6 Automations To Generate More Leads Than You Can Handle

Key Concepts

• Automated Lead Generation: Using systems and software to find and engage potential customers automatically.
• Web Scraping: Programmatically extracting data from websites.
• Apify: A platform for web scraping and automation, usable without coding knowledge.
• Lead Databases: Platforms like Apollo and ZoomInfo providing verified contact information.
• Cold Email Outreach: Sending unsolicited emails to potential leads.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator: A LinkedIn premium service for sales professionals to find and engage leads.
• LinkedIn Outreach: Contacting leads directly on LinkedIn.
• Phantom Buster: An automation tool often used for social media tasks like LinkedIn outreach and Twitter messaging.
• Instantly / Lemlist / Reply.io: Platforms for managing cold email campaigns.
• Upwork / Freelancer.com: Freelancing platforms where jobs can be scraped for leads.
• Make.com / n8n: No-code/low-code automation platforms for connecting apps and automating workflows.
• AI-Powered Personalization/Generation: Using AI (like ChatGPT) to customize emails or generate proposals.
• Content Marketing Automation: Automating blog post creation and distribution for lead generation via SEO.
• Keyword Research: Identifying search terms potential customers use (using tools like Semrush).
• Keyword Difficulty (KD): A metric indicating how hard it is to rank for a specific keyword.
• Faceless Videos: Videos created without showing the creator's face, potentially automated.
• Auto-DMing: Automatically sending direct messages on social media platforms like Twitter.
• Human-in-the-Loop: Incorporating human review or approval within an automated process.

Method 1: Cold Email Outreach Paired with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

• Core Idea: Automate finding leads through web scraping and reaching out via personalized cold emails.
• Lead Sourcing (Web Scraping):
  • Lead Databases: Use platforms like Apollo or ZoomInfo for high-quality, verified leads across various industries and niches (e.g., CEOs, Heads of Marketing, specific industries like landscaping, events, pharmaceuticals).
  • Job Postings: Scrape job boards like Indeed or LinkedIn for companies hiring for services you offer. Example: 2,599 jobs in Canada seeking SEO services. Apify can be used to scrape these listings, often capturing the poster's contact email.
  • Google Maps: Scrape local businesses listed on Google Maps.
• Tool for Scraping: Apify is highlighted as a key tool for web scraping these sources without needing coding skills. Specific Apify "actors" (scrapers) exist for Indeed, LinkedIn Jobs, etc.
• Process Workflow:
  1. Scrape Leads: Use Apify to gather lead data from chosen sources.
  2. Enrich Data: Enhance lead information, potentially using their LinkedIn profile data.
  3. Personalize Email: Use AI (like ChatGPT) to generate customized email copy based on the scraped and enriched data.
  4. Verify Email: Use email verification tools to ensure emails are valid and avoid damaging sender domain score.
  5. Send Cold Email: Use a cold email platform (like Instantly) to send the personalized emails.
• Potential: This method alone is suggested to potentially generate thousands of leads monthly.

Method 2: LinkedIn Outreach

• Core Idea: Use the same lead scraping methods as Method 1, but engage leads via LinkedIn messages instead of, or in addition to, cold email.
• Process Workflow:
  1. Scrape Leads: Identify target leads using methods described in Method 1 (Apollo, Job Postings, etc.).
  2. LinkedIn Outreach: Use a tool like Phantom Buster integrated with LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
  3. Automation: Phantom Buster can automatically send connection requests and follow-up messages once a connection is accepted.
• Tools: Phantom Buster (for LinkedIn automation), Instantly (mentioned as the speaker's choice for cold email, with alternatives like Lemlist, Reply.io).
• Strategy: Can be used independently or combined with cold email for a multi-channel approach.

Method 3: Upwork Automation

• Core Idea: Find freelance job postings on Upwork that match your services and automate the application process.
• Lead Source: Upwork job postings. Example cited: Approximately 4,000 jobs related to "AI automation" on Upwork.
• Problem Addressed: The high volume of jobs makes manual outreach and application impossible before jobs expire.
• Process Workflow:
  1. Scrape Jobs: Use Make.com (or n8n) or Apify to automatically scrape relevant Upwork job postings. Apify scrapers might not require Upwork login credentials.
  2. Organize Data: Add scraped job details (like URL, description) into a Google Sheet.
  3. Automated Proposal Generation: Use AI (trained on your resume, experience, etc.) to automatically generate tailored proposals for suitable jobs.
  4. (Optional) Automated Communication: Set up email triggers (using Make.com/n8n) to automatically reply to Upwork messages received via email notifications. AI can filter relevant emails and generate responses. Example: Replying "perfect thanks" to an email notification sends "perfect thanks" as a message on Upwork.
• Consideration: While automation saves time, the speaker suggests a manual or semi-manual approach might be better for high-value clients.

Method 4: Freelancer.com Automation

• Core Idea: Similar to Upwork automation, but applied to Freelancer.com.
• Lead Source: Freelancer.com job postings.
• Process Workflow:
  1. Scrape Jobs: Use Apify scrapers (noting they can sometimes be unreliable) or build a custom HTTP scraper using Make.com or n8n.
  2. Custom Scraping Example (n8n): Demonstrated using n8n's HTTP Request node (GET request) to pull raw HTML data from a Freelancer.com page URL. This data can then be parsed programmatically to extract job titles, descriptions, links, bid amounts, etc., and fed into a Google Sheet.
  3. Automated Proposals: Similar to Upwork, generate proposals automatically based on scraped job details. Apply manually if the job seems like a good fit.
• Speaker's Perspective: Considers Upwork significantly better than Freelancer.com. Views this method as more "experimental" and likely less impactful than the first three (Cold Email, LinkedIn, Upwork).

Method 5: Content Marketing & SEO Automation

• Core Idea: Generate leads passively over the long term by creating and ranking blog content automatically.
• Process Workflow:
  1. Keyword Research (Crucial Step):
     • Use a tool like Semrush (specifically the Keyword Magic Tool), not just ChatGPT.
     • Filter for keywords with sufficient Volume and low Keyword Difficulty (KD < 20). These are the "needles in a haystack" that are easy to rank for quickly.
     • Example: Finding low KD landscaping keywords.
  2. Automated Blog Post Generation: Use automation (speaker mentions an n8n blueprint) to create complete blog posts including titles, descriptions, images, internal/external links, based on target keywords.
  3. Ranking: Publish the content. Low KD keywords allow for potentially ranking on page 1 almost immediately after indexing.
  4. Automated Distribution: Set up a workflow (e.g., starting when a blog post is generated) to automatically push the post to multiple social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, X, Tumblr, Pinterest, LinkedIn).
• Results Example: Speaker's blog grew from ~10-30 clicks/day (late 2023/early 2024) to 1,500 clicks/day by September 28, 2024 (Note: Year inconsistency in transcript maintained).
• Caveat: Speaker prefers a "human-in-the-loop" for content distribution to ensure quality and brand alignment.
• Sub-Method (Untested): Automated creation of faceless videos (YouTube, Instagram). Speaker built this automation but hasn't tested its lead generation effectiveness, suspects it might not be very effective for local service businesses.

Method 6: Social Media Scraping & Auto-DMing (Twitter)

• Core Idea: Find relevant conversations or users on Twitter and automatically send them direct messages.
• Process Workflow:
  1. Scrape Tweets: Use Apify to scrape Twitter for tweets matching specific criteria relevant to the target demographic.
  2. Filter: Ensure the scraped tweets align with the intended audience.
  3. Auto-DM: Use Phantom Buster's "Twitter message sender" tool to automatically send DMs to the users who posted the relevant tweets.
• Caveat: This only works if the target user has their Direct Messages open to receive messages from anyone.

Speaker's Community & Additional Resources

• The speaker promotes their "School community" for those wanting in-depth, practical guidance ("going into the trenches") on these automation strategies.
• The community targets two main groups:
  1. Individuals looking to start an AI Automation Agency.
  2. Operators of 6, 7, and 8-figure businesses seeking to automate their operations.
• The speaker offers the exact blueprints they used to automate their own 7-figure service-based business.
• Mentions linking to Apify blueprints and a custom HTTP scraper tutorial (Make.com) in the video description.

Synthesis/Conclusion

The video outlines six distinct, primarily automated methods for generating a high volume of leads, potentially exceeding capacity. The core strategies involve leveraging tools like Apify for web scraping diverse sources (lead databases, job boards, Google Maps, social media), Phantom Buster for social media outreach (LinkedIn, Twitter), and automation platforms like Make.com/n8n for workflow integration and tasks like automated proposal generation or content distribution. Key lead generation channels covered are cold email, LinkedIn outreach, freelancing platforms (Upwork, Freelancer.com), content marketing/SEO, and Twitter DMs. While all methods offer automation potential, the speaker emphasizes Cold Email Outreach, LinkedIn Sales Navigator outreach, and Upwork automation as the most impactful "heavy hitters." Content marketing offers long-term potential but requires careful keyword research (Semrush, low KD) and potentially human oversight for quality. The overarching theme is using automated systems to perform the "heavy lifting" of lead generation efficiently.