Transcript:

If you’ve ever tried a lead gen campaign where you’re paying for traffic and the results you got was mostly about burning a big hole in your wallet, you’re certainly not alone. So many of the expert entrepreneurs that I know have tried out lead gen services that promised great results, but they delivered leads that either didn’t convert, or worse, they just plain ghosted you.

And it makes you wonder, was it you? Was your offer wrong? Or is the whole system just broken?

Well, here’s the thing that no agency will tell you. Your leads don’t convert because high-volume marketing tactics aren’t building trust. And trust, not tactics, is what actually drives conversions.

I’m Brad Powell, and I’ve been helping expert brands optimize for trust for the past two decades by using relationship-building videos. And in this video, I want to show you why your lead campaign failed and what to do instead.

So let’s get into it. Let’s say you just spent money on an agency that over-promised but underdelivered. Well, there’s a deeper reason why those leads never converted. Lead gen services focus on quantity, like how many names can we get on a list? And most of those leads are cold. There’s no context, there’s no trust, and there’s no authority.

This is the real problem with traffic marketing because you’re going for high volume. And here’s what’s actually happening: your leads don’t convert because they don’t trust you. You’re just another stranger in their inbox. It’s like proposing on a first date. And on LinkedIn, they call this pitch slapping. And nobody likes it. And when your traffic marketing tactics fail, you start questioning your offer, your brand, and even yourself.

But it’s not you, it’s the absence of consistent authority building.

So let’s take a look at what’s really going on here. We’ve got this thing in the world of marketing that I’m going to call the marketing spectrum. And this whole idea comes from one of my past guests, Michelle Werner. If you want to go for a deep dive in what she had to say about this, go back and listen to episode number 144. And what we’re talking about is that on one end of the spectrum, you’ve got traffic marketing. And this is where you’re trying to reach as many people as possible. Whereas on the other end of the spectrum is relationship marketing. And this is where you want to build deeper, more intimate relationships with people one at a time. On the traffic end, this is serving businesses that mostly have a low-ticket, low-priced offer that are trying to reach a mass market. And what happens is that you end up with low quality leads, which means that you have to have a high quantity of leads in order to get any conversions at all. Whereas over on the relationship end of the spectrum, now this is for a service that has high-end, high-ticket, high-touch kind of experience for your clients. You’re going to end up with much higher quality leads, which means that you only need a low quantity. And you’re not trying to reach everyone, you are just trying to reach the right people. So over here on relationship marketing, you have high conversion rate, whereas in the traffic marketing end of the spectrum, you have a low conversion rate. And it kind of begs the question when you look at the kind of marketing you’re doing now, which end of the spectrum are you spending the most time? Where are you on this continuum? Are you over in traffic marketing? Because this is where most people are being told they need to spend all their time. All the marketing gurus, all the marketing so-called experts are saying, go find as many people as you can. And how much time are you spending? Look at what you’ve been doing in the last quarter and see whether your efforts have yielded high conversion or low conversion. And this could be the answer. The principle here is that the marketing activity most aligned with your high-ticket expert business is relationship building. So if you provide a high-ticket service, you need to invest more of your time in relationship marketing. This happens with me all the time. Just last week, I had a call with a guy I met at a conference a few months ago. And when we first met, he said he was very interested in making videos for his business. But during a follow-up call that we had a couple weeks later, he sounded kind of neutral. But then, a few months later, out of the blue, he scheduled a new call with me. And on this call, he told me that he’d been binging my videos. And he said that that gave him the inspiration to get started. He was actually referencing specific things that I said in my videos. So on this call, here he was showing up super enthusiastically, and he signed up for his first mic drop moments campaign with me right on the call. When you create a body of work, a set of short videos that live on your website or on LinkedIn or on YouTube, anyone who discovers you, whether you meet them in person or they hear you on a podcast or they just see one of your posts, they’ll go look you up. And when they find your videos, they’ll quickly get this strong feeling for who you are and your approach to the work you’re doing. And they’ll build enough trust to reach out to you. So what works isn’t more marketing, it’s creating a body of work that earns trust, a way for people to become familiar with you and to know that they’re a good fit for your offer. Simply by showing up regularly on video, you’re giving people a place to go and quickly binge all your stuff, ultimately building trust before the sales call ever happens. That’s what closes the trust gap. That’s what makes people say, I feel like I already know you. By the way, if you’re wondering if the kind of content you’ve already published is sending the right trust signals, I’ve created a free trust signal checklist that will quickly let you know whether your content is sending the trust signals your dream clients are already looking for. You can find the link in the description below. So if your lead gen campaign failed, it wasn’t because you did something wrong, it’s because you weren’t seen. Not as the real you, not as the expert you already are. And the fix is to build trust before the sale. And the most powerful way to do that is to show up as yourself on video. If you want help doing that in a way that feels real and sustainable, well check out the link down below. And if you’re thinking, I’m already busy enough with my business, I don’t have time for making content, then you should watch the next video. It’s made for the expert entrepreneur who’s sick and tired of performative marketing and tired of trying to look the part instead of just being the expert you already are. And I’ll see you in the next video.