Three Key Questions to Attract Thousands of New Leads—and Grow Your Business to Seven Figures

• Last updated September 2, 2019
• lead generation

If you’re struggling to attract enough leads—or the right kind of leads—to meet your sales targets and achieve your marketing goals, then look no further.

This post poses three essential questions to consider that together, when answered, give you a personalized lead attraction strategy. Put the strategy into action, and you’ll attract a continuous flow of high quality leads interested in the products and services you have available.

How does it work? In brief, the questions focus on modelling, and building relationships with, those who are already at where you want to be.

Shall we get started? Here’s the first question.

Consider who in your niche is already communicating with, and marketing and selling to, the audience you want to appeal to and attract to your business.

Their audience includes subscribers on their email list, followers on social media and other content platforms, people leaving comments and interacting on their blog, and even attendees of live events.

It’s easy just to immediately think of close competitors. But look beyond that. This can often mean casting a slightly wider net than your own narrow niche.

Where do the people you want to serve go for advice, information and help? Who do they turn to?

Don’t just stick with the first person you find. Try compiling a list of say say ten such people. Then focus on one of them (for now) who appeals to you most.

Once you’ve got the rest of this strategy nailed down, you can then use it for the others on your list over time.

Fortunately, the Internet's a relatively transparent medium, and the reason for most people's success can often be found lying around in plain sight.

So take advantage of this by investigating exactly how they built their audience.

Join Their Audience

Start by joining their audience yourself:

• Sign up to their email list
• Follow them on the platforms they use the most. Here are some of the most important ones to look for them on:
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • YouTube
  • Medium
  • Quora
  • Google Plus
  • Slideshare

Study and Observe

Study everything they do. Yes, study. Approach your research as if you were back at school or college. Take notes. Examine their approach in as much depth as you can.

You'll learn a lot through simple observation.

For example, observe the content they create, where they publish it, and the frequency with which they do so.

This could be in the form of:

• Blog posts, including guest posts on other blogs.
• Social posts.
• Articles.
• Email updates.
• Podcast interviews.
• Videos.
• Paid-for materials such as courses or books, including books available on Amazon.
• Content in offline publications.

(If they are in the marketing niche, you might even find they reveal a lot of their secrets through the content they create and share. Where necessary, invest in their materials and learn as much as you can from them.)

In addition, observe what, how and why they communicate. This includes email, social media, comments (and responses), videos and audio content.

Some Key Questions

To sum up this section, here are some key questions to start looking and and writing down some answers to:

• In what proportion do they share other people’s content versus sharing their own?
• How frequently are they sharing content?
• How often are they posting their own content?
• Whose content are they sharing, and why?
• What kind of engagement do they get, and how does it differ per platform?
• How often do they send out promotional content, compared to other content?
• What type of content do they tend to share the most?
• Which platforms are they generally most responsive on?
• What indications are there of relationships with other businesses that might be assisting their lead attraction activities (e.g. webinars, podcast appearances)?
• How are they using their content and communications to attract leads? For example:
  • If they’re sharing content published on their site, what happens when you click through and visit?
  • Where are the opt-in opportunities? (Try visiting the site via a private browser window, to avoid any cookies you may already have that stop opt-in offers from showing).
  • For content on other platforms like YouTube, what calls to action do they include that involves some form of lead capture?

Use Modelling

While it takes some time to compile this information and do the research, you get two key advantages as a result:

1. You learn a lot about them and how they operate. This means when you reach out and communicate with them (see below), you will be far more effective.
2. You’ll be able to model what they do to grow their audience, and apply it within your own business to grow yours.

Yes, if you want a similar audience to theirs, you need to do what they're doing to get it.

To suppose that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober

In other words, model what they do. Emulate their behavior.

Sure, you might need to adapt it a little for your own business. But watch you don’t lose the often subtle nuances in their behavior that may be central to their success.

Remember, as stated previously, the reason for most people’s success is lying around in plain sight.

The problem is, most people don’t bother to look. Or rather, they don't look in a conscious, investigative way.

By doing so, as described here, you put yourself leaps and bounds ahead of most other business owners.

The final stage of this process is to ask yourself the following...

Yes, that’s right. How can you help them?

This can sound a little counter-intuitive. Instinctively, you’ll probably want to do the opposite—try and get them to help you.

After all, you're the one who needs the helping hand. It should be them helping you, right?

But try to see it from their perspective. They're inundated with people taking this approach everyday. People who just want something from them.

It's a bit like demanding someone take you out for dinner who you've only just met in the street. Your chances of success are somewhere close to zero.

Be different, and you have a far greater chance of success.

It's a longer term strategy, sure.

But only slightly.

Remember, people who want instant gratification—the approach of the masses—tend to be far less successful.

So take the approach of working out how you can best serve them...

Ask yourself what you could do that would:

• Help them, and the people they serve, the most?
• Involve them wanting to link to you regularly via email, through social media, and other channels?

This doesn’t mean trying to manipulate them into serving you. That's the wrong kind of mindset and is unlikely to be successful.

Instead, it means focusing on building a genuine, proper relationship with them, like you would with anyone else.

Over time, through the power of reciprocation and a sense of connection, they’ll feel like they want to help you too.

It's like any positive relationship.

This approach—treating them as an individual you respect, rather than as someone to simply mine for resources to suit your own ends—gives you real power and influence.

It sets you apart from everyone else because it's so different.

So what sorts of things could you do that would help give them what they want, and allow you to start to get to know each other?

Respond to their content in meaningful and helpful ways

Leave comments on their content that:

• Show you’ve absorbed and appreciated the information.
• Illustrate your own expertise.
• Adds value their audience—for example, you may have your own valuable insights based on your own experience.

How does this help them?

By leaving comments, you:

• Add to their social proof, increasing their authority and credibility
• Help their audience with the benefit of your own expertise, increasing the value of their content.

Share their content with your audience

Don't worry that your audience is likely much smaller—for now, at least. It doesn't matter. Share it anyway.

Where appropriate, tag them in the content so they’ll be notified in some way that you’ve shared it (e.g. on Twitter, include their handle).

This helps them by:

• Giving their content broader reach.
• Encouraging further engagement.
• Attracting more followers to them.

Create content they contribute to

Create content that they can contribute to in some way—often with minimal effort or involvement—through which you’ll then link back to them.

One method is to create a roundup post. This might involve:

• Asking them for a direct quote. For example, this might be a relevant paragraph or two with their thoughts on your topic.
• Asking permission to quote them, based on some of their existing content. This involves minimal effort on their part. You’ll have already selected the content you wish to use, they’ll only have to agree if they’re happy to participate.

Through their participation, you are:

• Giving them a link, which helps their SEO and increases their referral traffic.
• Increasing their online exposure and influence.
• Helping to build their audience.

Above all, focus on how you can serve them first and foremost. Over time, as your relationship builds, this will result in them serving you too in some way.

Sure, it’s small steps at first. All relationships are the same.

It takes time to build trust, and that’s no different online.

In Conclusion

How can this strategy really attract thousands of new leads and grow your business to seven figures?

It happens in two main ways:

• As you start to emulate and model those you've been studying, your own results will almost inevitably increase.
• The relationships you build will:
  • Start to rapidly build your authority and credibility in the marketplace, attracting your market.
  • Potentially expose you to their audiences in different ways, such as webinars, mailings, podcasts, and so on.

There's no doubt this strategy works. It just takes the time and commitment required to put it into action and follow it through to success.

steve shaw

Steve Shaw is the CEO of optinopoli™, next-generation lead capture and sales conversion technology—click here for more info.