What is a lead?
Before I can talk about how I got my first engaged leads, I need to first define what is a lead. When I say lead I'll be using the definition of lead as described by Alex Hormozi's $100m Leads book. "A lead is a person you can contact. That's all".
A lead is a person you can contact. That's all
Engaged leads
If a lead is a someone you can contact then what is an engaged lead? Engaged leads are people who show interest in the stuff you sell. It is someone who gave you their contact information and has accepted communication from you whether explicitly or not. An explicit example is someone filling out a form on your website. An implicit example is someone who followed you on social media. While they aren't explicitly telling you to contact them, because they have followed you on social media they have shown interest in your stuff and thus are engaged leads.
My first two engaged leads
At the time of writing my engaged lead count is now up to five. Five people have shown interest the stuff that I sell to some capacity, but I'll be focusing on the first two since they were the biggest emotional wins out of all of them.
How I found them
Both of these engaged leads first started off as just leads that I found through scraping. I scraped these leads using the lead scraping method mentioned in my last blog post.
Recruitment agency
I was going through my list of scraped leads creating personalizations for each one, which I planned to use for my cold outreach. Part of my process of finding information for personalization was to see if they had a blog on their website, or see what they've been posting on their business Facebook. That same this recruitment agency just so happened to have posted about how they had just redone their website and how it was a labor of love. They were asking for feedback in on the website in their post. This was perfect for me. I do website reviews as a my lead magnet
Getting them to engage
My first idea was just to simply comment if they would be interested in a full website audit. I quickly turned this idea down because why would they be interested. I need increase my chances of them replying back as much as possible. That is when I remembered Alex Hormozi's big fast value. When trying to get cold prospects to engage, you need to provide the biggest value possible as a fast as possible.
When trying to get cold prospects to engage, you need to provide the biggest value possible as a fast as possible.
What I did instead of give them some very actionable advice on their websites hero section.
Side note: Any time you are critiquing something, always provide examples to go with the critique, don't just say why something is bad or wrong. Be sure to give them something to work with
I told them why their hero section wasn't great and other possible options for a better headline. I also gave them advice on how to make the headline text more readable. After that I asked if I could do a full audit of their website and made sure to state that I wasn't looking for money. They should be more likely to say yes because I had already provided them with some free value. They did say yes
From their I delivered my lead magnet for them and they loved it so much that now they want to work with me. If all goes well I'll create a post about my first paid client.
Saas software business
How I found this Saas company was interesting. My cold reach out process begins with me sending out emails offering my lead magnet. One of the emails that I sent was to a real life pony merry go around company. They go to events and create and set up a merry go round, but with real ponies. Its a metal structure that just only allows the ponies to move in one direction, and that is forward in a circular motion.
...a real life pony merry go around company
Real pony life merry go round
The business owner who I emailed of this company picked up that I was using AI for my templates. I told them the truth and said that I did use AI to create my email template, but that my outbound personalization was real and me actually finding information on them to use. I asked if they would like me to evaluate the website. The owner proceeded to tell me that their pony business just didn't make the money to justify. That is when the owner brought up that they were involved with a Saas company that would probably benefit more from marketing services.
Delivering lead magnet
I asked them if they would they would be fine with me evaluating their website. Its something that I do at no charge so its a pretty easy sell. The owner agreed and thus became an engaged lead.