The $300B industry of leads

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Updated: June 7th, 2022

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The $300B industry of leads

Lead generation is projected to reach a market size of $295B by 2027.

And what is lead generation, exactly? In short, it is the process of capturing the interest of potential customers. With the goal of turning them into sales.

In a world where everybody is fighting to get people’s attention, being able to do this right is extremely valuable.

How valuable?

There are industries willing to pay thousands of dollars for a qualified lead.

The higher the ticket/LTV, the more money you can get. Think of real estate, financial services, etc. Lawyers will gladly pay $10K per month to have a website that consistently brings leads.

This founder makes over $500K/year teaching people how to capture leads and sell them to companies. I wouldn’t miss this one if I were you, it’s a great case study.

More examples of crazy money being made generating leads:

By the numbers:

$829B -> global content marketing market size by 2027
8 -> lead generating websites = a 6-figures salary
$1K -> average monthly fee to rent a lead generating website

Our take:

Capturing people’s attention is a superpower. If you’re good at it, you’ll do well in life.

Do some research. “Limousine rental in XXX”, are they already investing in Google ads? Maybe they can get better results from a lead generating website.

A good way to start is to go local and to focus on small cities where competition may be lower.

And the best part? This type of business requires a very low investment.

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Quick hitters

(1) This guy bought a business for $2,5K and grew it to $100K/year. For some, coming up with a business idea is everything. But spotting a good business with the potential to grow is a huge skill.

Growing an underperforming business is a great idea to make money: this guy makes $1.5M/year flipping websites, this guy bought a dying marketplace and grew it to $1.7M/year, this couple bought a business and 15x’d the revenue.

Or you can take it as far as this guy, who bought 40 businesses.

(2) This side hustle generates $60K/year working only 15 hours per week. The ultimate goal for many people and the reason for lots of founders to start a company, spend less time working.

The truth is, there’s no correlation between the number of hours you work and the money your business makes. For example, this guy makes $1.2M/year working 5 hours per week.

These 4 companies went viral and yours can too

A product can go viral after a Superbowl ad or if a celebrity shoots a weird commercial of it.

Going viral can be a blessing and a curse. Your business must be ready to receive huge attention in a short period of time.

The most important takeaway is that going viral doesn’t just happen. These founders worked their tails off for it. Here’s how they did it:

#1. Sold out after 5 minutes on TV

These founders won a pitch competition on the shopping channel QVC. Their innovative cart sold out within 5 minutes of being in the air.

The company today generates over $7M in sales.

#2. Reaching Kickstarter’s goal in 24h

This waterproof notebook did $250K in sales and became one of the most successful projects until then.

Standing out on Kickstarter will often lead to attention from the press, and get you covered in blogs, magazines and on TV. The product was featured in different outlets, which helped reach a $500K turnover in its first year.

#3. “Buying” Facebook virality

These “swoveralls” are a $1.2M/year product. Their success started by going viral on Facebook. But this didn’t happen by chance, they hired an agency that published a video on several fan pages with big audiences.

There are agencies that specialize in helping companies go viral. They likely have it down to a science.

#4. Getting customers without a product thanks to Reddit

This $180K/year tool for job seekers exists thanks to a viral Reddit post. With millions of daily active users, trending on Reddit can get you a ton of attention.

Thanks to this, the founder was able to validate his idea and get its first users. Plus, he found a co-founder.

Thanks for reading!

meet the author

Pat Walls

I'm Pat Walls and I created Starter Story - a website dedicated to helping people start businesses. We interview entrepreneurs from around the world about how they started and grew their businesses.

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