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Hello and welcome to the show. Today we're going to look at leveraging WhatsApp and social media for lead generation. Now this sounds very fancy and highfalutin, so let's try and break things down with some simple definitions. Now remember, the definitions that I use on the show are just simple everyday common man, common woman definitions that we use, so these definitions are not technically precise. They're going to listen to other podcasts and they're going to tell you that you can defy the lead as this and the lead generation as that or you might read a textbook that says this is what the lead is, this is what lead generation is. So yes, you are going to find much more better and technically robust definitions elsewhere. But for now and on this podcast, I'm much more concerned with giving easy definitions that you can remember without having to make reference to anything else so that you can practice all the stuff that you learn over here because my focus over here on the podcast and with the clients that I interact with one -on -one is I'm trying to keep things so simple that you can remember. If it's simple and you can remember, you can do it.
And if it's simple and you can remember and you can do it easily, then you can also teach to other people, your staff members, your spouse, your friends, your little cousin, your big sis, whoever it is that wants to help sell on your behalf. So a lead is anyone who has raised their hand. When I say raised their hand, I just mean that this person might be interested in your product or your service.
You don't know how interested in whether it's a big interest or a small interest, but for now, we're just looking for anyone who might be interested in your product or service. So someone has raised their hand, they have done something right now, or they've done something in the past that shows that they might be interested in your product or service. So you get that person's contact details, that person is a lead that you can now chase down because the person has done something to show that they might be interested. You have a contact detail, you have a phone number, you have an email address, you have a social media account, you have a physical address, you have a something that you can chase down. So that is a lead. If somebody raises their hand,
that person is a lead. Now, if you look at it that way, then lead generation, even though it sounds all technical and everything just becomes very, very simple. Lead generation, understanding lead generation rather, just means that if you're doing any activity online or you're doing it in the real world, any activity that get people to raise their hands, that is just lead generation. Now,
like I said, you're going to find much more robust definitions over on other podcasts and out there on the internet. But for now, let's look at it this way. You know, pretend you're back in the classroom days or you know, remember when we were kids, anybody raises their hand, a person is a lead. Lead generation, how do we get more people to raise their hands? That's all lead generation is. So for those of you who've been listening to the podcast for a long time,
if you remember the one of the older episodes I did on lead generation, and the example that I gave was I picking up my kids from school, I come out of the gate, I'm heading to my car, a young man steps forward, he says good afternoon sir, he hands me the flyer, and he says we do blah blah blah blah blah and then he leaves. I look at the flyer, what they do is bags, water bottles, plates, socks, what else, you know, all those,
the sorts of things that you need for a kid to go to school. So you hand out a bunch of those flyers. The flyers have four numbers there. It has an Instagram handle there. If you go out and you hand out 1 ,200 flyers, and out of that 1 ,200 flyers that you handed out on Monday, let's say by Friday, three or four people call you, those are leads. We'll call those inbound leads.
Well, some people call them inbound leads because you know, they were chasing you, but really you're the one that started the whole process by sending out those flyers in the first place. So you know what, let's not worry about how you categorize the lead, just know that you dropped 1 ,200 flyers, four or five parents called you, that's a lead. 12 parents send you Instagram DMs, that is a lead. Let's see what else. One person drove into the store, you know, that is a lead as well. If you want to classify it,
we're going to look at them in different ways. The person that walks into the store, people want to call that a walk -in, or at least in car sales, you call that person a walk -in. But like I said, for now, we're not worried about how we classify them. We're just worried about what a lead means and then how we generate them. Now, the example that I gave for hiding our flyers was to show you how you can generate leads in real life, because most people think that lead generation is only online, but it can be online, it can be offline. Now,
the fact that somebody has raised their hand is not a guarantee that you're going to get some sales. So the fact that five parents made phone calls doesn't mean they will buy. The fact that one parent drove to your store doesn't mean that they're going to buy. And the fact that 12 people, or did I say 20? Anyway, however many I said sent you Instagram DMs does not mean that they are going to buy. Now,
because it's not a guarantee, when somebody raised their hands, we have to do two more things to make our lives a whole lot easier. Number one is what people call lead scoring. Let's ignore the technical definition. What lead scoring means is just what are the things that these people did when they raised their hands that can help us show how serious they are. Because if we know how serious they are, we know who to spend time with. So even though it's not a guarantee when somebody raises their hand, let's put it this way. The person that walks into the store, my guess is that is a much more serious raising of hand than somebody who in the Instagram DM sends you a message and says how much or what time do you open. So in both cases, a hand is raised. But the quality of raising the hand is different. But then again, let's say that there's one parent in particular who sent you an Instagram DM. After the Instagram DM, the parent called to ask about a specific thing that I
saw on Instagram. Red shoes for boys aged 14. Do they come in black and how much do they cost? So the same parent sent you Instagram DM, then called up, then said, let me think about it. And then you discover that a week later, that very same parent, maybe you recognize his or her voice, or the parent says that, oh, I'm the lady who you are chatting with also. So the person comes into the store. Now you can see that thinking in terms of lead scoring,
this person has done a series of activities to show that this person might be serious. I mean, might be more serious than the other people who have done lesser kinds of activities. Now, when you start looking at things in a technical sense, it gets very specific. You assign scores to certain kinds of activities. And then there's ways that you can get a figure to show how serious somebody is.
But for what I'm trying to get you thinking about over here on the show is just get it into your mind that it's not everybody who raises their hand that you should be running after. We should be looking for different kinds of activities that this person has done to show how serious that they are. The more activities that we can lump together, the more security we can have in chasing down a deal. So of course, in that sense,
it will make more sense to spend time with this woman who is already in the store instead of chatting with someone who is on Instagram. So of course, after this lady leaves the store, you'll continue chatting with the person on Instagram. But while this person is in the store, don't try to chat with her while you talk to her while you're still trying to chat with that other person on Instagram. Because lead scoring, you're dealing with someone who has a higher lead score, in quote, in theory. So lead scoring, number one,
second thing to make our life easier, lead qualification. This is where you start talking to the person. When this on this podcast, whenever you hear qualification, or you hear discovery, just know that I mean you should be having conversations. When you're having doing qualification, the kind of conversations you should be having with them are just to figure out how interested they are, how urgent they need. So back to the example. The person chatted on Instagram.
Then the person calls to ask about the red shoe that you have there in size 12 and a half. And she wants to know if you have it in black for boys. And your son is aged 16. It was the example that I gave. And the person is now in the store. So if you have that shoe, fine, no problem, bring it out. But you don't just bring it out and then start the conversation of how much.
You need to ask a couple more questions. Okay, how old is your son? Okay, no, okay, we've already know how old the son is, but we need to know what he wants to use the shoe for. Is it just a dress shoe? Or is it what they need for school sports? Because it's possible that the parent thinks, I want to buy it for school sport, but you ask the shoe person, you know that if madam buys the shoes, and they use it for sports,
the thing will just scatter. Because who use it for football two or three times, rain will fall one or two times, the shoe will scatter. So that is why you bring up your expertise to say, Oh, madam, actually, if it is running shoes, it's not this range you should be looking for. Actually, you should be looking at this range. This one is better because the leather is this, the cleats are this, the, the whatever, whatever, whatever,
and for school sports shoes, these are the typical things that people buy. The reason why she have this conversation is because we're after customer success, customer satisfaction. If people are not successful with their purchase, if they're not happy with their purchase, they're not going to come back again. And there's no point in getting this madam who has come to your store, Amish has Instagram DMed you, she has called you, she has come to the store. After all this work, what does it profit you if she only buys one shoe and she never comes back? But if she buys one shoe today, she comes back next month to buy shoes for her 12 year old daughter. And then in three months time,
she is back with her friends who also wants to buy shoes for her six year old niece or something. Now you have actually scored something good here because this is easy sale. You have only given out one flyer and that one flyer has been responsible for two purchases for one woman's child, one more purchase from another woman's child and then one other purchase for another woman's niece just from one flyer. This is how we start making our businesses profitable. So that's the goal. To get people to come back over and over again to bring their friends, their family members and their associates, maybe even bring their enemies as well because if it's that good,
they might bring their enemies to come and do business with you too. So yeah, those are the things that we have to do. Not everybody who raises their hand is going to buy today. How do we increase our chances? We have to go through lead scoring. The people that raise their hands, what exactly did they do to show us how serious that they are? The more serious it looks like,
the more time we need to spend chasing down someone, investing with them, building a relationship with them, lead scoring. Then lead qualification. We need to have conversations with these people. It's not just enough to bring out the shoe and say, oh yeah, here take the shoe. The shoe is 35 ,000 no. You ask a couple of questions. You say, oh yes, man, we have it in store. And then you bring it. What is he looking at? You start asking some questions.
How old is your son? What does he need it for? Is he really a shoe person? What exactly did the school say? The kind of things that you should buy? You know, all those sorts of things. Maybe even ask questions about her husband. Okay, no, no need to ask about her husband because this store only sells shoes for school children. Oh yeah, so ask about other kids as well. What about the other children?
How old? What age of school they are? Because this is how you know when to follow up. If there's a 16 -year -old who is in secondary school, but the madam has four other children, maybe the youngest one is about to leave, what's it called? Is it prep? Something prep? Or is it reception? About to receive reception. Who might be starting primary school soon? These are good things to know so that you can put in your CIRM or your Google Calendar later on. So that when it looks like primary school is about to resume, you can now start calling and sending text messages to all the madams and all the orgasms who have come through your store to say that, oh, ah,
madam, how now? How are you day? You know, school is resuming soon. We just have the latest this and this inside the store. Based on our last discussion, I remember you said this and this about your baby. We now have this and this and this and this. Would you be interested in having a look? And she will say, okay, no problem. I say, okay, can I send it to you on WhatsApp? Sure,
no problem. You send it on WhatsApp or you you continue on Instagram DM route and, you know, you have lead not sharing relationship building going on. So, okay, apologies for the sound that is coming in through the window. You know, as usual, you know, my neighbors just doing the thing. They have a commercial kitchen. So the staff are always constantly arguing, gossiping, toasting and being toasted. So that's where all the sound is coming from in case you guys can hear that. Then,
okay, so, okay, the focus of this episode was not lead generation in theory, but then how to do that on WhatsApp and then social media. Now, the good thing about WhatsApp and social media is that people that you have on your WhatsApp and social media are people who are already following you and kind of have your permission to get in touch. Now, of course, not everybody is your friend. That's why I spoke about lead scoring and lead qualification as an important part of your business. So yes, everybody has given you permission that you can be in touch with them, but not everybody is your friend. So we're still going to be having conversations and interacting and the basis of that or rather what we're trying to do there,
lead scoring and lead qualification. So how can we use WhatsApp for lead generation? First off, my recommendation, create a business profile. For a very long time, I didn't create a business profile. I did mine last year because I was like, what's up is WhatsApp? I already have a WhatsApp. What's the whole point in creating WhatsApp business? The difference is with WhatsApp business, you can create a catalogue. The catalogue allows you to create individual links that you can send to people so that when a mom calls you or a dad calls you to say, do you have this shoe, this one that is red on your Instagram handle,
but do you have it in black in size 12 and a half for a teenage boy? You can send a specific link from your WhatsApp phone, sorry, from your WhatsApp profile to this parent that will have the shoe there, the price, you know, the everything. It just helps to speed business along basically because you're spending, you're sending specific items in your catalogue. So create the business profile because of the catalogue.
It's real, real, real useful. Apart from that, when people check you up on WhatsApp without having a conversation with you, they say that it's WhatsApp business. They click on it. It's almost like looking at a small website. They can see there, these are the ranges of shoes you offer. These are the prices of shoes you offer. It's like a mobile store in WhatsApp. So it's a pretty good idea.
Then with WhatsApp business, if you hook it up, it always prompts you to share your link all over the internet where you can click to chat. So I didn't know you can do those sorts of things. I just created WhatsApp business profile. And then after a while I was mining my business and a message popped up. Click here to connect your WhatsApp to your Instagram. I was like, oh, okay, cool.
And I did that. So anybody who wants to, who looks at my Instagram can just see my Instagram and click on a button and then the person ends up in my WhatsApp chat inbox. So you can see that here, in both cases, number one, catalogue, person clicks on the catalogue. That is them raising their hand. Somebody clicks on my chat link from my Instagram handle. That is somebody raising their hand. And you can also share that link over different parts of the internet. That's one thing that these people do very well. You know, people in the WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook ecosystem, they're always showing you how you can get the best out of their services. You can also create industry groups. That is also another permission that people have to hear from you. So people who are in car sales, they do these sorts of things. There's a car sale group. They can add you to it while you're looking for a car to buy. You're there. They're posting about the different cars that have come in.
You know, these Mercedes -Benz has come in from Japan. It's 2023 model. It's AC. It's something, something, blah, blah, blah. Factory tinted and this and this and that. Tomorrow is Honda Civic, this and blah, blah, blah. Really say people also do that as well in their groups. This house is available in Meitama. This house is available in Ministers Hill. This house is available in Lecky phase three, Lecky phase four or Lecky phase,
whatever that you have these days. So the thing is people who are into those groups who click on something, who respond to something specifically, that is lead generation because the person has raised their hand to show that they might be interested while the very least that they are curious. And of course, sharing on your status updates, people can click through from the status updates. That also shows that they might be interested because they have raised their hand.
They've taken some course of action in the past. Clicking through something is raising your hand. Then lead generation, you can do that for on social media. The strategy when using social media is to attract and to engage. So you attract people. People do something that shows they raised their hands. You engage with them. When you engage with them, you're doing lead scoring and you're also doing lead qualification. So you're trying to figure out who this person is and how interested that they are.
So you can run targeted advertisements on Facebook and on Instagram. When we say targeted, it means you don't just put up a wall of text. We actually tell Facebook or you tell Instagram, send this advertisements to parents who have small kids between the ages of six and 12 and who are in primary and secondary school within the cities of Abuja. For Abuja, focus on central business district. Do not include cities like Guagallada or Karoo because in your mind, maybe you think Guagallada people don't have money and Karoo people don't have money.
That would be the sort of thing like you're putting the adverts in Lagos and you say focus on people who live in Ikeja, between Ikeja and Lagos Island and ignore people who live in Ikegepensinema because you think maybe Ikegepensinema people don't have money. But that's it basically. That's what targeted ads are. You can see that this is very specific. You've given very clear instructions to Facebook and Instagram. These are my ideal customers. Go and find them for me.
These adverts that I've created, put it in front of their face. When madam is scrolling the phone, if she's my ideal customer, let that advert pop up on her screen so that she can know about me. So the ads have to be targeted. Then you can also do content marketing. That's where you educate and entertain people. You're putting up content, posts, audio, just like this podcast. Let's see what else. Texts,
blogs or you write stuff on LinkedIn or whatever. And the goal is to educate people, entertain people. Once people engage, you interact with them. You're doing your lead scoring and you're doing your lead qualification, lead nurturing, relationship building, all that fine jazz that we spoke about. So that's what you'll be doing. So back to the school thing. You are on LinkedIn as well.
Apart from dropping off flyers, you also put things up on LinkedIn. Back to school is upon us for something, something 2024. For those of you parents who are worried about exchange rates and the rising costs of social so -and -so, we are introducing the this and this and this line. And this line is much more better than conventional school shoes because the issues breathe better, the issues look better, the issues are made with genuine leather or something. Anyway,
you get my point. You're putting up something here that doesn't quite read like an advertisement because, well, you're talking about your business, you're talking about your kind of shoes and everything. But you make the article about back to school and how you can save money and buy things on the budget. It also happens that you happen to run this store that sells these sorts of things. So that's content marketing.
Then of course, is partnering with influencers so you can tap into their audiences. I'm not an influencer marketer. It's not much I know about these sorts of things, but just know that these sorts of avenues are there. And these are the kinds of things that you can do as part of your social media strategy to attract and to engage. Now, before we sign off because we're at 22 minutes, here are a couple of things to note. Number one, if you're going to be doing lead generation of any kind, it is a volume play. So massive activity is involved. You can't go and give out five flyers and say you have done lead generation. Go to one school, like the young man who came to the school of my kids, and drop like 100 flyers on Monday. Then go to your neighborhood, go to the second school, go and drop another 100 or 200 flyers. Hope you guys get the gist.
Then on Wednesday, go to another school in the neighborhood, drop another 100 or 200 flyers. I hope you guys are seeing the pattern. In month one, after you exhaust all the schools in your local government, go over to the next local government. That should be the next target for month two and start doing the same thing. Lead generation, volume play. It is a volume play. Don't go and drop one flyer, say that you don't work. You haven't done work. You have to drop lots of flyers and do it as many times as possible for a sustained period of time.
So it's about massive activity. If your lead generation is, you're going to go and scrape contact details from the internet so that you can call people to see if they're interested in your business. Don't just go and get one or two contact numbers from a business director and say that you have done lead generation today. No. Go and scrape a bunch. Maybe you scrape 10 today.
Tomorrow, try and call those 10. Let's say you scrape the 10 on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. You're calling the 10. Thursday, scrape another 10. Maybe Friday and Saturday, you call those people. Monday, you're back at it again and I'm sure that you see what I'm, you see what you get the gist I'm trying to make. It's a volume play. So if you're going to be using social media as part of your lead generation, if you don't like posting and engaging, then there's a problem there. There are lots of ways that you can solve it. Well,
number one, you can avoid it because you don't have to be on social media. So there's some people who do. There was a lady at a session that I had for a business woman in Abuja. It's a ladies who branch. Yes, the networking, the business and the business networking, also professional networking organization, ladies who branch or something like that. So there's a lady there who is like in the beauty influencer space. What she did because she was tired of social media was she decided to kill two birds with one stone.
There's somebody in the village who is kind of one of their distant cousins. She need helps with the children here in Abuja. So she brought the girl down. She pays the girl a salary. The girl takes care of the kids when they're back from school. But while the children are not in school, this girl who initially is supposed to be sort of like a house help is the one who is editing the videos that madam has shot, putting up the videos, responding to the enquiries and then handing off the serious enquiries to madam. So there are different ways around it. In this case, it happens to involve a distant cousin with the house girl move,
you know, that kind of thing. So whether it's your cousin, your little sis, your junior brother, because I met another woman who for her for her content marketing, that was the solution. Junior brother is leaving secondary school. Junior brother is going to be around for a while because he's waiting for a jump. Junior brother loves cameras and all these sorts of things. So she bought the camera and she said, look, bro, for this holiday, you come and spend time with me. And this is how you're going to be helping me. I'll be searching out with pocket money every once in a while. So there are solutions if you don't like posting and engaging, just be creative about it. Not every solution involves hiring an employee. Then another thing to note,
consistency. You can't just do this for one week. You have to do this for a long period of time, for a month, for several months, for a year, to get the best results. So lead generation, like I said, is volume playing and consistency. Then also realize that increasing sales is about having more conversations. So the more flyers that we put out, the more adverts that we send, and the more conversations that we're having from there, the more sales that we are going to get. So you should be having conversations. If you're putting out targeted ads on Facebook and then somebody responds, how much?
And your only response is 35 ,000. That is not a conversation. If that is how you're going to be responding. If the person sends a message, how much? Your response shouldn't just be 35 ,000. It should be 35 ,000. Okay, no, for school purposes. Or is it just for something that they want to use socially? Ask some sort of question and get a conversation going. Because the woman who sends the message, how much? She's in research mode now. She didn't just send that message to you. She has also been checking other people's Instagram handles, and she has been sending how much to five or six other people. So try and engage the woman in conversation. It will give you a chance to stand out. Because if you just respond 35
,000, the thing is some other people may have responded 20 ,000, 25 ,000, and she thinks, ah, it's available over here at 20K and they rush for it. You in your heart of hearts, because you know the market, you know that all that 20K, 25K, those are the fakes, those are the ones that will spoke quickly. You will never get a chance to tell madam that if you do not engage her in the conversation. So whatever it is you do for a lead generation, just know you should be engaging people in conversation. When people call from the flyer,
don't just say 35 ,000. Engage them in the conversation. Oh, thank you very much for calling. Yes, we have it in this size and in the color that you want. How many children do you want to buy it for? Oh, okay, just one child, okay. How old? What do they want to use it for? Okay, sir, if it's for sports, I wouldn't recommend that you do this and this and that and that. And these are the reasons why would you be free to come in Friday morning to come and check out this and this and that range that you know might be much more useful. If it's not free, then yeah,
if it's not free and you have done your WhatsApp, what's it called, your WhatsApp business, you can text him some links directly from, some links directly from your WhatsApp, from WhatsApp handle. Anyway, you get the whole point. Let me just wrap it up here. So volume play, consistency, and make sure that you're having conversations. So remember to follow me on WhatsApp, the phone number is 080 64662140. The country code is plus 234.
For those of you who are not Nigerian, and then follow me on LinkedIn, connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavashima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link where I'm listening to this episode. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.