215. The Complete Game Marketing Playbook: Step 2

I'd rather have a small list of hyper qualified leads versus a huge list filled with prospects who don't know who I am, don't even really know I exist except for the calls and emails I send and again, have not given me any permission to reach out. They're probably annoyed by it. Instead, if you could have that small list who have given you permission, you're gonna be so much more effective with your prospecting. Trust me.

Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Friday Bullpen Sessions. My name is Andy Neary and this is episode 215. We are going to continue on with our four part series of the 2023 Marketing Playbook. And my last solo episode, I started with step one, clarity. How to build your brand and your ideal prospect's brand identity. How you want the market talking about you, how to identify the right prospect for you, and how to build the brand message that draws them in. If you did not hear that, go back and listen to episode 213. Today we're gonna dive into step two of the 2023 marketing playbook and that is capture, capturing qualified leads. This is something I would argue the insurance industry is not very used to because the way we have captured leads historically in the insurance industry is to just go buy a big list of leads and start spamming them with phone calls and emails. None of these people asked us to reach out to them. They did not give us permission to reach out to them, but we just did it anyways until they either told us to go away or maybe took our meeting.

So today I want to talk about a way, a strategy, a plan you can use to actually get prospects to give you permission to reach out to them. And that's through capture. So when you think of capturing qualified leads, I heard this phrase used in a book I read recently. They ask you answer by Marcus Sheridan. He calls it permission based marketing and I absolutely love that. What he means by permission based marketing is imagine if you had a lead, a list of prospects who were giving you permission to reach out to them, to stay in touch with them. It would make your business, your prospecting, so much more effective. And this goes back to something I said at the end of episode 213. I'd rather have a small list of hyper qualified leads versus a huge list filled with prospects who don't know who I am, don't even really know I exist except for the calls and emails I send, and again have not given me any permission to reach out. They're probably annoyed by it. Instead, if you could have that small list who have given you permission. You're going to be so much more effective with your prospecting, trust me. So how do we build a lead? How do we go capture qualified leads? I think there's three ways, there's three channels that I believe we can capture some good qualified leads. That's your website, social media. And if you're in the business, to business space like insurance, probably LinkedIn is your best bet. And then email.

And so let's start with websites. The place I like to start with.

Capturing good leads from the website is making sure your website says the right thing. If you listen to step one of the marketing playbook, in episode 213, I talked about building the brand message for your ideal prospect. And as a story Bryce story, brand certified guidelines, I walk clients through a process, a story, brand format to help them build that brand message. They call it the brand script. Well, when you have a good brand script, it actually becomes very easy to get the right message on your website because you just take that message and you apply it to your site. But I'll tell you, 98% of the agencies and industry partners out there.

Have a website whose verbiage is actually turning prospects away. And when your prospects come to your site and they're not sure what they're looking for and they leave, that's a lead that you had an opportunity to get. That's gone maybe forever. And unfortunately, there's no metric really to tell you that they're not coming back. So you have to use your website as a lead generator. And there's a couple ways to do that. One, it starts with the message your website has to tell your prospect story. If I come to your website and the first thing I see is messaging and verbiage around about you, your agency, and how long you've been and how great you are. I'm leaving because you look like every other agency out there. But if I come to your website and immediately above the fold, the first thing I see on your website in the headline gives me an aspirational statement that I want to have. You've drawn me in.

And so the first place you have to look for capturing qualified leads is your website. And I'm gonna tell you, I know it sounds strange for me to say this, but it still happens. If you're an advisor and you don't have a website you haven't even started yet, you have to have a website today. Because when prospects meet you or get to know you or hear about you, the first thing they do is they Google you And the first two things that are gonna come up is your LinkedIn profile and a website. And if I Google you and I don't even see a website, you have lost almost all credibility with me.

That's how your prospect thinks. So you gotta have a website and the website has to tell your prospect's story. Now when I talk about lead generators, actual lead generators here in a few minutes, your website can be a place where you store or house the lead generator. But step one is making sure your website is the message is aligned with your brand message for your ideal prospect. That's number one. That's a good way to capture qualified leads because if they feel like you're telling their story, there's a decent chance they may go to that contact form and fill it out. The second place is social media. Now again, if you're listening and you're an insurance advisor, you're probably in the business to business space. So what I'm really talking about is LinkedIn. When you send out LinkedIn invite requests to prospects and they accept, that's a captured lead, I truly believe it. The problem is you can't turn around and immediately jam a message down their throat trying to take them get a meeting. That's again the old adage of you just grabbed a cup of coffee and you're already asking them to marry. You can't do that. You gotta let your content do the talking on social media and we're gonna talk about that in step three. But when you send out a LinkedIn request to your prospect and they accept, that is a captured lead.

When we have agencies who hire us to create their social media content, their email marketing content, one of the frustrations they have, and it's a misconception and maybe we don't sell the services the right way sometimes is a believe by us just creating content and in social media and email, leads are going to magically come in. That's not how it works. You still have to proactively reach out to people. And one way to do that on social media is make connections on LinkedIn. Because when prospects accept they're now in your world, they're in your community and then, and again your content is going to do the talking. And then the third place where you can capture qualified leads is via email. Now remember the historical way we've done it in the insurance industry is we just grab somebody's email and start sending them messages.

They're not giving you permission to do that. The odds of you being successful are pretty slim. May work Once, twice. But imagine if they gave you permission. And one of the best ways to build an email list through permission is lead generators. And so when we work with our clients on building lead generators, there's different types of lead generators, generators you could create. You could do webinars. That's a classical form of a lead generator, right? If you have a series of webinars you host every, every time somebody signs up for that webinar, they have to give you their email to register. That's a captured lead. How about a video? I love video. Most of our lead generators here at Complete Game Consulting are done via video Pre recorded webinars, 10 minute videos where I'm teaching something. But a video is a great way to create a lead generator. And then you could do it through white papers and PDFs and things like that. The purpose of a lead generator is the prospect has to give you something in return to get what you have. So when you create a lead generator, number one, the title of the lead generator. So whatever the topic is has to be valuable. You have to share some good content if that prospect's going to be willing to give up his or her email address. And number two, it's got to be a topic that's going to help them. So titles matter and the platform you use matters. So again, whether you use a webinar, a video, a white paper, pick the one you are most comfortable with. But make sure whatever you are sharing via the lead generator is good. We have some clients that put, especially the partners to the industry that sell product, they put a demo video in their lead generator. Prospects want to, brokers want to see the demo, they can download it. We have clients who create white papers that share a ton of content, ton of value. They're almost giving too much away. But that's what we have to do today. If we're going to give somebody, we're going to get somebody to give up their email to get the content. Remember, think about yourself when you go to a form to fill it out, put your name in to put your email address, you're already a bit skeptical. That's your buyer. We're all skeptical these days of filling out forms because we know the emails are coming. But the good thing is when you use a lead generator, whether it's a webinar, your website or a PDF or a video, you can backend the download with a nice nurture and sales email campaign. When somebody downloads that video or signs up for that webinar, you can send them out a pre automated Sequence of emails that hopefully ultimately leads them to scheduling a meeting with you. Happens all the time. We do it here at Complete Game and it works. The problem is you have to have patience. You see, I can't tell you how many times I worked for agencies over the years where we would host a webinar. We get 20 people to sign up. Traditional 10 to 12 show up. And what our sales manager would immediately do is get the list of the people who attended, pass them out to the producers and say, hey, go call everybody who showed up yesterday and try to schedule a meeting. That is not how it works. A lead generator also has to nurture that prospect. You can't just come slam them with a sales message immediately because in their eyes, in their head, all they hear is ah, okay, now I see why you did the webinar. You just wanted to use it as a channel to call me. So you have to be able to develop a nurture email sequence that can, that can also include some sales messaging that draws your prospect in. But the point of part two here, of building the 2023 marketing playbook is you gotta have a system to capture qualified leads. Our lead list right now at Complete Game Consulting consists of an email list of about 680 brokers and a text community of about 300. But they're all permission based. They have all joined the list voluntarily. So it's a very qualified list and we get a ton of leads from both lists. Same goes for LinkedIn.

So that's my advice with step two here is you have to have a qualified, a system to, to generate qualified leads. And if you do that, you will have the right people raising their hand. They may not be ready to buy right now, but when they come in, your list, your community, they're qualified. That's what matters. So take today's advice. Pair it with what you Learned in step 1. Identifying your brand and your ideal brand, your ideal prospect. And you have the first two pillars of a hell of a marketing strategy going into next year. Or one quick announcement before I wrap up today's episode. Our broker branding academy is officially open for enrollment. The next one starts January 18th. 12 weeks, 12 calls. We take 20 advisors and industry partners and we teach them our marketing playbook from start to finish. So if you're ready to make next year the best you have ever. Best year you have ever had. There's a link in the notes. Hit me up, get on my calendar. You and I will connect to see if it's a fit for you. We do it by call only because we want the right people in. It's about community and collaboration, coaching, community and collaboration. So check it out. But otherwise, you know what happens, my friend. When you get the clarity, you mix it with confidence. You do massive things. So go out and start capturing qualified leads. Have a beautiful weekend.