Profitable Lead Generation Niches for Agencies

Customer lead generation is an essential aspect of any successful business that wants to succeed with their product or service. But not many companies have the resources to generate leads, so they leave that up to the professionals.

If you’re one of the companies who find prospects, you might want to make yourself stand out in a sea filled with countless competitors. In order to accomplish that, you should focus on a specific category. In this post, I’ll introduce you to a few lead generation niches with potential. I’ll also tell you how to find a niche without much competition. After all, any list you’ll find will sooner or later be outdated.

Why lead generation niches are a goldmine

As an agency owner looking to be more distinct, you should be looking for a niche that is in high demand but hasn’t been discovered by competitors yet. The advantage is that you’ll find customers that are willing to pay a decent amount for your services, since there’s no competition (yet). You’ll also be able to offer your lead gen services easily as you can position yourself as an industry expert.

Sooner or later, competitors will emerge, and most likely try to undercut you with their pricing. However, you’ll have the advantage of being first-to-market. Use that to advertise your skills with the help of case studies that showcase what kind of qualified leads you’ve brought your clients.

How do you choose a lead generation niche?

The beautiful thing about services that there are always new niches emerging as technology and products evolve. If you’re just starting out with your agency, you can tap into a niche that hasn’t been discovered (or saturated) yet.

Before you pick a random niche, though, keep the following in mind:

• Check if the niche does have a high demand.

• Make sure prospects are willing to pay for a service.

• Ensure you have the expertise to serve this niche.

Another criteria to judge a niche is by the conversion rate. The target group is easily reachable, be it via email, LinkedIn, or phone. This means you need to invest less resources into warming the leads, leaving more headroom for your budget. Speaking about the budget, how much do you have to invest in your business in order to scale it and find quality leads? Providing niche services doesn’t come cheap. After all, you need to hire a few people who will do the niche lead generation—and they need to be paid even while you still experiment with your new business.

10 best niches for lead generation

In order to help service providers kick-start their lead generation business, I picked niches that respect the criteria mentioned previously. One way to be sure of that is to look at the average cost per lead (CPL) by industry, published in a study from Sopro.

They have found out that the CPL for email marketing is especially expensive in the healthcare and management consulting sectors; the cheapest ones are software/technology and education. For some niches, SEO is a cheap lead generation strategy you can use, for instance retail and IT services. With this information, you can calculate your profit margins more accurately, as you can estimate how much money you’ll need to invest in order to find prospects.

Another aspect to look at is the customer lifetime value of your potential agency clients. An architecture firm would have a high lifetime value as a customer because they’ll be interested in constantly finding new leads. Their projects also take a lot of time, and are often split up into phases that span multiple years. While SaaS businesses seem like an interesting target group, keep in mind that not all of them have huge budgets, especially those that have just hit the market. Instead, look for SaaS businesses that recently secured funding as they’ll probably look to invest it into marketing. The bad part is that the funding might run out, making the business focus on other aspects.

Finally, it might make sense to focus on clients that target other businesses. B2B lead prospecting does have its challenges compared to targeting consumers, but companies are usually willing to spend a lot more money. It’s also easier to reach out to them via professional networks such as LinkedIn.

In any case, to make things easier, I’ve split the niches up into two categories.

Local lead generation niches

Architecture

Architects are always looking for new clients. Their business is a little bit different from what you might be used to because the buying cycle as well as the project time are very long. This might be tricky for your agency because it can take months before you get confirmation of converted leads. However, they usually do spend a lot of money, so you can justify your higher niche lead generation costs.

Roofing

Every house needs a new roof sooner or later. And in some countries, there are very strict laws when it comes to roofing standards. This means that the project costs are higher than they used to be a few decades ago. To make things easier for your agency, focus on finding a local business as your client as you can leverage local SEO. To find the right leads, make sure the business does at least have a website you can redirect them to.

Clean energy installation

Solar and other solutions are gaining traction around the world—and companies constantly need new clients to satisfy their availability. As with architects, you could certainly take the local approach, as the competition would be lower than getting a client that services anyone across the state or country.

You can even focus on a specific type of clean energy, for instance heat pumps (which are trending first according to Google Tends), or the installation of home EV charging stations.

Remodeling

Anyone will sooner or later renovate their house, and usually invest a small fortune into the remodeling. This is especially true if the house or apartment hasn’t been updated in a while. Remodeling shouldn’t be confused with regular handymen work, instead, these businesses are often run by designers. They have a team of brilliant people who will change existing spaces to make them better suited for modern living. This includes tearing down walls, updating appliances, and rewiring the house if needed. As such, they often work with contractors to get the job done. As with architects, remodeling businesses need a steady stream of new clients in order to expand.

House cleaning

While this is a general niche, you can narrow it down to residential or commercial cleaning, or even focus on just carpet or pool cleaning. Industrial services are usually the better choice as they cost more and the contracts are longer. When dealing with private individuals, there’s just no security when it comes to the length of the service provided because contracts are rarely signed.

Online lead generation niches

Technology

Tech companies spend on average more money on advertising and marketing than other businesses. According to this Kiwi Creative, SaaS companies are the biggest spenders, with over $5,000 per month on paid ads alone. Bigger tech companies don’t invest much in marketing because their name is already known. Your best bet is either to go after SaaS companies that are established and looking to grow, or bigger companies with a revenue of around $50 million per year.

Education

Online education has changed over the past few years. Some universities allow you to get your degree online, but there are also all kinds of other educational services. For instance, those that teach languages or skills. The biggest downside of this niche is that the customer lifetime value isn’t very long. After all, once you got your degree, you don’t need the service anymore. With language learning, it’s a bit different because everyone learns at a different pace. In any case, lead generation in the educational sector usually targets private individuals. However, you could focus on business services, for instance learning business English.

IT services

This niche is rather broad and encompasses everything from cloud backup services to software development. It’s a good idea to focus on a specific subcategory so it’s easier to find the right leads. For instance, a lot of companies are looking for on-demand help with small tasks, development, or support. You could service outsourcing companies (or productized ones) looking to help those businesses in times when they have too much work.

Ecommerce

This is an interesting niche because many ecommerce products are always in demand, so your clients will be looking for new leads for a long time. Stay clear of seasonal products (Christmas) or expensive products such as watches or jewelry, as they are not essential items. As a rule of thumb: the longer the decision-making process for the products, the harder it will be for you to find leads. Customers will spend a lot of time educating themselves instead of making an impulse decision. Help them with image search software that can recommend products.

Other agencies

You might think: why would I help find leads for marketing agencies or any other agency for that matter? It’s simple, they are not your competition as long as they don’t offer the same service. It makes sense to help other agencies grow because that means that they’ll keep asking for your services. Try to find agencies that are willing to spend money on leads for a specific service or product that you know well. Also inquire about their rates because they are often not public. If you know that their average client spends $10,000 per month, you can easily justify your costs of about $6,500 per month for your lead generation services.

Niche lead generation FAQ

Pick the most profitable lead generation niches

Picking the right niche for lead generation is essential to succeed with your agency. While there are many niches to choose from, not all of them are underserved. You can still find a niche that your competition has ignored, though.

Once you’ve set your eyes on a niche, it’s time to think about lead generation channels you want to focus on. Choosing specific ones will allow you to further distance yourself from competitors. For instance, you could be known as the agency with the best network of LinkedIn influencers for ecommerce.