Generating free leads online. That’s why you are all here so let’s get straight to it.
I am massively passionate about generating free leads online, and the reason is. Three years ago, I was spending £20,000 a month on leads. I had a team of 12, and I was buying my leads, names, numbers, email addresses, all from third party companies, and I did that for almost seven years. The problem was I had no control over the people that I was buying and the actual quality of the lead that was coming in. There was no one who I was niching down to assist. I was just taking anything and everything.
A few months ago, I was sitting on holiday with my family, and leads are still coming into my business. Jack is in the office posting the videos that we’ve recorded, and then people are downloading from our website the seven mistakes that business owners and entrepreneurs make when buying and investing in property. And I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, “How is this happening?” Because three years ago I was spending £20,000 a month, and I hated it because I didn’t know the person who I was selling to and it wasn’t my ideal type of client.
While I was sitting on holiday, I started to think about the process that I’ve gone through to be able to get to this point, and it has steadily grown. We roughly get 20 to 30 leads a week now, or inquiries from you guys, all through social media without any marketing spend at all. All I was trying to think of was a way in which I could simplify this that would help other people, because the reason why I’m a mortgage broker and why I love property, and even more why I love my niche of helping self-employed people, is because I make the impossible possible in some instances, and I just love helping. Over the last two and a half years since I niched the business down to self-employed people, I have just loved giving away my free value content that is answering key questions of my audience.
So, I’m sitting on holiday and I’m thinking about the four C’s, and those four Cs are you need to connect with your audience, and there’s a way in which you do that. You need to cultivate that relationship, and there’s a way in which you do that. It’s all well and good having you guys tuning in, finding your tribe, and all that sort of stuff, but if you don’t capture them, and that’s something like an email address, a contact, getting them to make the logical next step to submit an inquiry or to have a conversation with you, they’re not yours. They’re social media’s. So, you need to get that first capture point from them, and then once you’ve managed to capture them, you need to continue cultivating the relationship, and then you need to convert them into a client.
Now I’m thinking, “Right. Connect, cultivate, capture, and convert,” and they were the four Cs. That’s kind of the order and the process that I came up with overall that I’ve done over the last two and a half years, not on my own because I’ve got Jack. I had a previous marketing assistant, Izzy. You know, my team helped me with the confidence, with the content, and every single person that I speak to and help with a mortgage gives me ideas for the content that I need to put out to solve the problem that people think there is in the marketplace when it comes to getting self-employed mortgages.
When I initially started connecting with people on social media two and a half, three years ago, and starting to cultivate those relationships, there were points where I’m putting a Facebook live out or I’m doing a video and I doubted myself. I doubted, and I worried what people were going to think. There was that little bit of fear that someone might not like what I’m saying. There’s still that element that thinks, “Who’s going to say something?”
I’ve come to learn, partly with age, that there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like what you do. Not everybody is going to like what you say. Not everybody is going to agree with what you say. People are going to have their own opinions on the message that you put out on what you believe and what you don’t believe. Nobody’s going to agree with you 100% because every single one of you is unique in the same way that I am.
So, I added a fifth C, and that fifth C is to continue to have confidence, and confidence only comes by sharing your content and giving away your most valuable assets, and then you need to capture people and their data and their documents and their information, and then you need to convert them into a client. That’s all essentially that I have done over the past two and a half years, and there is, yes, there’s a massive deep method behind that. We’ve got a structure for each of the social media platforms which are way different to what it was two and a half years ago. It’s way more structured. We know our results. We can monitor those, but it all comes back to building relationships.
I’m just trying to share my passion, my experience, and my knowledge from what I’ve learned over the last two and a half years, which is all I have done with trying to help people with self-employed mortgages, 15 years’ worth of experience. I think anyone of you who is reading this, the best thing that you can do is to share something that you have learned because if you help one person, then you’re having a massive benefit and you’re having a huge impact on those individuals.
I’ve come to learn over the last two and a half years that I love doing this. The whole reason why I became a mortgage advisor was to help people, and there’s no bigger way to help somebody than with the largest debt that they have on their personal circumstances. You know, there’s not much more than we take on than a mortgage of 200, 300, 400, 500 grand, whatever it might well be, and to help somebody achieve that and to help them to move into their dream home or take their next logical investment step with property is massive.
But equally, what I’ve also learned, having spoken to thousands of business owners and entrepreneurs, is the fact that not everybody is there in terms of the income that they need to have to buy said property or to start investing or to save the deposit, whatever it might well be. And that’s where I’ve learned as I’m growing my business, how can I help you to make more money. And in running my Facebook group for mortgage advisors, the one thing that everybody wants is more leads. The one thing I said to my dad in 2006 when I went self-employed and I borrowed two and a half thousand pounds from him to go self-employed was as long as I have leads and people who want to buy my mortgage or buy my product or invest in my service, I will have a business.
So, when I’m sitting on a holiday and I’m thinking, “How are we still managing to get these leads?” Yes, it’s the book. Yes, it’s the videos. Yes, it’s the lead magnet. But it’s the free content that I am given away, and it’s being consistent, and it’s just having that energy, that passion, and that drive to build relationships with you guys online. So I hope that helps you, and I hope you start to think about in your business how you can share your content to help your audience. And if you would like to come on this journey with me and learn more about the five Cs, I’m trying to flesh this out. I love sharing valuable content. So in the future, we’re going to be launching the Active Entrepreneur Podcast.
Jack and I are working on that now. I’m interviewing my clients, guys who are newly self-employed and setting up their businesses, because I’m massively passionate about building a business around my family, and I’m interviewing guys who are going from employed to self-employed. I’ve got another client of mine who’s just acquired two businesses and gone from two and a half million to about 6 million a year, so I’m going to interview him and bring you his story and his journey. He’s got, kids. He was at V Festival last year with his eldest daughter. He is a cool man for a 50-year-old and got a life that I would like to have in 13 years’ time.
I want to start sharing some of this inspiration or information, and equally, I want to learn more because I’ve invested about £100,000 in my marketing journey over the last three years. I knew three years ago that I needed to invest my knowledge into marketing because I was just buying leads, names, and numbers, so I have spent 100,000 on learning this stuff inside out. I want to bring you that information and share my knowledge in something new in a new area that is hopefully going to help you to generate more leads for your business, which in turn is going to generate you more income, generate you more profit, that’s going to help you to buy and invest in property.
And equally, I’m growing my own business. I’ve got an administrator, I’ve got a marketing assistant. I’ve got a mortgage advisor who’s just started this week with no experience, so I’m coaching him on my 15 years’ worth of experience. So, I want to share that journey with you in the hope that it helps you to build a business around your lifestyle.
If you do want to download and be part of the information that I’m going to share around the five Cs, then you can go to my website garydas.com. There is a page on there, how to generate free leads. If you do want to be part of that and you do want to benefit from the experience and the thousands of pounds or the hundred thousand pounds that I’ve spent over the last three years, then go and click to that mailing list, and I hope that it can help you over the coming months, years, and you’ll stick with me on this journey.
Thanks very much.
