Local Lead Generation: Is It Really The Best Business Model For Passive Income? (2024 Update)

So, where were we?

Building the site is great and all, but to make money online, you have to focus your marketing efforts to rank your website on page 1 of Google (and any other search engine).

Unfortunately, if you can’t do this and generate leads from the calls you get, then your website is worthless.

But, if you ARE able to get your website ranked and have targeted traffic coming to it on a regular basis, your Digital Leasing asset has the potential of being a cash cow.

Just like if you bought a single family home, or an apartment complex and rented them out to monthly paying tenants, your Digital Leasing can command the same earnings potential.

This could be the business model that actually leads to “working from the beach“.

Oh, and unlike traditional brick and mortar real estate, the great thing about the rank and rent website business model is that there’s virtually no upfront cost.

More specifically, the only significant investment you’ll make in your local lead generation website is the time it will take to learn the skill and apply it to your website asset.

Of course, you will need to buy a domain name, pay your monthly hosting, and website content and links, but when you compare this local lead gen business model to that of Home and Fire insurance and maintenance costs, you’re paying virtually nothing.

Today, we’re going to dive into all the nitty-gritty details into exactly how this works.

You won’t have to sit there and trust me – I’m going to walk you through these steps and you can make up your own mind.

After all, I’m already sitting pretty on some passive income. It’s up to you if you want to join me.

But before we get any further, let’s start with the basics.

What Is A Local Lead Generation Business?

Local Lead Generation is a system of selling high quality leads (aka, new paying customers) to local businesses by building websites, online marketing and search engine optimization.

You can even use paid advertising (ie, Google Ads, Facebook Ads) to start generating leads in your local area.

The way the local lead generation business model works is that you get leads coming to your website, and make money by either selling leads to local businesses (business owners/service providers). Or, you just rent them the website so that they can grow their own business.

Your website will focus on a specific service in a local area, then pull in traffic that will either make phone calls or submit forms.

As I mentioned earlier, you can either sell the lead, rent out the website… or you might even consider partnering up with the business owner for a higher percentage.

Of course, this is just one of the many ways that local lead generation can work for you.

For instance, let’s say you just finished your website and you’re in the process of getting it ranked. You could take advantage of the Pay Per Call lead gen business model using Google Adwords.

So, what you would do is buy these ads on your own dime to get phone calls coming in. Then you forward those calls to a local service provider for more than you paid to get the lead.

As long as your profit margins are high enough, you’re making pretty decent money.

Honestly, the only downsides to this aspect of the small business lead generation business model is the time you invest in setting up the ads and the time it takes to monitor and optimize the ads. If the ads are in the black, you keep them running. If not, then you kill the ads. So, you have to monitor your budget very closely when starting out.

Some people even use Facebook or other social media ads in order to get leads coming into their website.

However, my favorite of the specific models is rank and rent. With this model, you have complete control over your expenses.

Once you get your website up and running, ranked in Google and pulling targeted traffic from specific keywords, and you do this correctly…your website will stay at the top of the search engines because no one else will know how to beat you.

How To Launch A Successful Lead Generation Business

One of the many battles that small businesses run into is that they are unable to generate leads. Honestly, it’s sometimes not really their fault since many local business owners that are service oriented just aren’t into marketing – especially something cutting-edge like the modern world of lead generation.

Due to their lack of marketing prowess, they simply don’t know how to effectively generate local leads or do it on a steady basis.

However, this is a great opportunity for you to present yourself as a “secret weapon” for their bottom line.

Online lead generation gives one the ability to track a wealth of information and data to reach people who will benefit from your services and then replicate that process for future success.

Regardless of how well you’re able to generate local leads, if you can’t create a campaign that is specifically designed to get local clients, and do it over and over again, that campaign will be short-lived.

So, what’s the magic formula to generate leads for small businesses?

It’s all about the website.

Why You Should Rank And Rent Websites

Regarding Digital Leasing, it doesn’t get any better than when you own and rent out a website.

Here are a few reasons why:

• Very low overhead compared to other business models
• The process is easily repeatable over and over again
• Ultimately, your assets can make you money anywhere in the country and the world
• Every local business needs what you offer
• You’re basically a landlord with no overhead or maintenance headaches
• Your return on investment (ROI) is phenomenal

There’s no better feeling than getting your “tenants” sending you a check.

If you can find the right people to partner with, and you can make a deal that’s mutually beneficial for you and their business, it truly is a win-win situation.

Especially if you’re in a relatively small market. You can get your website ranked pretty easily, and you can charge a couple hundred dollars every month.

Now, once you’ve finished your website and have it ranked on page 1, the best part is that you are making residual income each and every month.

Imagine if your website brought in just one call worth $20k to your partner.

How great would that be?

Well, I’ve done that.

Not trying to flex (okay maybe a little), but I just want you to understand this isn’t some fantasy theory I’ve been working on.

Results matter.

This is a niche in a big city that’s priced very competitively, and I keep investing in it because my ROI is so high.

The one thing that I really love about these business models, besides the fact that it costs so little to get involved, is that you have absolute control and you determine what happens and how it will benefit you.

And, since you own the website and all the leads that come in, YOU control who gets them.

I’ve worked with many clients over the last several years.

I’ve done SEO and Social Media Marketing for many people, but for whatever reason, they couldn’t live up to their end of the bargain. No harm, no foul… I just move on to the next person.

Think about it, if you’re not in control, your business income is walking a tight rope with no safety net. No matter how many leads you bring them, it’s not your Digital Leasing.

But you’re in total control of your local lead generation website. If they decide to part ways with you, you can just go to one of their competitors, possibly for even more money.

Keys To Starting Your Local Lead Generation Business Website

If you’re going to do this at all, then my first and foremost advice to you about starting a local lead generation website would be to go all in.

Make this your primary focus and don’t get distracted by all the shiny objects that will come along.

Once you get your first website built and rented out, you can do this process over and over again.

Now, here are 3 concepts that will greatly help you during your journey:

• To find success faster, find someone who’s already been successful and do the same thing they’ve done.
• Attack this business like it’s the only thing that’s left and work your heart out to make it successful.
• Stop listening to all the naysayers. Stay focused, build your websites, get them ranked and rented.

Simple Techniques For Local Lead Generation

With local lead generation, the competition is virtually non-existent. Even if there is some competition, they don’t really know what they’re doing.

The thing is, when starting a lead generation business, the strategies and techniques that are needed to get your website ranked high do have a specific learning curve, which is why so few of your competition bother with it.

And now for the best part…

The 3 tips about how to start a lead generation business that we’re going to go over next will skyrocket your local lead generation 10 times over.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

One of the most crucial aspects of local lead generation is that you become a master of local SEO so that you can bring in new leads at a record rate.

It’s so much easier to rank for local keywords, at least for the most part, than it is for the keywords that are searched by people nation-wide.

If you take a look at the keyword Carpet Cleaners, this would be way harder to get your website ranked high in Google than it would be if you were trying to rank for Carpet Cleaner Marietta Georgia.

Local SEO is relatively easy to learn and it really narrows down to 3 simple principles:

• Content
• Citations
• Backlinks

Even though there are many other ways to know your SEO performance out of the park, these 3 are the foundation of your local SEO success.

Make Your Content Relevant to Your Community

As your writing out the content for your website, you should make sure that your cover your community’s issues.

Your audience will be much more attracted to your lead gen site content if it talks about the things that are happening locally.

SEO like this will accomplish a couple of things… first your content will be more appealing to your local audience, and second you’ll have a better chance of getting traffic to your website when they search for local topics.

Target Your Local Market

What I mean here is that you should focus all of your marketing (online and offline) on your local community.

And this has proven to be correct because a business that adapts their e-commerce and online stores to the needs of local consumers places themselves in a good position to capitalize on local marketing.

For businesses that are smaller to medium-sized who operate on a shoestring budget, local marketing (especially online) makes more sense anyway since they can’t really reach huge and growing audiences anyway.

However, this doesn’t mean that they can build up a strong client base with local marketing.

You see, local marketing can have its pros and cons. On the one hand, if your goal is to get more local customers, then your business is already in a good position. That is, if you have your thumb on the pulse of your community and keep in mind their needs, this will lead them to buy from you.

Here’s what I mean…

Let’s say that your community has a local flower fair every April and you run a flower store. What you could do is structure the content on your website towards this, or even run ads promoting your operation in conjunction with this event. This could have people calling you even well after the fair.

The only part that could be much of a challenge is devising a unique selling proposition to your strategy.

If we look back at the flower festival, instead of saying that you have the best looking flowers in town, you could say something like your flowers will make any float dazzling and gorgeous. Saying that your flowers are the best looking in town will sound a bit vague, but specifying the float addresses the local event.

This way, your business is actually relevant to community events.

When you think about it, it really is quite simple to convert an offline marketing campaign into an online lead generation campaign. You have so many tools at your disposal that you don’t have to have a degree in computer science to satisfy the needs of your community. You just have to know what your community needs and the best way your product can help them.

9 Ways To Target Locally

Local Business Listings

If your business offers products that customers can purchase online, then you should make it a priority to have your business at the top of the search engines when they’re looking for those products. This way, your website will have the upper hand over your competitors.

Also, if you want to know how to start a lead generation business quickly, then make it a point to get your business listed in outlets like Yahoo Local or Google My Business. The best part about this is that you are able to create a company profile with pictures and videos that you can use to show off your business.

If you go this route, make sure you pay close attention to the contact details of your business. The business name, phone number and address should be consistent everywhere.

The last thing you need is to have the search engine give a potential customer the wrong information when they’re looking up information on a local product.

Localized Paid Advertising

It goes without saying that advertising is a great way to bring attention to your business. With that said, if you target a specific community, you stand an even better chance. Running ads that are geo-targeted will have a bigger impact on your business than those that are not.

Google Adwords is one of the best ways to advertise your business on a local level. Google offers you so much more control over your budget, keywords and targeting.

And don’t forget about Facebook Local Ads which allows your business to market to customers inside a certain radius.

Using this feature lets you show your ads only to users on Facebook who live in a very specific part of town.

Localized Social Media

Knowing your demographics is key when it comes to advertising on social media. When choosing a social media platform, you’ll want to look at the ones that are most active. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are a no brainer for general customers, Instagram is great for the younger market, and LinkedIn is custom-made for B2B businesses.

Start by creating buy-in with customers by hosting events. Take lots of pictures of the event and share them on social media, then throw in a few of your latest promos, or just share posts that your visitors will like.

The ads your run on social media is much more than just advertising to a potential customer. You’re also able to connect with your customer on a personal level by answering any question they have or simply providing compelling content.

Localized Landing Pages

The best way to set up your landing page is to have all your business contact info easily accessible to your customers. Information like:

• Company profile
• Phone number
• Products and services
• Store Locations
• Testimonials
• Contact form

Also, if your company has various satellite locations, then it would be a good idea to build out landing pages for each of those locations so that they will be more relevant than having one website covering everything.

Localized Email Marketing

Email marketing is another way your business can effectively reach customers, in addition to your website. There are many ways that you can effectively optimize the marketing for your businesses.

• You can send out newsletters (with relevant local industry news) so that your customers stay in the know about all your products and services.
• Also, you can email out your catalogs in PDF format, any promos that you have, and conduct surveys so that you can get a better understanding of your customers’ needs.

Localized SEO

SEO is a crucial element when businesses want to get highly targeted traffic to their websites. By providing the content and proper SEO that search engines want, you’re almost guaranteed to get to the top of the search results.

An easy way to get your website optimized for search engines is to research the keywords that align with your services and then add them to your site.

The next thing you should do is make sure that the keywords you use on your site are also used in your ads. This will create congruency between your ad and your website.

Adding a blog to your site with up-to-date content that is SEO optimized with relevant keywords along with helpful tips for your customers is not only a great way to be informative, but it will also help you get more local leads so you can convert those leads into sales.

Local Referrals and Strategic Partnerships

Getting referrals is also critical. There’s really no trick to getting customers to refer your business to other people they know. But, as long as you provide good customer service, then your business stands a good chance to get good word-of-mouth advertising.

Strive to build strategic partnerships with businesses related to yours as well. This way, you can refer customers to one another.

One other important thing is to build rapport with other related businesses in your area so that you can refer customers to each other.

A great way to boost your business referrals is to ask for them. Make sure that your employees are always looking on top of this.

The best time to ask for a referral is right after a customer has purchased something from you. So, be sure that your customers have a great experience with you.

Local Offline Presence

As important as it is to have an online presence, your offline presence is just as important. Hosting local events is a great way to build awareness of your business in your community.

Start networking with other local businesses so that you can pick up on how they run their operation.

Sponsoring events will go a long way to get people thinking about your business.

Build Partnerships with Other Businesses?

Finding other businesses in your area that provide products or services that complement yours is a good way to boost exposure.

Let’s say you have a coffee shop, and down the street is a bakery. When you have a customer that comes in for a Mocha Latte, you can tell them about the great donuts down the street, and vice versa.

By working together, both businesses are able to figure out which of their respective products go well with each other. Doing this allows these businesses to provide better value.

Why Rank And Rent Google Maps?

Not only can you rank and rent your websites that are SEO optimized for conversions and sales, you can also rent out your Google My Business listing. As long as you have your GMB optimized and in the Google map pack (see below), you could have small business owners calling and begging you to take their money for this piece of prime Digital Leasing.

Just make sure that you set it up correctly.

Early on, it was pretty easy to set up a GMB for your lead generation website even though you need a physical address, but lately it has become a bit more difficult with all the algorithm updates and manual reviews. Due to that, many lead gen owners bypass the GMB altogether.

Nowadays, you have to jump through quite a few hoops to get a verified Google My Business listing.

Here are 10 things you can do to get your Google map listed.

1. Add images to your listing that are fully optimized
2. Verify that your business information is complete
3. Link the Google Business listing to an optimized website
4. Optimize your listing with the main keyword
5. Have you map embedded on your website
6. Answer any questions that people ask via your GMB and interact with reviewers
7. Develop a process to get more reviews from your customers.
8. Be active on your listing by sharing important and relevant content
9. Strengthen your website authority with relevant backlinks
10. After creating your listing, make sure to add your business to citation websites like Yellowpages.com and Yelp.com

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I Really Make Money With Lead Generation?

I don’t know how this is even a real question: of course you can. You’re over-thinking it.

This biggest obstacle that most people run into with this business is what I like to call the “Paralysis of Analysis”.

What I mean, is that think way too much about all the different marketing strategies of this business model… how much MORE they need to know before they get started… trying to figure out what is a good niche and what isn’t.

This type of thinking will leave you feeling like you’re spinning in circles with no clear direction.

Fortunately, ScamRisk.com has found a program that takes you step-by-step through everything you need to know about Local Lead Generation

This program offers clear and thorough training for creating your Google My Business Map listing and building out your Digital Leasing website. It covers everything from selecting the right niche to optimizing your site for all the search engines, especially Google.

And it helps that the guy running it has experienced tremendous success in the industry, which means his advice carries some weight.

Is The Lead Generation Business Model Still Profitable In 2024?

Yes.

Local Lead Generation is still if not the most lucrative business today, and if you can master lead generation, local businesses will be beating down your door.

When you think about it, the Local Lead Generation business model is simply finding customers for local businesses.

So, for as long as local business owners are still in operation, they will always need new local leads. And if you know how to create a lead generation business and can generate leads for them, then you can pretty much write your own check.

What Are The Best Local Lead Generation Niches?

This part of the process can be a bit overwhelming and confusing because there are SO MANY niches to pick from.

The answer may vary depending which area you’re focusing on.

So, I believe the first thing that you should do is narrow your focus to a specific category, which is home services…that is, any service that requires a business owner to come to your home.

Also, if you’re trying to come up with ideas about how to start a lead generation company, think of the types of things people would search for if they have an emergency. For example:

1. “locked keys in my car”
2. “my car needs towing”
3. “my toilet is overflowing”

Below is a group of emergency niches that would fit the bill nicely:

• Tow Truck
• Roof Leak Repair
• AC Repair
• Plumber
• Pest Control
• Flood
• Emergency Locksmith

Of course, these niches are great and all, but you should try thinking outside the box for sub-niches within a bigger niche.

Niche-ception.

In all seriousness, let’s run an example:

If the hot water doesn’t work in someone’s shower, they could do a search for “plumbers”, but they might have better luck getting the exact person they need if they searched on “repair hot water heater”.

On top of that, these sub-niches are often overlooked when a business owner is ranking their website, so they are easy pickings for SEO optimization.

Here’s another example…

Let’s say you have a Limo service. You could optimize your site for just “Limo Service”, but what if you optimized it for sub-niches like “wedding limo service” or “graduation limo bus”. You could create a list of the different services that Limos offer and add those to your website.

You could also install Google Analytics on your website to see what people are actually searching for.

This is a great tool because Google does all the guesswork for you and send you leads that that you might not have been optimized for. So, create a list of these keywords and optimize for them.

Doing this makes thinking outside the box even easier when you are shown the exact keywords that people are searching for in Google so you can get quality leads.

The Beauty of Rank and Rent Lead Generation vs. Social Media Marketing:

It’s likely that the majority of you folks found this page either doing a Google search, watching a YouTube video or through some other type of social media marketing.

Years ago I started a hybrid social media marketing agency with my main focus in Search Engine Optimization. I can tell you that SEO is the one thing that skyrocketed my business.

On top of that, if you want to know how to do lead generation, social media plays a huge role in increasing your online presence and getting new customers. These skillsets are in such big demand right and I would expect that they will be even more valuable for years to come.

At the moment, my team is running an Instagram and Facebook campaign for a local cosmetic dentistry business. Using these social media platforms is generating us leads like crazy.

In fact, SEO is so powerful that I almost feel guilty having gotten a jumpstart on the SEO wagon train.

I can honestly say that the social media business model in conjunction with SEO and local lead generation has been a huge part of my success.

So, let’s cover a couple of important issues with Digital Marketing and Rank and Rent.

The first thing I would do if this is the route you want to go is to start building your rank and rent websites for local business, the start focusing on SEO.

First, you have your own asset that you have complete control over and second, you have the know-how to get a local website ranked as a case study to show other local businesses.

Also, in the beginning, just focus on one niche, that way you become an expert in the industry and you’re able to scale faster.

So let’s say you have a local client that you’re doing search engine optimization for them on their website, and you’re also running social media ads. What you should do is go buy a domain that is also related to their business, then create a website and SEO it so that it ranks right along with them at the top of the search engines.

Why would you want to do this?

You can go to your client and upsell them on your new lead gen website (that is also pulling in all these leads) and tell them that you can double or even triple the leads to their business with all the newly targeted keywords if they decide to rent your website.

If they say no, well no harm and no foul… you can just take your website to one of their competitors who I’m sure would be more than happy to rent your website from you. Keep in mind that the rank and rent business model allows you to be in complete control of your business, not the client.

This is the main reason I got into ranking and renting in the first place.

Let me explain…

I had several SEO and social media marketing clients a few years ago. Everything was going great, they were making money hand over fist, and they were happy to pay me like clockwork. Well, one day a client decided that they no longer needed my services (which they were wrong) and ended up not renewing their contract with me.

In fact, I guess the word must have gotten around because not long after, a couple more of my clients decided that I was too much added expense. Needless to say, I had to come up with a better solution.

After creating my own website in the same niche as one of my clients and getting more business than their website was getting, it dawned on me that I should be doing this with every SEO client I sign up. After all, they need me more than I need them… more specifically, they need MY leads.

So, should you create a Social Media Agency?

Yes!

Just keep in mind that social media marketing is just the start. Make sure that you also have your rank and rent websites lined up so that your SEO clients can’t drop you like a hot potato.

Is Local Lead Generation Recession-Proof?

During a recession, businesses can get hit pretty hard, but lead generation businesses are going to thrive like you’ve never seen them before.

Desperate business owners all over are going to be buying leads left and right, to the point it might even be a good idea to setup their own lead generation system as a business owner.

Well, whether they decide to start your own lead generation business, or decide to start learning lead gen for their existing business, they’ll need someone to teach you these lead generation strategies.

Luckily, if you check out our #1 recommendation, you’ll see a program that teaches you exactly that. You’ll get all the local lead generation tools, tips, and tricks, you’ll need to start reaching out to potential customers and start living financially free regardless of our seemingly never-ending financial uncertainty.

At ScamRisk, we find many programs every day, like the My Lead Gen Secret business, that come up short. But from time to time, we’ll find one that meets all the requirements for a legitimate business model.

Digital Leasing takes you step-by-step through everything you need if you’re serious about making money online with the local lead generation business model.
From building a local lead gen site… ranking the site… then contacting local business owners to partner with.

In addition, they have a Facebook Group that gets together twice a week for online coaching calls so that you can get all your questions answered.

So, you won’t be in this alone.

After that deep dive, I’m sure your head is swimming and you have a whole bunch of questions.

So, check out our recommendation and see if it’s the right fit for you.

It sure helped me.