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Ask HN: How to find a lead gen expert?

1 points by jimmygatz ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I’m involved in a business called Coze (www.cozelinen.com), a luxury linens brand (towels, duvets, blankets, pillows, etc.). We are a subsidiary of a large UK wholesaler called Gailarde which supplies the likes of Travel Lodge, NHS and the Ritz.

We spent a lot of money on the design and build of the website but to our disappointment have done very little sales on it (under 10k). We tried some lead generation through Google, Facebook, influencers and print magazines and spent around £5000 for a £3200 return. However, we have very limited knowledge about online marketing and we don’t have any in-house specialists.

So, we’re looking to hire someone externally to help us with website conversion optimisation, funnel optimisation and lead generation in order to increase our sales. We want someone with experience and a proven track record. I'm considering trying Upwork but I've used it before and it's difficult to differentiate between different experts.

How do you guys go about finding lead gen experts or does anyone have any suggestions of someone you've used that you recommend?

7 comments

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[dead] my_tmp_login
Website Fail

"Shop" is a Stop word. You are asking for my money before offering me anything of value. Estimated time on site < 15 seconds.

Wonsize
There are a lot of scammers out there around this area. Unfortunately this is not an area that is easy to outsource. If you try, you usually end up paying somebody £5k, of which they pocket £1k for non productive ads. But fortunately it is learn-able with the old college try.

I run a very successful agency. I don't do consulting, but if you put your email address in your profile I'll give you a 5 minute assessment.

--

What scope are you looking at? UK only, or other geo's too?

What scale is meaningful for you? £1m rev? £10m rev? £100m rev?

What are your #1 or top sku's in terms of popularity / profitablity ?

Who are your closest comparable companies? we have "Boll and Branch" here in the US. are there others that have brand awareness in UK?

jimmygatz
Hi Wonsize,

Appreciate the response. Here are some answers:

1. Our scope is currently only the UK, although we are looking at other brands.

2. Meaningful scale for us would be between £100-500k revenue in first year and growing that 40-60% every year.

3. I don't know the answer to this.

4. Close competitors are companies like: https://charlottethomas.co.uk/, https://www.frette.com/.

I've put my e-mail in my profile. Thanks very much in advance for your time and for the consultation!

jimmygatz
Also, I found this guy on Reddit and was impressed with his knowledge and results:

https://www.reddit.com/r/marketing/comments/4sbu78/im_a_22yo...

Here's his up-work profile: https://www.upwork.com/freelancers/~01d666ef2195a368dd

Any thoughts on this?

[dead] Wonsize
That looks like the exact wrong guy to work with. I am not even sure you are monitoring this thread any more, I don't see your email in your profile, whatever, I'll give you the censored version.

That guy is the exact wrong guy because he's playing you as a sucker because he makes it seem like its a penny game to get a 10,000 units of this mystery substance that you'll then grind into gold.

It's no mystery, you are basically the shopper. (I've never had any success with FB and I doubt you will without serious branding in addition, but I can't speak to it).

Stick with google, think about what you would type into google if you wanted one of your products. Real simple: search "luxury linens" google.co.uk. Ok, observe each of the ads and what they say, then click each of the links and see how they sell it. Ok, those competitors have probably years experience in this market and they are showing you right there on the page what they have learned.

Next step is build out your keyword universe, something along the lines of:

[size] x [color] x [quality] x [material] x [brand] x [product]

"large grey luxury wool hermes blanket" "grey luxury wool hermes blanket" "grey wool hermes blanket"

"king-size white Egyptian cotton sheets" "king-sized Egyptian cotton sheets"

etc

so on and so forth, get thousands of those, type them into google keyword planner, investigate.

Next put into a live account, start with the roots, put in bids, start getting traffic to your generic pages. find where the volume is, refine your landing pages there, get a conversion rate, use that to up-bid your roots. then refine by looking at the search query reports and "pealing and sticking" those that have volume, rinse and repeat. Copy your competitors.

You get the idea.

You are the customer, how would you buy this through google?

When is the last time you or any of your acquaintances have bought soft goods from Facebook?

ParameterOne
When you say funnel optimization, which side of the funnel are you talking about? And I am wondering if you really need lead gen or just a better idea of who your target customer is. Very specific target customers are usually easy to find....but you have to make sure you know how to talk to them, meaning, your towel page is selling "comfort and softness with upmost absorbency" but your customer might want to buy "looks great in your bathroom and the color won't fade"
jimmygatz
I agree and this is what we want whoever we hire to do as we currently don't have the skill-set/human resources to test out the different propositions.