’t want to do webinars.

 

Jennie Wright [00:14:59]:

I don’t want to do summits. I don’t want to do bundles. I don’t want to do any of this stuff. And I will tell you that in one way, shape or form, these marketing and lead gen techniques have been working for decades and they changed slightly based on where we are, what’s going on and so on, but these are tried and true. And so I’m going to say, like, suck it up a little bit because these are what work and you can make it your own. You can take the summit model or the bundle model or the webinar bundle, and you can make it your own thing. You can mold it and make it into a bespoke feel, like feeling event. It doesn’t have to look cookie cutter, but you still need to follow some of these rules.

 

Jennie Wright [00:15:45]:

And that is looking at your lead magnets, Okay. As one thing. So lead magnets are tried and true. They will always work. They always have. They work on me still, and I’ve been doing this for over a decade, but what’s essential is that your lead magnet needs to solve a real pressing problem for your audience. It can’t just be something small. It has to feel like something that’s keeping them up at night and is a struggle.

 

Jennie Wright [00:16:12]:

So I’m working on a webinar right now for a client, and we went through the whole discovery process of what should that be about? This person happens to be in the family law space. And so we’re talking about divorce and we’re coming up at the time of recording this. Today is Canadian Thanksgiving, but American Thanksgiving is coming up in a month or so. And statistically, the holidays are the times where a lot of people just kind of like buckle down and try and get through, even though they don’t feel happy in their, in their environment, they don’t feel happy with their partner, and divorce is something that sometimes people think of, right, Or think of. And so we’re doing a webinar to talk about how to think about divorce or how to think about separating from your partner, if that’s, what’s on your mind and that’s what you want without having to, without having to sort of like grin and bear it through the holidays. Okay? And that’s a timely topic. And so, and it solves a really big pressing problem, because a lot of people are starting to think, the people who are in these, you know, relationships or marriages where they’re not happy are starting to think, how the heck am I going to get through the holidays? And, you know, a long time ago, I was there, I had those same feelings, and I was like, how the heck am I going to get through this, great and bare it. So I’m building out the webinar for the client for a pressing problem that I know a lot of people have.

 

Jennie Wright [00:17:31]:

And so make sure that your lead magnet, webinar, PDF download, whatever, follows that metric, follows that style. Okay? And make sure you nail down exactly what your audience wants and then deliver to them. Now let’s, let’s talk about the power of personal connections alongside when we’re doing this lead gen, we have our lead magnets and so on, because relationship building is everything. Not just building a list, not just accumulating email addresses, not that vanity number that I talked about a bit earlier, but you’re building a community. And whether or not you have that community in circle or Facebook or just in your email list alone, it’s still a community. And how you engage with that community through either being a really personalized, authentic person, creating those interactions, and and and why you should be doing this. If you’re doing that, you’re going to actually create higher conversion. Right? So if you’re engaging your audience, you’re being authentic.

 

Jennie Wright [00:18:30]:

I do this in several ways. My clients do it in several ways. One of my clients is like totally anti Facebook at this point, and so they’re building a community in circle. I have a Facebook group, but isn’t really, you know, it’s just not something that I find is really working at the moment for me. And so I’m building a community on, GoHighLevel or GHL in their community area. So I’m building something there. And all this to say that when you’re doing anything, you really do need to have those powerful connections and also look at how you’re networking. Okay? So lead gen isn’t just about the numbers on your list and the emails that I was talking about.

 

Jennie Wright [00:19:08]:

It is also about the people that you can connect with that have your ideal client on their list, and it can’t be transactional. So if you wanna partner up with somebody and do a summit, or if you wanna partner up with somebody and do a webinar or a bundle, those people are not a money ticket. Like they’re not, they’re not your meal ticket to getting into their list. It’s about building those really real, you know, those real sort of relationships and having the opportunity to be able to present to that person’s audience and then having those people reciprocally, you know, support you, you support them. Those relationships, and by the way, they can last for decades, they can last a really long time, are phenomenal. In the most lean times of my business, the relationships I had with other online entrepreneurs are what kept me afloat every single time. Every single time that I’ve been somewhere where I’ve, you know, transitioned. So going from a VA to an OBM, to a coach, to a strategist, each one of those took a moment for the business to adjust, right? And every time there was a bit of a lull because I just didn’t know how to do it without there being a lull.

 

Jennie Wright [00:20:24]:

And my entrepreneurial friends were the people I could lean on and say, Hey, do you know anybody who needs this? And they helped me launch these things. So when I went from being a VA, which, you know, I was only, there’s a certain amount of dollars per hour you can make as a VA, but there’s a certain amount you can make as an OBM, which is why I was transitioning. Getting to an OBM client was different. And I was asking my online entrepreneurial friends who they knew that could use an OBM. And that was my first client. When I was moving into coaching, it was the same thing. And then as a strategist and as somebody who last year was starting to work on, being a fractional CMO, and also as fractional seat, like a, an operations officer as well. Those people that came my way that became those clients and still do some of them came from referrals.

 

Jennie Wright [00:21:12]:

So leveraging, those communities, leveraging your powerful connections with people is just like paramount. And then I want to talk about the last thing pretty much here in this segment, which all has to do with organic traffic and collaborations. You probably already know some of this stuff. And if you need somebody to give you the little kick in the butt, it’s gonna be me. And not everything has to be paid ads as we’ve talked about. You do need to have those, those opportunities for organic. I will tell you that the best methods are tried and true podcast guesting. Social media DM strategies are not that bad.

 

Jennie Wright [00:21:49]:

If you can do it properly and not sound like a goof, collaborations. Those are my favorite. I love a good collab at least once a month. I’m trying to get into somebody else’s Facebook group and collaborate with them. You should be trying to do that too. Podcast guesting, like I mentioned, is fab. If I could, I mean, I really recommend if you can be a guest on other people’s podcasts several times a month. It takes time to build that up by the way.

 

Jennie Wright [00:22:12]:

And that’s actually, what’s going to, I want to talk about next. Cause it is a long game and that’s what it, that’s what we’re going to transition to. But everything that we’re talking about is, is directly positioned to give you long term success. Okay. And that’s, that’s what people struggle with. The long term game is what pays off in this play. Okay. People, and I think you might know this, but people who are in this online space, a lot of people crash and burn or fizzle out or go back to an like a real JOB because they fall off the wagon with continuously and consistently creating these things that we’re talking about.

 

Jennie Wright [00:22:54]:

They expect instant results, and and when they don’t get to see those instant results, they assume it’s not working and they stop doing it. Okay. It was, it was last year. Actually, no, it was 2 years ago. I was hired by a client and, you know, as a, as a human being who is growing and evolving, I missed a couple of red flags bringing this client on board. And I really thought they could get the marketing side of things, the long game of these things, and they didn’t. And so when they didn’t see instant results with webinars, they questioned everything I was doing. They questioned what the webinars I was, suggesting the titles, the tags, the client, they were such that they were just really questioning everything.

 

Jennie Wright [00:23:39]:

But then it went beyond the webinar. They were questioning me as a marketer and they were questioning my overall strategies, which are very sound and work, and they were working for that person, right? We were getting conversions, like really high conversion rates onto the webinar, yet we weren’t getting any sales. But my job wasn’t sales, my job was to get people to the webinar. This person had a whole sales team that could sell their product, and that’s not my job, it wasn’t. But the client was like, none of these things are converting, therefore it’s the leads that are coming in, therefore therefore it’s your fault, therefore webinars suck. Right? And they didn’t want to do webinars anymore. That’s fine. That’s their choice.

 

Jennie Wright [00:24:19]:

But that is very, very narrow minded thinking, very short term thinking when what we need to be looking at is long term thinking. We need to look at the long game of these things. We need to look at sustainable lead generation. We need to look at, consistent high quality content being generated. With nurturing in mind with relationship building in mind, with building trust, and building that real sort of currency of being able to connect with people on a deeper level in marketing. And the difference between short term tactics and long term tactics, right, so the short term flashy stuff and the long term ones that you might think are a little bit, like, more boring, even though they’re not, is loyal, paying customers, very engaged leads, and an audience that will follow you anywhere. And that is key. That is so monumental.

 

Jennie Wright [00:25:12]:

And when you get there, then you can start experimenting. It is phenomenal to feel like you’ve got this beautiful foundation of people around you that when you try something, you know, and and you’re providing them with great content and then you you wanna try something a little bit different and a little bit new, those people really support you. That’s a great community behind you. That’s a great, following behind you. And once you’re there, it makes so much sense to reward those people with additional fun things or great products or, you know, incentivization. Okay? And so let’s bring all this home. Let’s bring this all together. So if you’re frustrated by your lead gen efforts, I hear you.

 

Jennie Wright [00:25:50]:

I want to, you know, really encourage you to do a lot of things that we that I talked about today. And if you’re doing well with lead generation, I just want to applaud you because it takes so much effort, and I know it. I I totally get it. If if you’re able to shift the focus away from the old myths and embrace what really works time and time again, you’re gonna build those meaningful relationships. You’re gonna build that valuable, that sort of that valuable currency. You’re going to create content that is phenomenal and just engages people. And by playing the long game, you’re going to see long term results. You’re not going to see the ups and downs and the swings.

 

Jennie Wright [00:26:29]:

You’re gonna start to see, like, this really nice arc of growth because this, like the up and down, up and down, up and down is when you lead gen and stop or try something and stop or this didn’t work and stop. And every time you do that, you’re causing a problem. Right? So we really wanna have that that longer engaged piece. And so I hope that you found this useful. I hope that you are on board with a strategy of long term lead generation and you’ve, you’ve kind of taken a little bit of an inside look, not only at what you’re doing, but maybe at what other people are doing and, and seeing how you can make improvements. Okay. And I’d love for you to let me know how that goes. Talk about it with your friends, share about it on social, all those great things.

 

Jennie Wright [00:27:14]:

And if you do want to go deeper, head on over to jenny wright.com. You can always book a strategy call with me or somebody on my team to talk about mapping out your lead gen, plan. And that works perfectly for you and your business and what you’ve got going on. And then don’t forget to subscribe to the Acquire podcast because I don’t want you to miss an episode. And so thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. And if there’s anything that you want to hear on the podcast, we love hearing from you, so go ahead and let us know what you think and what you’d like to hear. Thanks so much, everybody.

 

Jennie Wright [00:27:45]:

Take care. We’ll talk to you all soon.