145. Baking it Down - Not All Leads are Created Equal

Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

☎️ Not All Leads Are Created Equal

Let's define some words before we jump into this week's podcast topic:

• ✅ Lead: someone contacting you to secure a potential product or service
• ✅ Qualified Lead: a lead that has been vetted and is willing to pay your price or work with your availability
• ✅ Converted Lead: a lead that has turned into a sale, a sign-up, or a confirmation (ideally this is when money exchanges hands)

️🎯 So - the goal of marketing is to generate leads - ie. get the phone to ring and the inbox to ping. But the goal of sales is to convert a lead (generated from marketing) into money (a conversion).

🤔 So how do we qualify leads? Ideally, before they even see the lead in our inbox. That's where lead qualification comes into play - doing things to ensure that the lead that hits our Facebook messenger is one that's ready to reach into their wallet and pay our price.

If you find that your leads often turn into Casper, 👻 you probably need to qualify them better before they reach your inbox.

📠 Lead Qualification:

To qualify a lead before they ask how much then play the "let me ask my husband" card, let your marketing do the heavy lifting. How? 📸 Great question - high-quality photography is a perfect jump-off point along with these other tips to get ya cut out to qualify leads:

📞 Higher end, better photography
📞 Copy that includes high-end keywords (not discount verbiage like "sale")
📞 Base price listed multiple times / places
📞 Posting in places where the ideal audience exists (not in Buy Nothings / FB Marketplace which is OBO)

🚗 Allow me to demonstrate my point on why photography makes a world of difference. Here's a Mercedes AMG-GLE. I don't own this car, but boy would I love to. It's the same car in two different photos. The top photo - is in an insurance claims lot. The bottom photo? A photo taken from Mercedes' website.

🚘🚘 It's the same car in both photos - but one makes you think, "Wow - that's a $$$ car," and one makes you think, "Hm, maybe I can actually afford this - I'll just need to teach one cookie class every day for the entire year. Easy, right?"

💰 Another great way to qualify your leads is by having your base price posted everywhere.

😩 "But twins - what if that drives them off?!"

Perfect - that's the goal. 💸 When you're just too far apart on price, you've got a recipe for a tire kicker on your hands. If I think you're going to tell me the cookie quote is $20, but you tell me it's $120 - there's very little salesmanship you can say to help me make that monetary jump.

By posting your "my prices start at" disclaimer, you help people qualify themselves. 🧼 Just like Car Wash Steve, had he said, "Car detailing starts at $100," I wouldn't have been emotionally side-swiped thinking it was a $40 service. 😲

A great way to implement these base price notices is through your Facebook and Google auto-responses.

Here's where you can access your auto-response messages through Business Manager (on desktop). Go to business.facebook.com > click on the Inbox icon on the left > click on "Automations" button on the top right.
📠 Lead Conversions:

📞 Quick Response Time
📞 High-end Customer Service
📞 Easily Accessible Booking Process
📞 Social Proof (Reviews)
📞 Professional Email / Website
📞 Accepting Credit Cards (Multi Payment Options)

Once the qualified lead hits the inbox, it's time to turn into a salesman. Listen - they already know what your base is. They're even ready to reach into their wallets. How deep they reach is up to you selling them.