Do you want to know How I Generated $900 In Revenue In Only 5 Minutes?

Over the last two years, I’ve accidentally acquired a new addiction… business marketing and lead generation. No, I’m not some kind of guru or anything. In fact, I’m still learning. But over the last 24 months, I did something that changed the way I approached marketing forever.

When it comes to marketing an auto transport business, the first thing that comes to mind is yellow pages and Google Ads. However, there are so many other places to market your business. There’s Bing, Yahoo, Transport Reviews, Magazines, Radio, Billboards… I mean the list can go on and on. The common denominator in all of this is money. In order to advertise through any of these channels, you’ll need some kind of marketing budget. And that can get quite pricey especially when you’re talking about buying television ad space or a billboard. Interestingly enough, Google ads are not so cheap either.

In most industries, you can expect to pay anywhere from $1 to $3 for popular keywords however, in this industry you’re lucky if you can buy a keyword for $5. So it’s not cheap getting your business name out there especially when you’re not thinking outside the box.

So how did I generate $900 in revenue in only 5 minutes?

I answered a question in a forum.

Yes, that’s all I did. One day, I was sitting at my computer doing market research when I saw a question in a forum that caught my eye. Now usually when it comes to forums, I take a “fly on the wall” approach. Simply put, I just observe, I don’t interact. This time was different. Like I said, the question caught my eye. Someone was asking about cheap car shipping options for moving a car across country. On a normal day, if I had seen the question, I would’ve just skimmed over it and move on but this time I couldnt.

Why?

Because the answers I saw were sickening. They made me want to spit my wine all over my keyboard and computer screen. I couldn’t believe the things people were saying about how to find cheap car shipping companies. And worst part? Some of the answers were from car shipping companies themselves. I mean reading a company say things like “we guarantee the cheapest rate” was making me sick to my stomach. How can you really make that guarantee unless you’re cutting into your fee? And if so, then advertise the lowest brokers fee. I have no problem with that.

Anyways, I decided that ignoring this post wouldn’t do any justice for the author nor the people who will eventually read it and take the advice given. So I took a gulp of my wine, placed it on the coaster and proceeded to write the author what turned out to be a quite lengthy response to their question. Literally it looked like a blog post. It took me precisely 5 minutes and I clicked the “post” button.

For a few days nothing happened. A week went by, and nothing. Eventually I stopped checking back on the post and boom, it happened.

Fast forward about 6 weeks after writing a post during my slightly inebriated state of mind, I woke up to a quote in my inbox from a guy in Canada. He said he saw my response in the forum and it blew him away. He had never seen an auto transport broker so open and honest and that “seemed to care more about the well being of the customer than themselves.” His words not mine. He booked with me and has since used my company two times after that. So off a 5 minute post in a forum one late night while drinking a glass of wine, I ended up making $900.

Best part? It didn’t end there. After creating that post I went on to eventually acquire 4 other clients just from that one post. So do the math. 🙂 

So you’re probably thinking, well that’s you. I can’t do that!

Let me assure you, you can. Here’s how:

Step 1: Keep the Client’s Best Interest at Heart First and Foremost.

The key to doing what I did is understanding that I did this without the intent of making money. Making money happened because I was generously giving my expertise without looking for some for of reward. This is key. When you think with an end game in mind, you’re losing. Why?

Because you are then limiting yourself to only think about the sale, not the clients best interest.

Once you have that in your mind then you move on to step 2.

Step 2: It takes time.

This is a big one. Listen, it took about a month and a half before anyone even responded to my post. So using this method is not some get a million clients at once thing. You have to understand that any efforts you do today, you might not reap the rewards if any at all for quite a while. Give it time. Slow and steady wins the race. You’re not going to replace buying leads straight away, but you will help bring in clients that you have a high ROI on because all you invested was what? Time. So be patient.

Step 3: Find forums.

This is the juicy step. This is where the action takes place. Find a forum where a client is asking about shipping their car. But listen closely here. Do not advertise your services. The key to what I did was I didn’t advertise my company at all and this is very important. I found that by not posting the name of my company  and only having signed “xoxo Ashley” they were easy to convert into clients. Here’s why. Studies show that when people put more effort into a company they are more likely to continue with that company. In my case, they had to do a little bit of digging to find me. Now they didn’t have to jump through hoops or anything like that, but they had to click my name and hope I had some background info on me in my bio. Which I did.

In conclusion:

The last step which really isn’t a step is to make sure you have a way to know how the potential client found you. Without that information, you have no way to know if your efforts have worked. Tracking where your clients came from is a lesson within itself so i will spare you this time. But that’s pretty much it. I used the power of forums/blogging to generate $900 in revenue through only 5 minutes of my time. What a serious ROI if you ask me.

All this lead to my recent addiction to marketing and lead generation. Since then, I’ve explored numerous other NO COST ways to generate my own auto transport leads. If you haven’t already, sign up for the mailing list and when you get inside, you’ll find extremely valuable resources along with ways you too can generate your own auto transport leads.