How to Profit From Non Qualified Leads

Recently, someone reached out to me with a concern: “We’re losing too many leads because they are not qualified. What can we do?”

While improving ads and media buying are long-term solutions, let’s focus on what you can do right now with the leads you already have.

Imagine you’ve made a poor media buying decision, perhaps purchasing solo ads that delivered subpar leads.

You’ve already spent the money, so what can you do next?

Nurture First, Sell Later

While profiting from non-leads is important, don’t assume a lead is non-qualified just because it isn’t converting quickly.

The value of a lead starts decaying within minutes after capture, but implementing a nurture sequence up front can significantly slow this decay.

Why is that?

By observing the market, some people realized that only about 5% of buyers are actively in the market at any given time. 

The other 95% represent future buyers who will enter the market based on their own needs, and no amount of persuasion from marketers will change that.

This “95:5 Rule” implies that coming into the market is primarily driven by internal factors within organizations or buyers, not external factors like marketing. 

So your job isn’t to try to convert the 95% at the same rate as those 5%, but to find the optimal time frame to engage as many people from the bigger group as possible.

By having a nurture sequence right from the start, you minimize the need for back-end strategies like SMS campaigns later on.

For instance, an insurance company once believed no one would be interested in their offers after a 14-day sequence.

However, real-life scenarios often prove otherwise.

People often have important but non-urgent tasks that get delayed due to various reasons—trips, sick children, etc. By understanding this, you can build longer-term nurture sequences.

Real-Life Example: John McCurry’s Funnel

John McCurry’s funnel is a classic example.

He initially struggled because he tried to sell a medical procedure through a front-end funnel, expecting immediate conversions.

However, medical procedures are considered decisions and require time.

When he switched to a 30-day or 90-day nurture sequence, things changed. 

The funnel started working, and people began booking assessments.

Even though it took nine months for some leads to convert, nurturing them with weekly SMS and emails kept them engaged.

Building Longer-Term Nurture Sequences

Understanding that non-urgent but important decisions get delayed allows you to respect that timeline and build out longer nurture sequences.

Here’s how you can do it:

1. Initial Capture:
   • Start with an engaging sequence immediately after capturing the lead.
2. Regular Follow-Ups:
   • Send weekly SMS and one or two emails a week to keep the lead engaged over a longer period.
3. Respect Their Timeline:
   • Understand that some leads may take months to convert. Keep nurturing them without being too pushy.

Why It Matters

This strategy can significantly impact your conversion rates. 

Even if only an additional 10-15% of your ad spend is recovered through nurturing, it’s a substantial amount that can be reinvested. 

Moreover, it reduces your overall cost per acquisition.

Market Research Tool

A long-term nurture sequence also acts as a market research tool. By analyzing which leads convert and which don’t, you can:

1. Improve Your Main Funnel:
   • Use insights to refine your primary funnel.
2. Expand Your Offers:
   • Discover new opportunities based on the needs and interests of your leads.
3. Reduce Non-Qualified Leads:
   • Adjust your targeting to decrease the number of unqualified leads entering your funnel.

Once you are sure the lead is dead what should you do?

Just keep making offers.

Years ago, in the early days of LeadsHook, we encountered an interesting example of turning non-qualified leads into profit. 

A participant was promoting a pharmaceutical product—not something like Viagra, but a lipo or cholesterol drug. They were a legitimate pharmacy, fully authorized to sell the product.

They faced a common issue: they could only sell to clients who met specific criteria like age or insurance status. So, what happened to the leads that didn’t qualify?

Instead of discarding these leads, they created a secondary funnel to redirect them to other relevant offers. 

For example, if someone didn’t qualify for the pharmaceutical product, they might be offered health supplements or wellness programs instead.

The first time I saw this approach, I realized it was possible to keep making offers until customers quit.

This innovative strategy ensured that no lead went to waste. 

It allowed the participant to recoup part of their advertising spend and improve their overall ROI. 

They took the approach to its logical conclusion—continuing to make offers until the customer either took action or opted out.

1. CPA Offers for Unqualified Traffic

When dealing with non-qualified leads, one lazy but effective approach is to leverage CPA (Cost Per Action) networks.

This method ensures you can still monetize traffic that might otherwise go to waste.

The simplest solution here would be to drag and drop the decision node to start with filtering for your geo-regions.

Example: US and Canada

Let’s pick the US for argument’s sake. You could go and drag and drop the US-based funnel because that’s your primary offer. 

So, if you’re doing insurance, start asking questions about insurance here.

You may also be running a Canadian offer. So, take that person down the Canadian insurance path as well.

There are many different reasons why you want to do it, with the main one being that the offer here may be different from the offer there.

For large-scale offers like insurance, debt, solar, and refi, which tend to be very country-specific, a country-centric campaign is crucial.

This also applies to other regions, such as England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. The offer might be different, or there might be legal requirements or language changes needed.

But what about traffic that doesn’t fit into these primary regions? 

Sometimes, up to 30% of traffic can come from outside your target area, especially on platforms like Facebook. 

In such cases, you can still make offers to these people too.

How to Implement

Start by visiting Offer Vault or your preferred CPA network to find suitable offers. These could range from health and wellness products to financial newsletters.

Let’s say your original ad was about insurance, but the lead doesn’t qualify. 

Since global leads may not qualify for offers like insurance or debt, you should focus on more universally relevant offers:

• Make Money Online (Biz-Op)
• Health Products
• Financial Newsletters
• Sweepstakes (e.g., PayPal $10 sweepstakes)

Initially, it might seem like switching from insurance to health products doesn’t make sense. However, this approach has proven effective in various scenarios.

At first, I thought this was never going to work, and this is because I never stretched it that far, like insurance to health, it doesn’t make any sense until I saw a pharma funnel where they actually didn’t care.

In the pharma funnel example, they picked the top-performing offers from their CPA network, even if they seemed only remotely appropriate.

They were like, ‘Well, we’re paying for this anyway. I need to do something with this traffic here,’ and they just drove it down.

If your initial ad is about insurance, but the lead isn’t from the US or Canada, profile them to find suitable alternatives.

Profiling and Redirecting Leads

To make this strategy work, drive leads down a profiling pathway to see if they qualify for any of these offers. If they qualify, redirect them to the CPA offer.

I’ve run funnels where I was seeing skincare offers where they didn’t qualify. I actually did on some weeks as much revenue on the offshoot or what was the unqualified traffic as you did from the qualified traffic.

This shows that non-qualified traffic can be just as profitable as qualified traffic, making it crucial not to ignore these leads.

Build a Separate Funnel

My recommendation for most people is to build out that other funnel as a totally separate one, and then what you can do is you can just redirect that person to that funnel.

Once the separate funnel is built, redirect non-qualified leads to this new funnel.

1. Set Up Redirection: Include the URL of the non-leads funnel in your original campaign settings.

1. Pixel Firing: Decide whether to fire a pixel here to create a negative audience pixel for refining your targeting.

You could fire a pixel here and then redirect, and what the pixel would do would be to fire a negative audience pixel, as in an event, a lead event, or some other event that you want to put as a negative audience so that you can get less and less of these people being targeted here.

Now, the cost of this is very, very little because whenever you have unqualified people, you would take that one URL, and you would shove everybody down into that URL right there.

This redirection can be applied at various levels:

• State Level
• Country Level
• Any other level that you want to

This makes it a very easy way to try to monetize those people.

Layer One: Initial Decision Node

Inside the Decision Tree (DT), layer one involves initial profiling based on geo-location or general qualification criteria. If leads don’t meet the primary criteria, they are redirected.

Layer Two: In-Depth Qualification

Layer two involves deeper qualification questions. For example, in the context of an insurance offer, you might ask:

• Are you a smoker or non-smoker?
• What is your age?

Based on these answers, you might find that certain leads still do not qualify.

For leads disqualified at this stage, set up a decision node that marks them as disqualified (DQ). 

This might be because they don’t meet specific criteria, such as being homeowners for a debt offer.

Here’s how you can handle it:

1. Set Up a Decision Node: Mark the lead as disqualified.
2. Splitting Off: Redirect based on the disqualification criteria. For instance, if scoring less than 30 or being renters instead of homeowners.

When leads are disqualified (DQ) during the deeper qualification process, you can handle them in several ways.

For US-based disqualified leads, you may want to treat them differently due to their potentially higher value.

1. Separate Funnel for US DQ: Create a dedicated funnel for US-based disqualified leads.
2. Leverage Relationships: Utilize any existing relationships or offers that are country-specific and not available on CPA networks.

With the information gathered from the qualification questions, you can now create highly targeted redirects:

1. Solar or Energy-Saving Grants: For example, redirect leads to a solar or energy-saving grant offer.
2. Multiple Pathways: Redirect based on the profile and conversion likelihood.

Mapping and Optimizing Offers with ChatGPT

Another essential aspect of effective lead distribution is mapping your offers from the most universally applicable to the most specific. This ensures you can efficiently funnel generic traffic to relevant offers, increasing the chances of qualification and conversion.

Identify a range of offers, mixing broadly applicable ones (like home loans or car payments) with niche-specific ones (such as fitness programs). Use ChatGPT to prioritize these offers by asking it to order them from most universally applicable to most specific. Perform a quick review to ensure the order makes sense and adjust as needed to fit your lead generation strategy.

Example Offers and Qualifying Questions

Broadly applicable offers, like home loans and car payments, suit a wide range of leads. Qualifying questions could include “Do you own a home?” or “Are you looking to finance a vehicle?”

Pharmaceutical offers can also be broadly applicable depending on the demographic. Questions like “Do you take any regular medications?” or “Are you interested in health supplements?” help narrow this down.

Automate redirections to the most relevant offers based on answers to qualifying questions using decision trees and API calls. 

Regularly update your list of offers and questions to reflect market changes and lead behavior, using analytics to track performance and make data-driven adjustments.

2. Post Lead Generation Handling

When you’ve captured a lead, but it gets rejected—whether by the client, the sales team, or because it’s a duplicate—it’s crucial to have a plan for what to do next. 

Here’s how you can manage those leads effectively.

Managing Rejected Leads

Once a lead qualifies and provides all the necessary info (name, email, phone number, etc.), it might head to the sales team or the client. 

However, if it’s rejected for any reason, you need to have a system in place.

Storing Rejected Leads

For rejected leads:

• Send to CRM or Google Sheets:
  • Make an API call or use a webhook to store the lead data in your own CRM or a Google Sheet.
  • This way, you keep a copy of the lead data before it’s sent to the client.

If the client rejects the lead, you can take further steps to try and sell it again.

Reattempting Lead Sales

There are a couple of ways to try selling rejected leads:

1. API Calls to Lead Distribution Platforms:
   • Some platforms allow you to make API calls to check if a lead can be sold again.
   • If it’s rejected, you can redirect it back to the platform to try selling at a different price.
2. Sliding Scale of Pricing:
   • Set a minimum price for the lead (e.g., $100).
   • The platform will ping potential buyers to see if anyone will buy at this price.
   • If no one buys, the price lowers incrementally (e.g., $90, $75, $50), repeating this process until the lead is sold.
   • This method helps you get the highest possible price for each lead.

Example: Sliding Scale Pricing

Consider a scenario where you have a lead you want to sell for $100. The lead distribution platform pings potential buyers:

1. At $100:
   • If no one buys, it returns to you.
2. At $90:
   • If no one buys, it returns to you again.
3. At $75, $50, and so on:
   • This continues until the lead is sold, even if it’s just for $1.

This approach is clever because it makes sure you get the highest price possible for every lead, maximizing your profit.

Obviously, this means you have many clients you work with, or perhaps you’re partnering with a third-party system that has aggregators on the other side, and you’re trying to ensure you sell at the highest price possible. 

It’s like creating a stock market exchange system to make sure your assets get sold at the highest price.

If a lead comes back rejected, there’s still something you can do with that person. 

If nobody buys the lead, here’s what you can do:

1. Redirect to Another Funnel:
   • You can say, “I’m so sorry, nothing qualifies you,” and then redirect the person to a different funnel.
   • This could be the same funnel but usually not non-country-specific since that’s more targeted. Instead, use a funnel tailored to their needs.
2. Use Your CRM for Follow-Up:
   • Store the lead information in your CRM or Google Sheets.
   • Sometimes, you’ll find out about the rejection after 24, 48, or even 90 hours.
   • While the lead isn’t waiting around, you can still have their details (name, email, phone number).
   • As long as your permissions are set up correctly, you can communicate with them via SMS or email.
   • Bring them back into a decision tree (DT) to liquidate the lead another way.

This approach follows the same principle but changes where in the funnel you’re handling rejected leads. 

It’s all about post-lead generation profit maximization by ensuring no lead goes to waste.

3. Post-Sales Lead Management

The final aspect is handling leads post-sale. 

Recently, Dan emphasized leveraging AI-type bots and SMS campaigns to re-engage leads with messages like, “Hey, are you still interested in buying insurance?” Here’s how you can make the most of this approach.

Re-Engaging Leads

Despite your best efforts, you’ll find that not all leads convert immediately. 

Typically, out of 100 leads, about 10 might buy within the next 30 days, and perhaps another 10 might convert within 60 days. 

That still leaves a significant portion—some 60-80%—who haven’t bought yet.

In regions like the UK, where GDPR rules are stringent, you might need to consider joint ventures to re-engage these leads. 

You could ask partners, “Can I get those leads back and monetize them in some way?” These are still real leads looking for solutions, and repositioning them could be beneficial.

For example, you could channel them back to the primary offer or route them to other relevant funnels.

Importance of Non-Leads Funnels

While non-leads shouldn’t occupy too much of your time, they shouldn’t be ignored either. 

Even if they yield just 10-15% of your ad spend back, that’s still a significant amount of money that can be reinvested. 

This reduces the overall cost per acquisition of the leads you are capturing.

Market Research and Funnel Improvement

Another major benefit is using non-leads as a market research tool:

1. Learning and Adapting:
   • Understand what these leads are looking for.
   • Adjust your primary funnel based on these insights.
2. Expanding Your Offers:
   • If you notice a demand for products or services you hadn’t considered, you can expand your offerings. For instance, if you’re focused solely on life insurance but discover a demand for health insurance, you can diversify.
3. Reducing Non-Qualified Leads:
   • Use the data to refine your targeting.
   • Aim to decrease the percentage of unqualified leads from, say, 95% to 90% or even 85%.

Reducing the number of non-leads changes the economics of your business. 

Even a small shift, like reducing non-leads from 95% to 90%, can significantly impact your cash flow and conversion rates. 

It’s essential to pay attention to these metrics to optimize your business’s performance.

Take away message

Most leads won’t buy immediately. 

By implementing a solid nurture sequence, you can keep leads engaged and significantly improve your conversion rates. 

This approach not only helps you sell but also provides valuable insights to refine your business strategy.

And if they don’t convert eventually, don’t be afraid to keep making offers until they do or choose to opt out.