Lead Gen Mastery: Owning Vs. Renting Your Marketing Channels

Let’s take a minute to talk about all of the OPTIONS you have for getting more customers online. HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Angie’sList, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, Google Business Listing, Craigslist (if that’s even still a thing…) are just a few of the many paths you can take. However, only a couple have proven themselves over time. Let’s quickly go over the pros & cons of each.

Evaluating Popular Lead Sources

HomeAdvisor

• Pros: You can get “leads” fast.
• Cons: They are shared leads, low quality, you don’t OWN your marketing channel (HomeAdvisor controls it all, including the price per lead), and you’re not investing long-term into your business. Essentially, you’re just renting someone else’s marketing channel!)
  

Thumbtack

• Pros and Cons: Same as HomeAdvisor.

Google Ads

• Pros: Get website traffic and leads quickly.
• Cons: You have to pay per click for as long as you want results.

Facebook Ads

• Pros: Get website traffic quickly.
• Cons: Leads can be extremely low quality, even fake, and the “buyer intent” is much lower than leads from Google.

Craigslist

Really, do I even need to cover this one??? Let’s leave Craigslist for your Auntie Ethel and people selling their used mattresses.

Google Business Listing

• Pros: Generates calls like clockwork if ranked on Google properly.
• Cons: Takes some time to optimize & rank on Google.

Below: A before and after image of one of our client's Google Business ranking reports. In one month we fixed some major visibility issues, and are on track to dominate the area for his service keywords. If you don't understand what you are looking at, watch this video.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

• Pros: Highest quality leads of all lead sources, you OWN the marketing channel (your website), you don’t have to pay per lead, and you can continue to expand your target market reach over time.
• Cons: Same as Google Business Listing, it can take some time to optimize & rank on Google.

Below: Our clients getting 100+ calls, without having to pay per lead.

The RENTING vs. OWNING Analogy

What’s the picture that’s being painted here? All of these lead sources and marketing channels fall into TWO categories:

1. Lead sources where you are RENTING someone else’s marketing channel (HomeAdvisor, Thumbtack, Craigslist, etc.)
2. Lead Sources where you OWN the marketing channel, and it becomes a lead-generating ASSET that you can leverage for years to come (Google Business Listing & SEO).
   
   

The best illustration for this difference is “RENTING vs. OWNING”, in regards to real estate. Why would you pay someone rent ($$$$$), making them more money over time, when you could OWN your home, creating and leveraging an ASSET for yourself?

Leveraging SEO for Long-Term Benefits

At Roundhouse Digital Marketing, this is the message we’re constantly preaching. Whenever you decide to utilize SEO to transform your Website & Google presence into an ASSET that you invest in over time, good things happen. You start to generate your own, uber-qualified leads through your website & business listing, you begin to rank your website, which is a long-term growth catalyst for your company, and you’re building a marketing & lead generation asset that YOU own, and NO ONE ELSE (your competitors) have access to! It’s a win-win-win, and you’re constantly investing in your company.

Getting Started

Sounds pretty good, right??? If you want to hop on a call with me (Philip) to learn more about the process and how we can implement our "Perpetual Prospecting Engine" into you business then click this link and book a Free 10-minute marketing strategy call with us! We can answer any questions you have about how to leverage Google to build a long-term lead generation ASSET using digital real estate that you OWN & CONTROL!