Links Mentioned & Helpful Resources from Episode

• Kevin Dieny’s LinkedIn
• Google Paid Search Ads – How it works page
• Facebook for Business Ads – How to create a facebook ad
• Quora Question “Why should you use lead generation ads?”
• DigitalMarketer’s ‘How to [Lead Gen]’ Article

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Kevin Dieny: Hello and welcome to the Close the Loop podcast. I’m your host, Kevin Dieny, and today we are gonna be jumping in and talking about advertisements. In fact, on this episode, it’s a little different. We’re gonna do, what’s called a let’s create. And during the length of this episode, we are gonna create an advertisement that generates leads.

[00:00:20] Kevin Dieny: So this is something that you could apply in your business. If you’re wanting to get your hands and dip them in the marketing advertisement bucket, put that hat on. And we are gonna discuss everything that’s needed for an ad to be successful at generating needs. And this applies to any business, any industry, just because there’s some foundational, basic things, but we’re also gonna create one along the way as an example, and I’ll make available, you know, the information, any notes that I have, anything that we end up kind of creating, I’ll make sure that that’s on the episode page for you.

[00:00:54] Kevin Dieny: So let’s get started. Lead generation add that’s a little different, there’s lots of different types of advertisements. There’s advertisements that are going to be built to bring to awareness to customers, to future customers that your company exists, that, you know, help them become aware that there’s a problem.

[00:01:16] Kevin Dieny: Like if someone, how does someone really know that they need your service? How do they even know that? You as a company are able to provide such a service. There’s lots of different ads that are doing lots of different objectives. If you’ve ever gone into an ad platform and started to create one, you’ve seen things come up, like, what are you trying to do?

[00:01:34] Kevin Dieny: You know, are you trying to get video impressions, people to watch your video? Are you trying to get people more aware of your brand? Are you trying to get people to like, to share, to click, to comment, to, you know, those are more engagement type goals. Are you actually generating leads, right? A lot of times that’s kind of what a default business may go to.

[00:01:51] Kevin Dieny: Yeah. That’s that’s whatever your advertisement is, but it’s, you know, that’s probably the most common one. There’s also advertisements that create sales. Um, sometimes it’s more associated with eCommerce cause it’s a little bit easier to track, but any business can link their sales to the ad that brought.

[00:02:08] Kevin Dieny: So today we’re specifically focusing on the types of advertisements in marketing that are specifically around generating the. A lead is any person. It’s usually a person in a business, a person alone, a consumer, someone that you want to have. A future client, customer, patient sort of relationship with, they’re not paying you yet, but you’d like them to maybe they, you are paying them, but you’d like them to pay you more.

[00:02:34] Kevin Dieny: So the lead is that they haven’t paid you yet. It’s that first interaction in touch with the consumer generally real time, right? Either a phone call, a chat back and forth over an email possibly, but you’re usually most businesses are trying to. Things moved along as fast as they can agility. Right? The faster you can speed up the sale.

[00:02:56] Kevin Dieny: That’s the sales, agility, sales acceleration. The more ordeals you can have, your calendar might be busting with leads, but is it busting with sales? Right? So this is for the businesses for someone, a marketer, an owner, someone to consider, how am I gonna get more leads? Now, if you’ve put leads in the top of your sales funnel, right?

[00:03:16] Kevin Dieny: Hopefully at the bottom, you’re turning them into. So that process we’re not gonna go into, we’re gonna specifically focus on how we get that ad made that ad to be successful so that your marketing budget around this type of activity that you’re trying to, this goal, you have this objective that it becomes successful.

[00:03:34] Kevin Dieny: So how could we make the best possible, most successful, most effective lead generation advertisement? That’s what we’re gonna talk about. That’s what we’re gonna. So the reason I wanted to do this is because this is one of those most common objectives, but it’s also because a lot of times a business when it’s getting into marketing or when there’s an owner, who’s enjoys wearing the marketing hat.

[00:04:01] Kevin Dieny: When there’s a marketer, there’s always a point where things stop working where your, your business is. Like, I really want to scale. I really wanna go to the next level. Right. And lead generation, in my opinion is one of those. Faster to results, ways that a business could go. All right, take me to the next level.

[00:04:20] Kevin Dieny: Okay. The next level, meaning more sales, more scalable revenues coming in at an effective budget spend. Right? If you’re a hundred percent referral business, I’m be going, why would I even need lead gen? Well, the more lead gen, the more satisfying you are to your customers, the more referrals you’re gonna get.

[00:04:37] Kevin Dieny: Anyway. So this supercharge is a referral based. Let’s say downstream instream network that you have, that’s building your business. It is possible that you’re, you may consider well lead gen doesn’t work for my type of business. Sure. Maybe you don’t have an interaction directly with the consumer, but the principles in this right.

[00:04:58] Kevin Dieny: Create what maybe a lead to us is connecting with somebody, but to you, a lead might be okay. Someone added something to a. The definitions are so vague, but just essentially what we’re after is someone who’s really interested in doing business with you, but hasn’t done business with you yet. The first thing that we’re gonna wanna do is make sure we talk about what’s required to pull this off, right?

[00:05:22] Kevin Dieny: So you might go, okay, great. Might listen to this entire episode, but at the end you go, wait a second. I can’t do this one required thing. So the whole thing doesn’t work. So let me save you the time. Okay. The first thing that’s required, right? Is. A landing page. You also have to have an offer. You also have to have an ad.

[00:05:41] Kevin Dieny: You’re gonna need some messaging. Sometimes visuals, you’re gonna need to do something or to be able to capture the leads. So you need some sort of converting action. Sometimes that’s a form, a chat, a phone, uh, number, um, sometimes it’s a. Whatever you use to interact a cart, a form , whatever it is, you need something to capture the information on this, uh, consumer that’s coming through, passing through.

[00:06:11] Kevin Dieny: And then the last, last two things I would say are required. It’s essential that you measure this because the ad platform will keep track of how much you spend. But if you think it’s not working when it is, you’ll turn the budget off to say, nah, ads don’t work for me when it could happen. So, I don’t want you to miss an opportunity also, if it doesn’t work for you or isn’t as effective for you right off the bat, I’d like you to know so that you don’t keep wasting money when you do this.

[00:06:37] Kevin Dieny: Okay. The last thing, I don’t know if it’s arguably the most important, but it’s important is motivation. Okay. So everything in marketing follows this simple principle, which is fail fast, fail as quickly as you possibly can learn from it and then improve it. All right. I’ve never, ever seen anything in marketing work.

[00:06:57] Kevin Dieny: The very, from the very, like from the draft idea, right? Maybe on a napkin on the whiteboard to execution it stay the same. Right. And it worked flawlessly. You really have to make improvements. You have to consider, well, what if we did this? What if we did that? Could it. There’s signals gonna be coming in from your measurement that you’re gonna need to apply to make it more effective.

[00:07:21] Kevin Dieny: What we’re gonna talk about today is how to set you up for success. Make sure that you can create a lead generation ad that is successful and ROI efficient. So. Those are the basics that are required. Okay. This is the, the ideal type of elite generation ad that you want because in the types of assets you’re gonna need, the requirements are specific because each one is gonna tell you something about if it’s effective, how it can be improved, what you can learn, right.

[00:07:51] Kevin Dieny: Maybe what chink along the process is weak, or what’s strong. All the things I’ve mentioned that are required. Right? So again, landing page, the. Visuals, the messaging, the converting tool or converting action needs to be something, a capture point, uh, the measurement and then your motivation. They’re all essential, right?

[00:08:13] Kevin Dieny: So those seven things next you’re gonna have to follow some kind of foundational, slightly opinionated, but I would say mostly foundational guidelines on how this works. This is how the platforms are set up. This is how these things work and it’s best if you work within. The best practices that are established the best foundational practices and then deviate from there, however you want, but just understand the foundations is gonna get you going a lot quick.

[00:08:39] Kevin Dieny: So the things I run into the most though, uh, where someone hears all that I’m about to say, and still doesn’t want to do it, what would keep them from, okay. I could see that I could make a successful lead generation ad. Right. I could see it would be beneficial for my business. I could see that I could, I could do this.

[00:08:56] Kevin Dieny: I could, I have the budget available. Right? None of those is the things that I’m talking about. keep people from actually executing on this, the things that are actually keeping people from doing. Or the idea that it could never be effective. It could never be, it could the return on investment on this. If I make a lead generation ad will never be enough to recover my budget way that I need it to.

[00:09:20] Kevin Dieny: So that’s just like a belief that the marketing in this channel, in this objective won’t work from, business’s a couple things around that. Right? Why wouldn’t it? Why couldn’t it be effective? Why wouldn’t it be? Why wouldn’t it work? Why couldn’t it work given that. You see that it possibly could. Why do you still think that the ads would be too expensive or that they won’t work?

[00:09:42] Kevin Dieny: Well, a lot of times that’s because they’ve had those experiences in the past with things not working very well or they’ve really put a lot into it and it didn’t work then. So why would it work now? Well, things change. There’s still a lot of opportunity. If there is an opportunity right. To. To be able to pay back the marketing budget.

[00:10:03] Kevin Dieny: You spend quickly to be able to generate a better, healthier funnel of qualified leads into your business that helps you generate more revenue, far superior, more revenue than it costs you. Right. If there’s a chance that that would work, I would keep going, keep listening to this. All right. The second thing I hear often that you know, has nothing to do with whether it, the situation of whether it can work or not, but it really focuses on how it gets done.

[00:10:30] Kevin Dieny: Is someone who says I can’t do this. This is not something I can do. I don’t make ads. I don’t know what, what to do. I wouldn’t know where to go. I probably hit a button and my account would just blow up right. Spend too much. Right. The platforms have gotten far better. Most of them have. So while yes, you could be a little nervous about tinkering around the platforms all have made.

[00:10:57] Kevin Dieny: Entry barrier, much lower than it used to be. So if you have this feeling of looking at a ad platform and going, oh man, that’s not for me, I could never do that. That’s crazy. that’s way too much. Or I don’t have the time for that. I would say a couple hours. That sounds like an investment. It is, but a couple hours is really all it takes.

[00:11:19] Kevin Dieny: Now you could do it. There’s lots of videos. There’s tutorials. There’s also, most of these platforms have a customer success. Type of team that can help you set up and create your very first campaign. You can guide them along. What kind of thing, kinda objective, what kind of marketing goal you have or campaign you have in mind and they’ll make sure then help you at least set it up.

[00:11:43] Kevin Dieny: Right? So that barrier is less than it ever has been. And it’s there. So, you know, other businesses have that same issue. So they’re, they’re doing the same thing. So less businesses are advertis. Don’t wanna do it don’t wanna bother, but you could do it and you could take advantage of that barrier. Um, the last one, before we actually start creating the app, one of the, one of my favorites, which is, I wouldn’t even know if it was working or not.

[00:12:09] Kevin Dieny: That’s a great one. That’s why we wanna make sure measurement is one of our required parts of setting all this ad stuff up. And by that by measurement, I mean, okay, you turned on the ad and the ad, platform’s gonna say, okay, you bid this much or you spent this much money. This is the results you. Those metrics up.

[00:12:26] Kevin Dieny: It’s a data within the platform is gonna be sort of self explanatory. It’s just, okay. Well, great. The ad platform said I did this, but what happened in my, you know, in your platforms, in your CRMs, what happened with your team who took the calls? It says you got 10 leads. Did you actually get 10 lanes? You know, were they qualified?

[00:12:46] Kevin Dieny: Were they, were they a fit? Were they interested? Were they people that you could do business with? Right. Was there something wrong? And the process each of each of the points along the way you’re gonna wanna measure. And so without getting too deep into a, a consumer journey, you basically wanna go, okay, draw a circle on one side of a piece of paper and draw a circle on the other side.

[00:13:05] Kevin Dieny: And on the one on the left side, you’re gonna write okay. From you’re gonna write ad and then on the far right, you’re gonna write sale. And then you’re gonna put like a hash or a line or something and plot out what has to happen between the ad and the sale for you to know. And then each of those points that you plotted down, just make sure you’re tracking and measuring each point.

[00:13:25] Kevin Dieny: I assume most of them are being done. A lot of businesses are tracking, you know, the major points, but anything else that’s important along the way in there, make sure that you’re tracking it. Measuring you have something in place to track it. Someone lands on your webpage on your landing page. How are you gonna know that they got there from the.

[00:13:42] Kevin Dieny: Website analytics like Google analytics is how you would measure that. Right? How they, at the converting point, it’s a form, a chat, a call, a text, whatever it is, right. An in person visit, make sure that that if that’s, you know, wherever that is, that that has also you write down, here’s how I’m measuring that.

[00:14:00] Kevin Dieny: And that’s just how you kind of covered your measurement and to be, to go over that as simply as I can now gone over what’s required. And the last thing here, I wanna mention. Is the silver bullet idea. Is there a single way as I’m seeing, I’m sure we’ve all seen lots of Facebook ads that make this claim or maybe a YouTube ad or an ad on TV or whatever that if you download this template, if you do these things, you know, you’re guaranteed eight X, four X ROI, 10 X hundred X Y to double your business in four months or.

[00:14:38] Kevin Dieny: Is there a silver bullet template idea that works right. Is what I’m about to share with you. The silver bullet way. The great thing about this question is that I could say very simply, no, there’s no silver bullet, but that’s where you have to kind of take something and make it your own, right. Is there a silver bullet way that anyone else could apply to your business?

[00:15:02] Kevin Dieny: And it would just work perfectly onto the gate? No, doesn’t work that. You have to take these templates, these ideas, these blueprints, these idea, like the let’s create like I’m doing today and you have to take those and go, okay, well, how would I apply this to my business? Right? You have to make that transition.

[00:15:20] Kevin Dieny: And that’s because every business, no matter how similar they are, has a little bit of a different value proposition, a little bit in different niche audience, geographically, it may be price points. It may be though how they deliver. You have to really consider your business. And so that’s why the silver bullet idea just doesn’t work.

[00:15:38] Kevin Dieny: So if you’re, if there’s no silver bullet idea, why are you listening to this? It’s because you want to be able to take what I’m about to give you and use it and apply it to your business. And it will work. And I’m not saying not making the promises of like a hundred X, Y, or some crazy outlandish thing.

[00:15:54] Kevin Dieny: I’ll just tell you that it will unlock an opportunity that you can then keep pushing. I have campaigns running that have been running for almost five years now, the same campaign I started five years ago. How could that still work? How could it be so successful? It it’s paying us back quickly. It has a high ROI return.

[00:16:14] Kevin Dieny: It it’s. Performing without a whole lot of hand holding and touching and editing and reinforcing. It’s basically just on and going constantly at a very effective rate. Doesn’t require a whole lot of input. It’s fantastic. So how could you have something like that is how I wanna set you up today? So let’s jump into it.

[00:16:32] Kevin Dieny: Here’s what you want do first, the first thing you wanna do, you’ve gotta understand your audience. That’s first. You do that before. Anything else? Because the better you understand your audience in these sort of li in these parameters that I’ll provide for you the better you’ll know. Okay, well, what are we gonna offer them?

[00:16:53] Kevin Dieny: Right? What are we gonna, what’s the message gonna be? What kind of ad are we going for? What are my expectations around this? What could I see as far as return? The whole thing will be answered simply by an understanding your audience. So by audience, I’m talking about at the end of the day, the leads that you want, what is sometimes it’s called an ICP.

[00:17:12] Kevin Dieny: And we’re not talking about the band in St. CLA posse. I’m talking about the ideal customer profile. Who’s that customer that you would really like to have more than any other. And for this example, a member I’m gonna teach you the principle and then I’ll use an example, right? So the principle is focus on your audience OK.

[00:17:33] Kevin Dieny: And understand them better. Now here’s an example. I picked a residential plumber. As my example, if I’m a residential plumbing company, the type of audience that I really want is someone who’s, it’s obviously I’m residential. So I need a homeowner. Okay. I need someone with some expendable income. So I’m probably looking at ideally around 35 plus maybe 35 to 55, somewhere in that range.

[00:17:58] Kevin Dieny: I’m also looking for people who own like, not just are in a house, but they may own, or have some decision making capability. Right. That way they can be the ones who say, yes, you know, do this repair or do this fix, or let me upgrade or get me a new, whatever. It’s we also are kind of interested in the type of customer that isn’t knowledgeable enough to know what they may need or know that they need a plumber, know that the issues related to that, but they also are unwilling to do the work entirely themselves.

[00:18:30] Kevin Dieny: Like we’re not looking for another plumber who lives at a home. We’re kind of looking. I mean, maybe they would call. We’re looking for the ideal audience. And part of that ideal audience is people who would really want a plumber. The great thing I think about being a plumbing business is that once we get a customer, maybe they’ll become loyal and they’ll always just call the same plumbing, number, our business over and over again, because we delighted them.

[00:18:55] Kevin Dieny: We had a great experience. The first go around for summer round. They thought I got a lot of value outta this last time. I. So that’s why, to me, it’s very important to try to get a consumer that’s loyal. So a loyal customer is another aspect I’d be looking for. Finally, they are gonna need to be available.

[00:19:16] Kevin Dieny: So by that, I mean, if I, you know, I’m applying business, if the more availability they have to get me on to their calendar, to be able to do the job, to do the project, whatever it is, the better. And so availability is another. Another point of requirement, I would say. And the type of ideal customer ideal audience that I’m looking for, I’m kind of in the assumption that the average deal size here is probably gonna be 500 plus that I’m hoping to achieve, because that way, if I can get leads for, you know, us considerably less, I can get a good ROI at it.

[00:19:53] Kevin Dieny: So that’s kinda what I’m go reversing from. OK. I’m gonna make 500 on an average. Right. So how do I make a campaign, a marketing campaign, given the margin you’re working with very much a high return, right? How can I make this something where I go, oh yeah. I mean, I’ll do this all day. I’ll, you know, if I’m putting a dollar in and I’m getting $3 or $4 back, whatever it is, um, I’ll would do that all day, whatever that scenario is, that’s what I’m after.

[00:20:20] Kevin Dieny: So for me, I’m saying, okay, if I’m estimating about 500, a. Let’s say I have, uh, like 50% margin. So I need at least two 50 to break, even on spend per sale. And let’s say I’m third of the time I make the sale. So that means I need to make leads for two 50, you know, divided by three. I basically need like less than $85 leads.

[00:20:46] Kevin Dieny: So I’ve like to, to be able to just break even on this right away. So that’s what I’m. I have my kind of metrics in mind. I have my audience in mind already from this now a secondary part of, of the audience research, right? Not just knowing your, your ideal audience that you want. Okay. And how I’m gonna, what I’m after.

[00:21:06] Kevin Dieny: And maybe what my, maybe what my kind of ROI has to be, but now it’s okay. Now what’s my offer. That’s the second step, first step, figure out your audience. I mean, write down all these things like, like anything that you know, or you would be like, yeah, I’d love to have a customer like that. That’s what you write down on a piece of paper type out on under audience.

[00:21:23] Kevin Dieny: What do you figure out for your offer? If you’re applying business, you know, way better than me, whatever your business is, you’re gonna know it really well, but like types of offers you want that work the best for lead generation have something called a trip wire effect, which is. You get someone in for a low price, right?

[00:21:41] Kevin Dieny: Something that requires less trust, cuz it’s lower priced something that the, the consumer is higher realized value, perceived value and is something that you can deliver, right. Without a whole lot of cost. So we’re talking higher margins on delivery for you lower cost to the consumer high value to the consumer.

[00:22:02] Kevin Dieny: So boom, boom, boom. What, what offers do you have that, that look or sound like that? So I don’t knowing business. Super well, but I can do my research. Right. So what I did is I started Googling plumbing, repair, plumbing, stuff like that keywords, just to see what what’s there. I arrived at, let’s say a handful of some services offerings that I wrote down.

[00:22:26] Kevin Dieny: Right? So the, the things that I found were kitchen related, fixes, right? Kitchen sinks and stuff, or anything to do. Refrigerators and stuff like that. So then I had bathroom stuff like showers and tubs and toilets. There was also like appliance, maybe like faucets, uh, water, heaters, laundry, things like that.

[00:22:47] Kevin Dieny: And then I found emergency right. Uh, leaks, uh, stuff like anything that sort of in the emergency section. And then last I had what I would call sort of like upkeep maintenance, which was like installations, gas. Gas insulation, things like that, maybe new move-ins and then drains and claws. So I had all these offerings that I consider, okay, this is the stuff that plumbers do.

[00:23:13] Kevin Dieny: These are the things that they offer. So then I went and looked up, okay, how much of these things typically cost? Now the two, two things that stood out to me, one was the drain inlaws, because that’s a lower cost. Right. I, I saw some things even just when I was searching for it, that was something like, you know, $45, a hundred dollars, $200.

[00:23:32] Kevin Dieny: Quick fast, get your drains, you know, UNC clocked those types of sort of, to me, maybe lower costs, get in the door types of types of situations, establish that you’re a good plumber, a good business. And then you earn their loyalty in the future. Great. Right. That’s why I like that idea of the drain of clock.

[00:23:49] Kevin Dieny: However, there was another one that stood out to me, which is appliance, and that was because there was water heaters, water heaters. Or something maybe not as frequent as drain and clogs. Well, maybe more frequent. I dunno, depends on the area and the types of, I don’t know the types of environment they’re in, but I really, I like better than drain and clogged.

[00:24:12] Kevin Dieny: I like the water heater. And the reason is, is because there is a low kind of a trip wire one, right? Water heater’s leaking. Something’s a problem. Maybe I need it set up. I need it installed. There’s also that I need it flushed. I need it checked. I need, you know, there’s these lower. Trip wire type entry offers, but behind it right, is a really important, I thought true offer, which is, you know, a brand new water heater.

[00:24:41] Kevin Dieny: It looked like to me that that was a really great upsell. So IRU rather like Legion off of water heater than drain and clog for that reason now drain and clog, you can go down and be like, oh yeah, like. This is, uh, you know, your pipes are broken or something wrong. We need to do a whole re-pipe. And I know that that’s a very high ticket, high ticket, um, project.

[00:25:04] Kevin Dieny: It’s also something I can imagine that some plumbers are less interested in than others, maybe some that’s their specialty, but I also thought about it and was like, gosh, that’s such an, that could be a really expensive. Upsell. I don’t know, as, I don’t know if like, as a, you know, as a homeowner myself or something, I’d be like, yeah, let’s, re-pipe, let’s resour.

[00:25:24] Kevin Dieny: Let’s, you know what? Let’s retrain our house. That might be a hard pill to swallow, but a water heater. Yes. It’s expensive. But if I don’t have it right, I don’t have any hot water. That’s like a con that’s like a convenience. If I’ve gotten used to that, how can, how can I live without hot water? you know where it says the drain thing, it might be like, Is it catastrophic?

[00:25:47] Kevin Dieny: If not, then maybe I’ll just wait. I know it sounds like a terrible thing and you probably shouldn’t do that. I’m not recommending anyone, anyone follow that. I could just see that going through their eyes. Right. I saw that in the searches that I was doing between drains, ands and water heaters. So just walking you through this thought process here, because I thought, okay, how can you apply this to your business?

[00:26:11] Kevin Dieny: You want sort of a lower bargain way to get in the door of a business and. Customer of whatever it is you’re trying to do. Right. Get in the door, just get in the door, get your foot in the door. That was like one of the things they teach you when door to door sales, just get in the door, whatever way you can get inside.

[00:26:31] Kevin Dieny: Once you’re there and you’re doing a water heater, check inspection, install, a flush, whatever it is, that’s where you can see, okay, here’s the state of the water heater. You can make recommendations. You can help them. Maybe you end up doing the upsell of whole new water heater. So I thought that. A really advantageous one.

[00:26:48] Kevin Dieny: Now I went from that to, okay. But let’s see if this, these are even good keywords because if drain and clog is, has a lot of impressions, a lot of good keywords, they’re very cheap. Maybe that’s, you know, at the end of the day, that’s the better option. So I compared drain and clog to water heater, repair, water heater, fix those types of keyword.

[00:27:10] Kevin Dieny: And what I found is, is that, and I’m, I did this research using some tools that are available, keyword, planning, tools, things like that. Google has it. Bing has it. Also, you can do this type of stuff with, uh, third party tools. SpyFu is one of them. I mentioned, I saw that there was a decent amount of impressions for the water heater.

[00:27:29] Kevin Dieny: One. It wasn’t that outrageously different than the clog and drains and the cost for the keywords. Weren’t so bad. Now this could be very different in your area and depending on the competi. But those are the types of things you wanna be asking. I wanna be wondering, okay. If I do have this offer, is anyone searching for it?

[00:27:47] Kevin Dieny: Is anyone looking for it? Is anyone typing in that product online? And if you have no, no, no. But yes, this product is being searched quite a bit. That might be the product you end up going with. Right. You might have a great. Offer a great upsell, but no, one’s looking for that. Well, how are you gonna get people to see it, right?

[00:28:05] Kevin Dieny: Then you have to go through a different type of advertising. I’m talking about a really great lead gen. That’s gonna have the keywords plus the audience is gonna be there. I think a healthier, much higher possibility of return than simply just there’s an audience and an offer. We’re also looking for there to be demand, which is people searching for the keywords, right?

[00:28:27] Kevin Dieny: Which you can figure out through keyword. Okay. So just to recap, I have my audience, my ideal audience figured out written down. Okay. You wanna know who they are, everything about why they care, what they’re interested in, why they’re an ideal customer for you. Write all that down. Just so you have some idea of what you’re looking for.

[00:28:46] Kevin Dieny: You’re not just wanting leads. You want quality second. You’re gonna figure out your offer. Okay. What are you gonna, what are you gonna offer them? Right. What, what is interesting to them? What would be a great thing? Product service. To offer them to get them in the door. What’s an incentive or something you can do to make it really ideal to your ideal customer.

[00:29:04] Kevin Dieny: Okay. So you’ve got your audience and your offer nailed. Now the last thing is to start building all this and start taking, okay, here’s my audience. Here’s my offer. You’re gonna start kind of, this is where you bring it together. That’s where you build. Now, the first thing you build is your message.

[00:29:26] Kevin Dieny: Messaging which going be your landing page, your messaging is gonna show up on your landing page, you know, a, a page, you know, just building a page, whatever. You’ve gotta build a page that narrows in on the messaging. So the messaging is probably the hardest part unfortunately, and that’s where it’s gonna be tough.

[00:29:46] Kevin Dieny: Uh, the reason is, is because you can’t just say buy this thing, buy X, Y. Right. It doesn’t work like that. You have to help people understand and answer their questions. Right? So here’s some questions you’re gonna have to answer. Number one, how do I start? Right. So you have your audience, you have your offer.

[00:30:07] Kevin Dieny: Okay. But your customer, your consumer is gonna be saying, Hey, I have this problem. How do I start? What do I go? What do I do? Right. And you want them to go, oh, I need your kind of company. I need your company and I need your solution. Okay. That’s where you want them to head. That’s where you want them to go.

[00:30:26] Kevin Dieny: Right now, the keyword may tell you, like, for instance, uh, for the water heater, one, a lot of what people type in is water heater repair near me. So they’re not typing in plumber near me. Maybe they are for that, but they also happen to be typing in the. Thing that they want near me, which is great. That’s something I’m, you know, even better, uh, for my example, right.

[00:30:48] Kevin Dieny: They’re looking for water heater repair. Great. That’s there’s demand for that. So that’s something that I’m, you know, position your messaging for if you know, okay. Here’s the keywords I have. Those are gonna have to show up on the landing page and I have to show up in your messaging. You don’t want people going water, heater repair, and they get to your page and you’re like, oh yeah, I’m a plumber.

[00:31:06] Kevin Dieny: Cause they may not make the connection. Oh yeah. This plumber is gonna be able to solve this. They wanna see on the page. Yeah, we’re all about water heater repair. You want that to come across? You want them to go? Oh yeah, these guys know these guys know what they’re doing. Like this is the company I want.

[00:31:21] Kevin Dieny: Okay. you don’t want, ’em going, do they do water heater repair? You don’t want them asking that question? You don’t want them going? Hmm. Like, I don’t know about them or I don’t know about this. Okay. When they hit that landing page, when they hit that webpage, whatever it is that you’re. You want ’em to go?

[00:31:36] Kevin Dieny: Yes. I looked for a water heater repair and I’m getting water heater repair okay. So that’s the same thing you gotta apply to your company, right? So where do they start then? The next question they’re gonna ask is how do they know the issue is a problem or that it’s solved? So that’s more around okay. My water heater’s leaking.

[00:31:58] Kevin Dieny: Isn’t that bad. Should I get it fixed? Maybe this is just how this thing supposed to be. Maybe when my water temperature drops drastically and then goes away that that’s not a big deal. Maybe, you know, maybe someone who knows is like, oh, maybe my pilot’s out. Maybe the thing that keeps it going is out, maybe got unplugged there’s kids or something and they may go, yeah, well, we’ll just suffer for it.

[00:32:18] Kevin Dieny: You know, for a while, who. How are they gonna know that it’s a problem? How are they gonna know when it’s solved? What it should look like, what the after should be. OK. Another question to ask. Can they live without you? Here’s an example. Let’s say I’m a, do it yourselfer. Look it up on YouTube. Maybe I’m a retired or maybe I’m a former mechanic or former handyman something.

[00:32:43] Kevin Dieny: Can I can’t I just fix this myself, right. So sure. There’s the do it yourselfer types. Right. And that shouldn’t be ignored entirely. Like those there’s lots of people who are do it yourselfers, but then they’re gonna go, Hmm. I could do it myself, but if something goes wrong, is it gonna be so much worse?

[00:33:03] Kevin Dieny: What could go wrong is another question they could ask, be asking. What’s the worst that could happen if I put it off, if I don’t go to you as a, the provider. Right? What, what could, what’s the worst that could happen? So those are the types of things that considering your messaging. Right. And then finally some things around, okay.

[00:33:20] Kevin Dieny: What’s the price? How was it delivered? Like the actual. Service offering transaction. The transaction stuff is gonna be very important. And you want them to know this before they call, right? So that you don’t get all these leads that go, oh, I was hoping it would be like $5, not a hundred dollars. Right. And then hang up.

[00:33:40] Kevin Dieny: You don’t want that. You want people who go, I know roughly what it’s gonna cost. I know what to expect. I know you’re the right provider. I know that you’re gonna solve this problem for me. And I know that if, oh, I do it myself, it’s something could go wrong and I want a trusted professional to do this.

[00:33:53] Kevin Dieny: And I trust you. That’s literally the thoughts you want in their head when they go to convert into a lead and then you have the greatest leads. OK. if you’re a marketer, you know how great it is to be able to have leads that people rave about. So that’s what you’re. Okay. And you do that by making sure that your webpages, your landing page, whatever, informs them on all these things that are so important to the consumer.

[00:34:19] Kevin Dieny: So they’re not wondering, oh crap. I got now I got, I’m not gonna find out the price to like, call that sucks. I I’m not like, I don’t know if there’s a, like just a fee to get them out here. I don’t know. You know, if there’s other costs to doing business. Oh, you know, you only take one type of insurance bummer.

[00:34:34] Kevin Dieny: Now I can’t do it. Right. You want everything crystal clear? Before they call before they convert before they, you know, get to that point. So you have the best leads possible, right? That’s what you’re after. Yes. It may be less leads. Right. But they’re gonna be quality. So that’s what you’re after it’s much more important than volume.

[00:34:52] Kevin Dieny: So I just wanna re make sure it’s also very clear that when you make your page, the page is gonna be the thing you make first, and then you make the. And that’s because everything you put in the page, whenever you finally decide and go, yes, this is the page that’s gonna work. And maybe I’m not as happy with the headline.

[00:35:11] Kevin Dieny: Maybe I’m not as happy with a visual or a video that’s on the page. There might be things on it. You’re like, you know, we could improve later. We could invest more, make a better video or, but, or put a video on the page. And there’s just an image right now. Start with whatever you’ve got visual wise messaging wise.

[00:35:25] Kevin Dieny: Just make sure it communicates those things. Clearly. There’s other best practices. Like don’t make a giant paragraph. Try to keep everything important in the top, fold up like 20% of your page or, you know, whatever displays on your browser. When it loads try to keep all the most important information there, make it simple.

[00:35:44] Kevin Dieny: Those are more UX tips than anything, but, and, and that’s for you to figure out I can’t dive into that too much in this episode. So let’s say we’ve got our landing page done, say, okay, water heater, repair service is at the top as a headline. The subline is, you know, for residential consumers who have a problem or questions with their water heater.

[00:36:05] Kevin Dieny: We are the trusted professionals in these areas. And you may list a few areas. Cause what you’re trying to do is speak to them, call out the audience you want. You want member you’re after a residential homeowners, you’re after them in a certain range, you want the, you want people who kind of know what they’re doing, but want to trust you.

[00:36:21] Kevin Dieny: You know, you’re, you’re trying to package all of that. Bring it all into a very simple message. Right? You have all these things written on your audience page. Now you need to craft that and turn that into simple one liners, take two or three bullets. Try to put it in one sentence then says exactly that use simple language.

[00:36:39] Kevin Dieny: Make sure it’s clear. Ask someone maybe else to look at the page and go. Does this make sense to you? and if they go, yeah, this looks like a plumber or something, uh, for water heaters, she go, yes. Okay. Anything else? Jump out to you. Anything they say that doesn’t make sense. You could literally ask a kid.

[00:36:55] Kevin Dieny: Okay. You’re seven years old. Tell me what you think of this page. What’s it for who’s what’s going on here. They’ll probably be able to tell you some really good fixes for your page, and then you can get it really good. Now, remember you don’t need the perfect page. You don’t need to invest a ton of resources in, but just get it to the point where, okay, I’m happy enough with it.

[00:37:12] Kevin Dieny: I’ll make some improvements later, you know, that’s all you’re after then you make the ad, okay. The ads are often best to make in the platforms. Google ads is the one I’m kind of nudging you toward here to make of the paid search ad, uh, with the objective or goal of website traffic to start with. That’s sort of what I’m leaning toward.

[00:37:31] Kevin Dieny: But what you’re really, what, what kind of ad you wanna make right? Leg gen is gonna be ultimately your objective, which you can switch it to, but that’s what you’re you’re after wherever it is, whatever platform you use, whatever style of audience targeting you use, just make sure that your ad you create after the page.

[00:37:47] Kevin Dieny: And then whatever the landing page has is its main H one headers or H two S or anything like that, that you’re doing. And your main header, whatever is your big, bold one liner statements that are kind of concise, right? So less than 30 characters or something, very, very concise. Try to take those concise sentences and, or craft some that’s what you’re putting in your ads.

[00:38:09] Kevin Dieny: So for instance, if my headline says water heater, repair services, right? Like water heater, repair, Anything like that. Those are the types of things I bring into my headlines from my ads. That way they match boom, boom, Lenny page ad, very congruent, very relevant. That’s what you’re after. That’s what you’re gonna need.

[00:38:28] Kevin Dieny: So here’s some that I came up with water heater repair. I’m just gonna restate the keyword that I’m going after the most. Okay. Another headline, five star professional work. I think it’s. Very relevant that consumers are considering trust based on reviews these days. So I just immediately call it out.

[00:38:47] Kevin Dieny: Okay. We’re a five star, four star, whatever it is, business plumber. So I call it out and put that in the headline that another way to establish trust. Now, another thing that consumers may be wondering, right, is we wanna availability in the consumer. So I’m gonna put it right there in the Lin again, 24, 7, 365, same day service, something like that, whatever you, you know, whatever your business offers.

[00:39:07] Kevin Dieny: So that’s another element. Another one. Thousands of happy customers. I love numbers. Plus text and headlines. I think it’s really, uh, draws your eye. So those are types of things I like. Um, and whatever number, copy customer number customers. It’s just another way that a consumer would go, okay, this is a trusted business.

[00:39:28] Kevin Dieny: They’re not just scam. That’s one thing consumers are looking for. Is this a scam? Are they trying to scam me? Are they trying to cheat me? Are they gonna be way too expensive? You. Push the things that are also equally important, getting quality service that doesn’t, you know, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna break six months down the line because they did it wrong.

[00:39:45] Kevin Dieny: You gotta be very assertive about the kind of business, the types of qualities your business has. Another one I have written down is honest work done, right? Another headline I have is quick on time service. Now, some of these things I’m even describing, aren’t gonna be in the keywords. So you’re gonna need to additionally, any other keywords that are very valuable.

[00:40:05] Kevin Dieny: Much the types of keywords you’ve added or, or types of interests you’ve added in your targeting. Put those things into the headlines too. So it’s much more relevant, especially if you know, it’s using different headlines. If it puts a bunch in that have nothing to do with, uh, water heater repair or whatever it is your offer is that’s bad.

[00:40:24] Kevin Dieny: So try to keep a good balance of, okay. Keyword, specific ones, and then headlines that relate to my business or a headline that includes both or combination. There’s also description fields sometimes in the types of platforms you use. So keep the same structure in there. You have a little more like, a little more length of text to use those typically.

[00:40:45] Kevin Dieny: So, you know, stuff in there, anything that’s from your landing again, that’s a little longer

[00:40:52] Kevin Dieny: headlines. So got your landing page. You’ve got your messaging, your ad done. Okay. So what’s the last thing. Hmm. The last thing is the call to action. Now it’s something that you need to have, have built into your landing page, for sure. But now you just go back through, look at your ad. Okay. Look at the keywords.

[00:41:15] Kevin Dieny: Look at the landing page, look at the whole experience and go, what am I asking them to do? What do they want to do? Right. And you as a business go, okay. Well, yeah, I wanna open sell. I want ’em to upsell, but what’s the first important thing you want ’em to do, and that’s just become a lead with that in mind.

[00:41:33] Kevin Dieny: If there’s any changes you need to make to make this less salesy, to make this more convincing, educational, helpful that you’re just getting them. You’re just getting in the door. Okay. Gotta remember to reframe this, just get in the door. You don’t need to sell everything up front. You don’t need to jam a page full of all your other offers everything.

[00:41:52] Kevin Dieny: Just keep it simple on this one offer. Keep it very targeted and specific to the call to action. Fill a form. Okay. Say somewhere, just fill out this form and then we’ll get in touch with you. What will happen? What to expect after they fill out the form. What happens then? Okay. So a thank you page telling them what happens.

[00:42:11] Kevin Dieny: What’s gonna, what’s gonna happen next. You want people to be very much aware along every step, what they’re at, where they need to go next, make a sign post, right? It’s like someone’s walking along a path and there’s signs. Okay. Left here, right here at the fork. Keep people guided in the right direction and you’ll make the leads.

[00:42:30] Kevin Dieny: More, the more you make the leg gen ads much more successful for my water heater example. Right. I have my audience, I have my residential over 35. Um, they can afford this. They can make they’re the decision makers, they’re in the geographic area. Make sure that’s in there. Um, they are the, you know, they’re homeowners.

[00:42:51] Kevin Dieny: They are searching for these keywords. They value. It being done correctly. There may be review sensitive. That’s the type of group I’m after it shows up in my keywords, it shows up on my landing page. It shows up in my ads. Okay. So check, check, check, check, check. That’s what we’ve just kind of talked about and made, then you turn it on.

[00:43:10] Kevin Dieny: Yay. So I turn it on what should be my budget? Well, that’s kind of for you to decide, I like to start between 10 and 50 a day just because I like to learn very quickly. And sometimes you need a decent budget to learn it fairly quickly. Like within a, within a two week period, I like to have a lot of either my negative keywords figured out.

[00:43:32] Kevin Dieny: Right. Or I like to at least see, okay, I’m sending the right people to my page. I like to know within a two week period, whether I’m getting any leads from this at all, if I’m getting none, you know, what could be the hangup, what could be the problem? And then you’ll go and assess. All right. I’m I’ve seen this many impressions.

[00:43:48] Kevin Dieny: Am I getting clicks? Is the click rate. Okay. How many landing page, actual visits am I getting a click and a landing page visit is a little different sometimes, especially if you have a very slow loading website. so then I got these many people hitting my page. Let’s say it’s a hundred, but I have no leads.

[00:44:05] Kevin Dieny: Okay. Well, if I had a 2% average conversion, I’d have at least two by now. What’s going on? Right? Find where the chin in the chain is, and then you can ask, okay, well, my problem is my landing page. My problem is my a my problem is my keyword. So too expensive. My problem is, you know, whatever it is and you could determine, okay, whatever point along the path is not at the rate of success that I need it to be.

[00:44:29] Kevin Dieny: Then I’ve got a problem. So things like, okay, my click rates. Below 2%. Okay. Maybe the click is wrong or the ad is off or the keywords are off. So check that test things there. Okay. I’m getting this many visits to my page. Is it close enough to the click to be roughly the same? Or is it like drastically lower than the clicks?

[00:44:46] Kevin Dieny: Okay. Then maybe there’s a page issue. Am I sending people to the right page? Things like that third. Okay. People getting into the page are not convert. Okay. By setting the right geographic area to them. Is the page making sense? Is it load well on mobile? Uh, what’s the experience like on the page? You know, do I need to get a tool like a hot jar and record and see what people are doing on there?

[00:45:05] Kevin Dieny: What’s going on there? A page performance is a little harder determine. Sometimes it’s a little harder to assess. Let’s say there are converting conversions happening. I am getting leads. Okay. Are the leads, quality what’s happening? Who’s taking them right? What’s the process. Is it flowing well? Is, are they showing up?

[00:45:22] Kevin Dieny: Are they purchasing, adding to cart? Right? These are the points along again. That path I had told you about, you can assess and know whether it’s working, whether it’s successful or not. Gosh, we just covered a lot. So your brain’s stuck. Your brain’s. You could use this to craft a successful lead generation ad.

[00:45:43] Kevin Dieny: You could do it. A business owner can do this few hours. You could set this up, right? Maybe it’ll take you more than a few hours, depending on, you know, how, how, you know, if you have a page ready or if you need to go, you know, get some graphics, some elements throw this together. A paid search ad is really low, much lower resource requirement.

[00:46:02] Kevin Dieny: You don’t need to make any visuals for the ad itself or text. And then you’ve got your campaign going, right. Let’s see you find success in it. Great. Okay. It’s working. All right. Can you increase the budget? Can you expand this somehow? Can you widen the geographic area? Uh, do you have more locations? You can test this with really scope this down and plan this out and like, wow, this is working now I can, you know, bump it up maybe.

[00:46:30] Kevin Dieny: Okay. I got it. Working for water heaters. Let’s try drains and clouds. Move around your product, uh, spoke and figure out, okay, let’s try other products. Let’s try other ideas. Let’s target different types of audiences. Okay. I I’m, I’m finding a lot of success with, um, elderly, senior citizens. I’m doing really well with realtors, helping me get in the door, whatever it is you’ve, you’re learning from your sales process, reapply it back to marketing.

[00:46:55] Kevin Dieny: That’s all that’s as many tips as I can give. To be as helpful as I can to help you be the most successful you can be with advertisements that are centered around generating leads. You could do it. You’ve you’ve got this focus on what’s important, right? Just keep things simple. You got this. If you need help reach out, um, on LinkedIn, uh, we also do consulting currently for digital marketing.

[00:47:23] Kevin Dieny: If you’re, you know, just want, so second pair of eyes to look at how your campaigns are. You don’t trust that something’s working as well as it could. Uh, you know, there’s no hard rule on things have to work a certain way. Things can be improved. Things could be restarted. There’s a lot of opportunity here.

[00:47:43] Kevin Dieny: So, thank you so much for listening. I hope that you’ve figured out what’s required to do this, that it, that it you’ve gotten the recommendations we put out there to make your audience, your offer, your messaging, your pages, your assets really successful the best they could be. And then at least by the end of the day, you’ve got a little more confidence that this could work for you and your business.

[00:48:02] Kevin Dieny: Um, so get out there. Take a chance at it. And, uh, you know, if you need any help, just ping me, let me know, or, you know, ask, uh, ask around, ask others to see if you can learn anything from them. So I really appreciate your time and listening to this episode. Again, uh, close the loop podcast and we’ve just created, uh, successful, hopefully successful, uh, lead generation advertisement.

[00:48:25] Kevin Dieny: Thank you for listening.