My Favorite Way To Monetize A Business Directory Transcript, AI Summary & Key Points

00:00 hey everyone Tim Stoddard here and in this week's video I am going to show you my favorite way to monetize a business directory as usual I've been getting a ton of replies to my emails a ton of comments on the videos about building business directories and so I want to expand your guys' idea of different ways to monetize these types of businesses and in this video I'm going to show you my absolute favorite way to do it and I promise it's not what you think okay let's get [Music] started so I'm just going to start with

00:39 the punchline my favorite way to monetize a business directory is to use the directory to generate leads and to close deals for an agency to close like actual long-term monthly recurring marketing contracts for an agency and to use the directory to generate leads to get you clients so let me show you exactly how this works first thing this is one of my business directories this is a website called detox local it's a directory of drug detoxes around the country uh everybody knows that I'm like involved in this space and

01:13 so the directory itself isn't that important what's important is how I actually collect leads so just today I got a lead and here's usually how the leads happen so this is a category for Pennsylvania somebody's on here for whatever reason they browse and they get to a listing and they think huh like I want to get listed and so they usually click this link right here and this is a form so on this form get your detox facility listed in front of thousands of people who are looking for Detox Services I I choose to just put

01:45 the pricing on the form and then I also choose to make a note that says like when you fill out this form you're inquiring about advertising CU one of the downsides about having a business directory and creating leads through the directory is you're just going to get like a whole bunch of people that are trying to pitch you things or that want other things or that like don't do the research to find the actual contact information they're looking for so they just fill out this directory it gets kind of annoying um I

02:17 recommend doing this it my spam shouldn't even say spam my like my indirect leads my bad leads leads of people that aren't actually inquiring about advertising has really gone down since I just said straight up don't fill out this form unless you're looking to advertise it's it's helped a lot okay so this is the form and earlier today right so you're going to see 925 earlier today I got a lead for this form and this is what it looks like so this is the back end of my HubSpot account and all you need to know right here

02:49 is that this is the message and the message is very simple looking to get listed please so I know that this is a a legitimate lead um obviously viously all of this contact information is blurred out but I can see from the email address and I can see from the domain on the email address and even the website URL this is a legitimate company and this is somebody that I can contact so what I do is I have an automated sequence set up on HubSpot a lot of these leads come through on my phone so I get a notification on my

03:20 phone and then I open up HubSpot and there's just two buttons that I click and I send them an automated email so understand this is an automated email within hub spot I don't write this every single time but it says hey insert first name here thank you for filling out the contact form to get insert website URL here listed on yourfirst step.org it looks like it's a great fit it'd be happy to get you set up here are the steps so step one the price is 99 a year if you want to get listed on all three of our directories

03:52 you'll get a 10% discount so the price is 2.67 your facility will be listed on here's the websites step two if you want to register I'll send you a payment link step three once you pay I'll send you a Google form for you to fill out all the information step form step four Once all the information is filled out we'll create the listing within 72 hours it's very simple if you have any questions and then this is the part that like I think this is one of the things I've done that has been really Against the Grain that has

04:18 just generated such results for me is I say you can reach out to me directly on my cell phone number I close more business through text messaging these days than then I think anything else I think people are just moving so fast that we don't like to take time to have conversations and people just like to text and so what do you think happened well I got a text message so here's a text message Tim uh first name from company was running what happens with calls to your main number is that a sponsoring Treatment Center or

04:53 your people do you have average for clicks or calls of the month so this is actually really important because I want to touch on this subject for just one second because if if most people have watched my videos about directories I fully fully fully Advocate building a directory to try to generate leads for it it's just the simplest and it's the most profitable way to monetize and so you can tell that one of the main value ads for people reaching out to me is they're just interested in leads this is always what I say to

05:24 people leads are always going to be cool right like everyone leads are always going to be valuable I think lead generation is the best business model that there is because you're just you're providing a thing that's never going to go out of style local businesses brick and mortar businesses they just need the phone to ring and that's always going to be the case and so you can see here the main interest was this this person wanted leads so uh you know this is a little bit friendly I saw the area code was from

05:56 Philadelphia so of course I say go birds and he says hey go burs I thought you were on the west coast I made a joke about uh being from Philly and about loving the Eagles but nonetheless I started talking about my directories I started talking the value ad and this is where it happens so I say but I own a lead genen agency as well and I don't have any clients in seepa that means Southeastern PA if you're from like the Philly area you'd know what that means as of now I do have clients in the shore so when you're from

06:25 Pennsylvania you call the beach the shore so this means the Jersey Shore but that's all Jersey keyword so he says what's up with Le genen we have a conversation basically and then he says we have an SEO and PBC company currently we're about to launch our first digital campaign if they don't produce our owners will look at new options but they are going to at least give them a chance we are using call tracking metrics this is the software that I talked about um within the the previous conversation so I say cool ctm is

06:53 what we use just make sure you set it up properly so understand in this case it's not like this lead came in and it just instantly turned into a $9,000 a month marketing contract however this person did buy a set of listings so actually hold on let me show that to you so I earned the business this person did buy listings so I made a quick sale of $267 it's great featured listings are a great a great way what we call them verified listings are a great way to monetize a directory but more importantly I generated a lead

07:28 for my agency so I think this is by far the best way to to monetize a directory like granted not everybody is excited about doing agency work and about doing Client Services work I've always been a huge advocate of it because people know my philosophy of using service-based businesses to generate cash flow and then using that cash flow to create investments into assets which then compound so you don't end up working so damn hard for the rest of your life however it's a no-brainer to me that using a directory to close

08:04 what could be a $2,000 a month client in some other Industries like granted my industry does have pretty high marketing budgets but let's say you you've created a business directory for local contractors like we've talked about right well local contractors would easily pay $1,000 a month for for leads and this could even get into like the rank and rent philosophy that we talked about recently whatever it is a $1,000 a month client on the very very very low end is absolutely going to be more valuable than let's say a

08:41 $29 a month feature listing but the best thing about it is like you can do both right I sold the feature listing I built a relationship with this person I created trust with this person and this person is going to see how effectively and how quickly and with how much professionalism we create his listings on the website we're going to send it to him and within HubSpot within my CRM you know in that conversation he said we're going to give it a few months so I sent myself a reminder for three months from now to reach

09:14 back out to this person to see if I can turn it into a high dollar SEO deal right granted this isn't going to scale the same way that just a full-blown super high high profit margin directory is going to but the reality is you're probably not going to create the next yellow pages.com right like you're probably not going to have a hundred million a year business directory and so like the two aren't mutually exclusive you can still sell your featured listings you can still create that really really high leverage High

09:47 profitability Featured listing or lead generation sale through the directory itself but while you're at it why not promote your services anyway because the the lead has already qualified themselves like don't you see this you know that this particular business is looking for leads the fact that they went onto your directory to buy a feature lising or to inquire about your lead generation is proof positive that they're looking for leads so maybe they'll sign up for the directory listing they probably will but you

10:20 already know just by nature of them being on the website and reaching out to you that they're also a good fit for your client services business right so in my view this is the perfect marriage between symbiotic relationships of a high leverage High profitability business with probably like low revenues and low cash flows and a low leverage High cash flowing relatively stable profitability business when the two meet you really can't go wrong this is my absolute favorite way to monetize a directory and I hope you

10:56 implement this and I hope you take seriously all right thanks guys if you have any questions please leave a comment Please Subscribe please smash that subscribe button and I will talk to you next week peace