Ask HN: Built a prototype for getting leads from social networks

7 points by sumeetchawla 11 years ago | 12 comments

Hello HN Community,

We recently built a prototype which helps get leads for businesses from social networks. By social network, we mean any places on the social sphere where people are genuinely raising enquires. Example: nowadays, a lot of Facebook groups for entrepreneurs and freelancers have grown so much. On these groups a lot of people post their queries and look for references. Example, someone might post that they need an Android Application done, a logo, content writer or even require an event agency. Being a service provider myself, I have received genuine leads from these groups. We are looking at smartly data mining these enquiries and showing these leads to the relevant business owners.

Our target audience would be SMEs and freelancers. They will be able to add the keywords associated with their business and leads associated with them will automatically appear on their Leadify dashboard. Then the business can contact them via our dashboard and try to close the deal.

We really want some support from the community in getting feedback. How can we improve it further? What relevant data would a business owner want regarding the lead? How can we improve the lead generating experience of any business owner? What problems does one face in normally getting leads? How much would a business owner be willing to pay if the product gives genuine value and helps convert 1-2 leads per month?

Here is the prototype version of the product - http://leadify.in

Looking forward to your valuable comments :)

Thank you.

Sumeet Chawla

amrrs 11 years ago |

When you talk about Lead generation,

* What kind of details are you giving the user - Full Name, Title, Email, Company and Phone or it's just a Facebook id saying that this user is in need of something that you offer.

* Also have you made it location specific and any demographics to target or filters of that kind?

* If possible include competitor mapping too, for eg: If I'm Costa coffee, very often someone commenting in Starbucks page must be my lead too.

* Fees - A Telesales executive or an Internet guy can sure get more leads and they are not algorithmic, so if your service is to assist them or replace them, the charges have to reflect that.

sumeetchawla 11 years ago | |

Hey Amrrs,

Thanks for the valuable suggestions :)

Regarding the comments:

* In the current prototype we are not displaying any contact details as we want to validate how many people are interested in the leads. But with our first version, we are going to provide an ability to contact the lead right from the dashboard. Getting more info about the lead will be the next iteration. We will try to study what information a business owner might want regarding the leads and then carry on from there. The fields you mentioned are very important in my opinion too.

* We will add filters based on demography. We wanted to validate the whole concept and see how many business owners are actually interested. Now we will focus on getting more reliable sources for leads. A lot of facebook/LinkedIN groups have very genuine enquires. Hence, at present we only know about those which are India oriented. We will be researching for other countries now. Once we have good number of reliable sources for different countries, we will work on the demography filter.

* Thank you so much for this! This is an amazing feature and I believe can be targeted at enterprise level companies too. I mean, if I was Costa Coffee, I would definitely want to see who are unhappy with Starbucks or want coffee from our competitors.

* Fees - is a very tricky point at present. The point you made is very valid that a internet sales guy or a telesales executive can get more leads. I think we have to find a balanced price depending on the customer value proposition we provide and how valuable it is to initial businesses who sign up.

Thanks again for your super valuable inputs! :)

- Sumeet

yopeoplefinder 11 years ago |

Interesting concept although I would make it clearer on the homepage who the target audience is - 'for your business' is a little generic.

sumeetchawla 11 years ago | |

Ahan. Well, the target audience is not limited to IT service providers or designers for that matter. Even, if I own a bakery shop, I would want leads from people asking for cupcakes.

This is another challenge we faced to write the description in the best way possible so as to not focus on one vertical and alienate other businesses. What would you guys recommend? Should we write bullet points after the tag line stating:

1. Recommended for small business owners and freelancers. Ex: Developer, Designer, Event Organizer. 2. Helps you expand your services to real people enquiring about those on social networks.

Something of those sorts?

amrrs 11 years ago | | |

My suggestion would is to keep the same length like the one you have now. Bulleting in Home might not look so appealing and it's always good to keep the words Simple and small.

"Drive more Sales with Quality Leads from Social Media"

"Your worry of Lead generation is over. We create your Leads from Social Media"

"Lead Generation is just a click away. Get Quality Leads from Social Media"

Might be creepy. I'm not so good in copywriting, thought it might give you some idea.

ColinWright 11 years ago |

Clickable: http://leadify.in/

sumeetchawla 11 years ago | |

Thanks for this Colin, I was unable to link it. :-/

ColinWright 11 years ago | | |

You can't link in submissions, and URLs in comments auto-link.