When you ask someone if they or "I" have successfully done “X” to give yourself confidence, you might be misleading yourself. Just because someone else has succeeded or failed at something doesn't mean you will achieve the same result. Your own drive and perseverance are what will determine your success or failure. Period. I've been in this industry for over 30 years, and I've fallen for shiny object syndrome too. But I'm also an information sponge; it's a hobby to dive into many things, though it's getting harder with age...lol. The Trap of Following Trends I see people registered in countless groups (not knocking it), but it often indicates they don’t know what they want and are hoping someone else's success will spill over to them. It doesn’t work that way, folks. People who can't decide between SMMA or AI (AAA) and other buzzwords—I get it, I really do. But you need to step back and understand what these are, how they operate, and whether they fit your desired lifestyle. Learn from others, but chart your OWN path if you want to succeed. The Realities of SMMA, AI, and SEO SMMA can be complex and a headache, with many people being misled. AI or AAA (AI Automation Agency) is laughable to me. I've built a 30-year career on automation and software development, and seeing people fall for the latest fad is disheartening but not surprising. Are any of these bad? No, it depends on you. Look at SEO (now part of SMMA); you can’t be a true SEO expert and master everything else unless you’re me, of course...JUST KIDDING. These skills take time, trial and error, and a lot of work. You don’t just wake up one morning, pay a guru $5k, and suddenly become an SEO, SMMA, AAA, or any other trendy term. Making an Informed Decision My point is, you need to understand these different technologies and business models to make an informed decision about whether they’re right for you—then COMMIT. Stop hopping around until you’ve spent 1,000 hours and $10,000+ investing in making it work.

I've gone with Solar as my first venture in offering DBR. Many of these solar dudes seem to have large lists of aged leads (50k+). Converting even 1% could be significant for me, but I'm worried these lists might be the epitome of low quality. Has anyone found success with similar lists, or was it a waste of time and resources? What has been your experience with the Solar industry in general?

I'm going to run a test in the coming days to attempt to improve lead quality from my Advertorial. Currently, I run cold Facebook traffic to a single page advertorial and on the advertorial there is a "calculator" lead capture set up with Leadshook. The client enters ALL of their details including their address, phone number, email and info to get their property calculation. Only once they enter everything, do they get their calculation. They also have to agree to receive a call from an adviser upon entering their phone number. This has largely worked really well for me for years at this point, with minimal need to update copy or funnels. But the quality has been slipping a lot lately so I need to test something different. My idea/plan is to test the same advertorial funnel but removing phone number requirement as well as address etc. Only taking the details needed for the calculation and email. Following that, I will provide the calculation instantly BUT also then offer the call from the adviser (need a good no brainer reason for them to go for this) and have a drip feed campaign to follow up via email to provide useful info and keep asking them to opt in for the call. My assumption is that the conversion rate when only asking for email will dramatically increase and anyone who takes the extra step to request the call will be a "hot lead" and extremely engaged/interested. Any thoughts or ideas welcome :)

I am guilty of this.. but being complacent or lazy and just running the State or Country is road to wasted ad spend, drill down and focus on the hot buyer Postal codes. I kept this map from a Solar group I was with some time ago, it's very revealing if you've ever just selected the whole state to run your ads because of laziness ;) even though this was part of a Solar lead gen, the leads in these areas were homeowners and that's applicable to many things such as finance, insurance, real estate, home services...etc. Taking the time to know where your lead pools are can save you time and money later.

yeh I can be a Debbie Downer sometimes when folks ask a question... that's probably because I've seen the courts side of things. I am very positive about lead gen!!!!! ... but I do not agree with a lot of the crap out there and the folks pushing the crap, I don't care about their 50k member groups with folks asking what is FTP, most of them are snake oil salesmen IMHO....just to be clear. Carry On. ;)