Your competitors are generating more CBD leads than you for one reason: they know the lead generation strategies that work and take the time to learn what improves their lead scoring. How can you expect to get customers if you don’t work on the same factors?
The main issue with a CBD business lies in the fact that most stores need to be online, which means you don’t market a specific physical store but rather your eCommerce. How is this an issue? That all your lead generation processes will be digital-based.
The good part? It can be easy to get more leads since websites aren’t commodities but necessities for businesses. It isn’t a secret that online stores are pretty much the future, and strategies based on digital efforts are better today.
However, there’s a lot of competition, and handling lead gen can be tough for CBD stores. With this in mind, you need to start with the basics: create your website.
With this in mind, your business may be digital or similar to your niche, but that doesn’t mean that you should not include traditional strategies. Referrals, networking, and meeting face-to-face with some customers when possible are all good options.
It is unlikely that you will be able to integrate all lead generation strategies. However, it is good to limit your options and focus on the most effective and efficient based on results and budget.
We will discuss the most effective CBD leads and how you can make sure they are high-quality ones. We will also share some tips to help you maximize your results and get more qualified leads in the short and long term.
Teach Others What You Know
It is not new to share educational content for free, but it is often overlooked.
Instead of convincing customers, you are the best supplier for the products they’re looking for; content marketing can help you show them the quality of your products without actually marketing them. How? By sharing your knowledge and taking the time to explain what CBD is or all its aspects.
It may seem counterintuitive, but sharing everything you know will help you attract leads willing to pay for your CBD products thanks to how you look like a professional and someone well-knowledgeable in the field, which is pretty much something like: “this person isn’t selling a random product.”
This strategy relies on trust and building awareness. People will be relieved to know that they have purchased from someone who is trustworthy.
How can you make this strategy a reality? You can share all content, even on social media, to your websites and other platforms.
Blogs are a great way to increase your lead generation, even though they seem saturated.
Remember that blogging is more about quality than quantity. However, it is important to keep adding new content to it and regularly.
Regular blogging helps to establish credibility with your readers and keeps you relevant in search results.
Most CBD sellers avoid blogging often because they don’t know what topics to write about or run out of them very quickly. However, with so many tools available today like AnswerThePublic or just a quick Google search, it is pretty much impossible to run out.
Instead of trying to come up with ideas, ask your customers what they want as well. Repeat the process of answering their questions and then share your answers on social media sites where potential customers are connecting with you.
You can come up with ideas for what to do or what topics to discuss from time to time. These ideas will help you get started if you don’t know where to start:
- What are your products? Set a short explanation or content to let people who aren’t familiar with CBD know.
- What are the top questions visitors or customers ask?
- Do you have reviews from customers you can share? What about how they feel after using your products?
- What valuable resources can you share with potential customers?
It doesn’t take much to become a great writer. You can also rely on audio, video, and multimedia in general. Don’t feel stuck with one option just because it is what most people use.
But is it actually worth your time? What does a blog do for you?
Here are some reasons why you should start a blog:
- Blog posts can help position you as an expert in your field.
- You can establish a personal connection with your visitors with each article you write. A personal connection with your reader is a better way to sell.
- Blogging can help you get inbound leads. This is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your site.
Optimize your blog posts with keywords customers are most interested in. These keywords can be searched on Google or other search engines like Google Keyword Planner.
Prospecting Your CBD Leads
It won’t be easy to get people to inquire about your products if you’re just beginning. Though, many customers already have an idea of what they want to buy and why. Others… they are trying to learn about it. This is why prospecting for quality leads is crucial.
This basically involves finding people who benefit from your products, then contacting them and pitching your offer.
A small team can dedicate one hour per day to prospect leads. If you are alone, you may need to invest about 2 hours.
First, you need to create a customer profile. A customer persona will help you identify the type of business or individual you are looking for and, depending on how you focus your business, which we believe will be a B2C.
Next, you will need to compile a list of individuals who match your customer persona. Once it is done, connect with them.
As a cold prospect, you can also use freelancing job websites. Check out online directories, too. You shouldn’t have any problems using them as long as they are functional.
You should assign someone to manage your team, and when your website and store grow, you better have someone lending you a hand for this task. The person responsible for managing sales metrics, such as closed deals, warm leads, sending products, and more, should also be assigned.
Create A Stunning eCommerce Store
Remember what we mentioned about your store being online? Well, you need to start working on this and make sure it is well-optimized, looks great, and customers can access the products without delays.
If your potential prospects ever have questions, 47% of consumers visit brands’ sites before buying. This is a universal behavior that spans generations, which is why it is even more important to establish yours as soon as you can.
Websites should be more than just functional and operate as your store. It must look attractive to draw people in and even make them purchase one of your CBD products for this reason alone.
But what do we mean with optimization, as mentioned earlier? Your website should load quickly, be concise in information, and have reduced steps to achieve a goal/purchase.
Social Media is the Best for Marketing Products
There are many ways to connect with your audience through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We all know that social media can be used to reach certain groups of people, and it is visual.
This is a great way for your brand to be seen by the world. Through content, you can showcase your products as well as your brand personality. This can be used to build an audience or follow and attract clients.
How do you do that? There are many social media platforms, and not all of them are the same. It is important to know how to approach each section and what content to share based on the correct format.
Right here, we will help you by adding some of the best platforms:
- Facebook.
Facebook is the most used social media platform, with over 2.7 billion users monthly. It offers many benefits to businesses. These are just two of the ways you can gain leads from it:
- Your existing social network: Family and friends can help you create a professional Facebook page by sharing it with other people. It’s possible to help someone in need of your CBD products.
- Facebook Leads: This is an easy and painless method to collect contact information and data about potential clients. These forms can be tailored to specific buyers at a particular stage of their life. No matter what your goal is, these forms can be customized to help you increase brand awareness and acquire customers.
- Instagram.
This visual platform allows you to share your designs. This is a great place for creativity and entertainment. People will be inspired by your funny images and posts and eventually grow interested in your products.
You should not use social media for marketing your product all the time but rather share a wide variety of content that is still related to your niche. Here, the idea is to increase awareness of your business and encourage people to use your services.
Make Them Subscribe to an Email Newsletter
It is crucial to show potential customers your content after creating it, even if they haven’t purchased any of your items yet.
An email newsletter is a great way for prospects to be nurtured and share content. Customers will send you their best content and email address in return for your attention. And no, this doesn’t work for only people working with clients or services.
For CBD buyers, you can get many benefits. They’ll give you lots of value in return for your attention, which will show that you are the best CBD seller in the area.
Newsletters can help you keep customers in the loop even when they’re not ready to buy from you or are trying to decide if they should.
Building trust is the most important reason to start an email newsletter.
Email is a great way to build relationships with your subscribers. It opens up a dialogue between prospects and allows them to trust you, allowing them to make the final decision.
These are some great tips for creating an email newsletter.
- Newsletters must be sent at a specific time. Make sure to send your newsletter every week or every month so subscribers know what to expect.
- A mix of personal stories and anecdotes as well as educational content. In this case, you can share anything you come up with regarding CBD.
- Each newsletter should contain a subtle call-to-action: But don’t try too hard to sell. Instead, let them know you are available and an option for the products.
Become a Podcast Guest
Podcasting is very popular, but it takes time and effort to grow your audience. This is especially true if you’re looking for customers in this niche.
Instead, take advantage of other people’s audiences and become a guest on podcasts your prospects are already listening to.
Podcast hosting is a great way to make money, and it’s much more rewarding than starting from scratch. Podcasting can build trust with potential clients who will view you as an expert and reliable store.
Podcasting can bring many SEO benefits to your business. Also, it is faster than guest posting, and you still get valuable backlinks.
You can reach your ideal clientele quickly by choosing the right channels and start generating those sales-qualified leads.
Find the best podcasts for you. Search iTunes, SoundCloud, and Spotify for industry-specific keywords. Next, reach out to each host and explain what you do. Do not just talk about your products. Instead, focus on the benefits for their listeners.
Once the negotiation is done, be a great host.
Share valuable tips and facts to attract clientele. Every episode should conclude with a call to action if you take part in more than one, of course.
Ask podcasters for a link to your landing page, so the audience learn more about you. After the episode is published, share it with as many people and include it in your email newsletter.
With permission from the host, you can also repurpose this content to create a blog article and make your voice heard. Your lead scoring should be completed by the end.
Spread the Word: Connect & Socialize
An introvert can still earn lots of money and customers by socializing, as hard as it can be.
Although this is all online, CBD continues to be kind of a reduced niche, which means you need to build relationships with suppliers and customers, and others involved in it to connect with prospects and opportunities later.
This is where the lead generation strategy that we have discussed in this section comes in. You must socialize. For it, you can:
- Take part in fairs and conventions.
First, it is important to build good relationships with other sellers (believe it or not). Customers who are looking for a specific product in the niche might not find it with their usual suppliers. As a result, those sellers might recommend you if you have it and if you can offer a high-quality one. Some relationships can make you a lot of money for this sole reason.
Recommendations are a key part of the CBD industry, where connections are a bit limited.
You can also meet new clients and prospects who are just trying to learn more about CBD.
You can also use your Instagram and Facebook pages to search for potential customers who can be interested in you.
This will allow you to be recognized for your products, which can lead to publicity.
- Get involved in charitable activities, if possible.
It is possible to attend some events where CBD products or similar ones are offered. In this way, you connect with people who are actually trying to get them or maybe trying to learn if they are useful for their needs.
What will you gain? You will get more publicity, recognition, and customers in the short and long term.
- Referrals.
The best way to find new customers is still through word-of-mouth referrals. Ask customers to review your products and business and recommend you to friends or people they know.
- Barter (wisely).
Bartering is the act of exchanging goods for money. Bartering is popular among CBD sellers and because they can offer a product in exchange for advertising (posting photos, writing positive publications). All this is usually done while partnering with influencers.
Bartering can make you very rich, but it is important to be cautious.
Take some time to look at the person you want to work with. How many active followers does this person have? Do they represent your target audience? Do you want to be associated with them?
If you are going to enter into a deal, be clear about the terms. Both parties will be able to understand what they can and should expect.
Ask for Reviews (Once More)
Have you ever read reviews before going to a restaurant or purchasing from a store? Remember what we mentioned not long ago? We may be old-fashioned, but we still want to see the reviews of previous customers to find out if they were or are satisfied with what they got. Others think the same.
This is why we want to remark how important reviews are. Ask them to leave feedback on Google, tag your photos via Instagram, and give you a testimonial about how your products are.
If you would like to receive reviews, you will need to ask. Don’t be afraid to do so, as some people just need a bit of encouragement.
As a species, we are less likely to leave a review for a positive experience than for a negative one. However, you can always find people who are willing to do it.
It’s Essential to Have A Solid Marketing Strategy
To increase your visibility and get each qualified lead, you need a strong, results-oriented marketing strategy. No one will find your business if you don’t make an effort to market it. This is something we hope you have learned during this article, considering each lead generation strategy we’ve shared so far.
Marketing falls under lead generation, but let’s pretend that both have their own spaces.
Your marketing campaigns promote your CBD products. Lead generation strategies are the same. One is for awareness, the other for capturing leads.
We consider them to be the same when it comes to building a plan. Strategies from both sides must be considered. There will not be differentiation.
We want to highlight the solid strategy, as you don’t only need one alone. You need many and a complete plan.
With that in mind, plan as much as you can, track which ones work, and start generating high-quality CBD leads.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your CBD Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My CBD Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic CBD Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.