47 Free or Cheap Ways to Generate Leads from a Work at Home Mom

You know how YouTube starts playing videos after you have viewed the original video you chose to view? I heard this video series by Dolly Estrada playing while I was doing something else in another browser. As I listened to her speak I was pleasantly surprised at the practical no nonsense ideas Dolly Estrada was sharing with us.

She offers a full pdf with all her lead generation ideas explained in even more detail if you join her newsletter here.

I think she is gifted as a teacher and I have already applied her contest technique to my free classified ad website here where you can be eligible to win a free $25. Amazon gift by reading my emails.

Here is my summary of the concepts that Dolly Estrada shared with us. To get the full pdf join her newsletter above.

1. Facebook marketing. Stay away from the “marketing groups.” Find real local groups and make friends. Most of the people in “marketing groups” are robots anyway and everybody is just cross pitching everybody else their opportunities. Find a group where you can contribute. It does not have to be about internet marketing. If you have a passion about this subject and are a regular contributor and make friends people are more likely to listen to you about your opportunity.
2. More Facebook Marketing. “The Follow Up.” Use the Facebook Mass Invite Tool to invite leads you have in your email contacts or just laying around your hard drive to join your own Facebook group that you created. This funnels people into one place. Plus if you get a lot of people to join your group from your old contacts you start getting more members of your group on Facebook because it looks like you know what you are doing.
3. Incentivize people with contests. Offer something for free if people take a certain desired action. For example I am offering a chance to win a $25. Amazon gift card to those who join  my newsletter and read my emails. The person who opens the most of my emails will get an Amazon gift card. You could ask people to comment on a certain post in order to be eligible to win your prize. Use your imagination!
4. Be social and interesting. Look at your social media posts and see what kind of posts are getting the most engagement and do more of those. Notice what times it is best to post and post then. Make sure what you are doing relates to your business. Just hanging out on Facebook all day is not going to make you any money.
5. Create a Facebook fanpage. Schedule your posts.Test to see what Facebook posts work. Study the major brands and see which posts work best on their page. What are they doing that you are not doing? Learn about Facebook ads.
6. Go offline. Online marketing is getting saturated. You have to overcome a trust barrier that is present when you try to sell something online. With offline marketing their is more trust. People need trust to buy. Get some business cards. You can get free and cheap business cards with Moo.com. Make sure the business cards include the benefits of contacting you not just your contact info. Make them memorable. Wherever you are give out your card, the super market, the doctors office, everywhere.
7. Get a custom t-shirt with your pitch. Include a call to action on the t-shirt. Get a magnetic car wrap. Turn your car into a mobile billboard. Use strong colors and good visibility.
8. Put your lawn to work. Get some signs and put them on your lawn. Put the signs on your relatives and friends yards too!
9. Print some flyers. Make tabs with contact info.
10. Telemarketing. Do not use a script. Have talking points. Try business to business and leave great messages. Give them something in the message that will make them want to call you back.
11. Direct Mail. Direct mail is great for follow ups. How many real mails or hand written notes do you get? A hand written envelope will get read. It is very personal. Plus there is no competition. This is a great way to get somebody’s attention.
12. Old school networking. Talk about your work with your family and friends. You do not have to use a hard sales pitch. Make new connections. Get out of the house join some clubs. Go actually meet people. Try meetup.com. Set up an appointment. Coffee dates. At home meetings. Put up flyers. Serve punch and cookies and pitch what you want to pitch.
13. Take out an ad. Local newspapers, church bulletins, home owner associations. Get local with your ads.
14. Get leads from content creation. Go with your strength. Choose the medium that works best for you. If you like writing start a blog. If you are good on camera start a YouTube channel and make some videos. You could even start a podcast. The whole idea of content creation is to lead people back to you and back to your sales funnel. Make it useful and entertaining. Go with your natural talent. Always cross promote your content across platforms. Put your blog posts and YouTube videos on Facebook and vice versa.
15. Be a YouTube star.Make your titles search friendly. Give a robust description and a link back to your website at the top of the description. The more information in text the better. Fill out the title tags too. Link to other videos on YouTube especially your own. Also check out what other popular videos are using in their tags. You can get a Chrome Plugin called VidIq. to reverse engineer what other popular YouTube videos are doing.
16. Start a blog. Blogging is a commitment. You have to post consistently to keep your audience. You can use free platform or get your own domain name and wordpress installation.
17. Have a website. A website is not a blog. It has more static content while blogs have to be updated. Make your content search friendly. Include opt in form and social media links. You want to get people on your email list. You need to follow up with them. Give them a good reason to opt in. Offer some free content you have created.
18. Be artistic. If you can create beautiful images that people want to share people really like to share images. Infographics are graphics that are like beautiful charts. They are useful and people share them. Include a watermark so people can be directed back to you. Share them and encourage other people to share them.
19. Become an author. You can write an ebook about your topic. You can offer your ebook as an incentive for joining your list. You can submit your ebook to ebook directories.
20. Be a virtual teacher.
21. Create an email course. Create a ten day course about whatever. Then promote the course on Facebook. You need an autoresponder for this and it is a great way to get opt ins. Include a call to action in the email series promoting something related.
22. Get social media leads. Concentrate on just a couple of social media platforms. It is too much to concentrate on all of them. You can create profiles on most social media sites but spend you time marketing on just a few.
23. Twitter. Get leads off of Twitter and into your funnel. Use local hashtags to find out what is trending locally. Follow them and follow them back. Images get engagement than text on Twitter.
24. Pinterest. Great for targeting stay at home Moms. Create your own images and share them on Pinterest. Have watermarks. Create local boards. Link your images back to your funnel.
25. Google Plus. Less spam on Google Plus. There is less competition on Google Plus. Join conversations to connect with people. Try keeping it local. You can use hashtags too and local groups.
26. Linkedin. Your marketing has to be grown up. Everything has to be filled out. So people can find you. Include your links. You can have 3 links. Include a video. Answer questions. Join groups. Ask people to recommend you. Post often follow often, do not be a spammer, be genuine and contribute. Use hot hashtags. Learn to link images effectively.
27. Other places around the web where you can get leads. Craigslist. Have an event and advertise in the event section to get around paying for the job section. Do not copy and paste ads. Make sure you ads unique. Add photos. Keep it local or get banned. If you have friends or relatives in other cities they can post for you.
28. Try other classified ad sites. Here is a list. Look for local classifieds. Here is a classified ad submission service.
29. Forums.Leverage the forums you already belong to.  Add your opt in link to your signature. Add your business information to your profile.
30. Guest writing. Use other people’s real estate to your advantage. Big blogs need writers.The post must be up to the standards of their blog. Find a blog that is in your niche and pitch them. Send them an email and be specific about what you like about their blog. Pitch several headlines that would be a good fit that they have not already done. You just write an entire post for their blog. Make it ready to go. Make sure there are links in the content or in the author’s box that lead back to you.
31. Webinars. Live webinars help you connect with your audience. Recorded webinars let you get the maximum return on your content creation. You can use this valuable content on other platforms online.
32. Podcasts. You can interview other podcasters and be interviewed by them as well. There are lots of podcast directories.
33. Be a reviewer. You can do YouTube reviews. Reviews on your blog. Pick a medium that you enjoy and pick products you know enough about to have a real opinion. Contact the product creators and let them know about the reviews. Many times they will link back to you.
34. Be charitable. Pick a charity you believe in. Openly support and endorse the charity. You can make a video and blog post about them. Hold an event.
35. Free Google Traffic. Google wants to provide the best answer to any question. Was there a time when you tried to learn something online and you really had to dig for it then you should write a post or make a video answering that question. Put that post on social media and promote it. Be Wikopedia. Wikopedia gives the best answer. Find niches without much competition.
36. Paid Google or Bing Traffic. Do not do this lightly. This can be expensive so you really know how to optimize your campaigns so that you get the most bang for the buck. Set a daily campaign limit. Skip the display network to start with. Test quite a bit.
37. Get some free press. Register on helpareporter.com. This is a site where reporters can go to find experts on certain topics. This can help make you an authority in your field. Notifications will come right to your inbox asking for your expertise.
38. Crowd sourcing content.Find a group of people who are experts on a topic. Then ask them one of 2 questions. Most people will be flattered if you consider them an expert. Let them know you are going to publish the answer with links back to them. You are not asking them for very much info just a quick question. The answers will be your post of video.
39. Bigger and Better Freebies. You used to be able to give away almost anything and people would jump on it. Now people are becoming a bit more jaded. You need to make your freebies better.  You want more bigger better. Add much more value. Create something people can use over and over. Create something that you would use. Get beyond the pdf. Think outside of the normal freebies.
40. Teaming up. Find partners that you can cross promote with. You should have audiences that are similar but your products should not be competing directly.
41. Encourage referrals. All your current and past contacts can recommend you. Leverage all  your contacts on all your platforms.
42. Be helpful. If you see there is problem on somebody’s website and you can help send an email offering to help.
43. Be a mentor and get a mentor. Aim high when getting a mentor.
44. Go back to the well. The most qualified leads are those who have already bought something from you.
45. Recycle and Re-Promote. Take content and turn it into a different media type and promote that new content.
46. Reverse engineer how you got sold. Analyze how you came to a decision to purchase something and see how you can incorporate this into your marketing.
47. To get the last tip and a more detailed pdf join Dolly’s newsletter here and or listen to her 6 part video series on getting leads.