Lead Gen Incubator by Leevi Eerola teaches you how to start a B2B lead generation business. The main strategy taught in the course is cold emailing, where you send emails to a prospective client without prior contact. The course is a 10-week program made for beginners. It starts by covering the basics of building a lead generation agency and then ends with scaling and optimizing the business.
There are no Lead Gen Incubator reviews online since the course was launched in October 2023. However, Leevi Eerola’s other lead generation course, Agency Velocity, has overwhelmingly positive reviews on Trustpilot, scoring 4.7 stars based on 23 reviews. Students of Agency Velocity praise Leevi’s dedication to his students and the community the course gives them access to.
According to Business Research Insights, the global lead generation industry is worth $3.1 billion, and is expected to reach $15.5 billion by 2031. The Content Marketing Institute also says that 85% of B2B businesses say that lead generation is one of their most important goals. These show that lead generation has some big opportunities in 2024.
In this article, we’ll go over what exactly lead generation agencies are, how the course’s B2B 60-word email strategy works, check some student reviews of Leevi’s programs, do a background check on Leevi Eerola himself, then end by looking at some alternative programs and businesses that you should consider.
Lead Gen Incubator Pros & Cons
Pros
Good reputation
Teaches a valuable skill
Enthusiastic teacher
Great community
Cons
No student reviews yet
Very difficult business to master
Simple, "scrappy" platform and coach
Course expires after 6 months
Price
Lead Gen Incubator does not state its price online. You have to get on a discovery call with a consultant before buying the course. One Redditor mentioned that Leevi’s other course, Agency Velocity, cost him $6,100.
Refund Policy
Lead Gen Incubator did not publish its full refund policy to the public. However, Leevi promises to give a full refund if students fail to make more money than they’ve paid for the course. There is also a qualifying process, and he says they won’t allow you to buy the course if you aren’t fit for it.
Origin
Lead Gen Incubator was created in October 2023 as a beginner-friendly version of Agency Velocity.
Reputation
Leevi has a good reputation among students. People in Trustpilot and Reddit comment on Leevi’s enthusiasm for mentorship and the strong community inside his course. Leevi also has a reputation for being “scrappy,” using simple tools like Google Docs for presentations and occasionally posting broken links.
What Is a Lead Generation Agency?
Lead generation agencies help businesses find potential clients through online marketing methods like email marketing, Facebook ads, search engine marketing, and others. These agencies typically specialize in one of the many strategies, but the end goal is always to generate qualified leads for their clients.
In Lead Gen Incubator, Leevi Eerola teaches the cold email lead generation strategy. This works by reaching out to potential clients without any prior contact. You first find a potential client's email address, send them a series of emails to get them interested in your product or service, and try to get them to book a call or appointment.
Lead generation is a legitimate business. Most business owners know the potential of online marketing, but many don’t have the knowledge or skills to make it work. This is especially true for startups since lead generation is one of the best ways to get clients while their brand is still unknown.
All of this makes lead generation a very profitable business when done right. Lead generation agencies can charge premium prices since highly qualified leads have a good chance of converting into sales. The average cost per lead is $198, but that depends on the industry and company size. Agencies serving IT companies can charge up to $370 per lead, while those serving non-profit organizations go for $43 per lead (DeTorres Group).
Who Is Lead Gen Incubator For?
Lead Gen Incubator is for people who are new to lead generation and want to start an agency online.
Before you can get into the course, you must go through a qualifying sales call. Leevi doesn’t lay out what you need to get in, but he says the qualifying process is to ensure the community inside the course is engaging and high quality.
How Does Lead Gen Incubator Work?
Lead Gen Incubator works by generating leads for B2B businesses by sending 60-word emails. Their main strategy is to choose a niche to work on, find the email addresses of people you want to work with, and then send them a series of hard-hitting emails to get them to book an appointment with you. In the appointment, you can offer your potential client the same process you used to get them in the first place: cold emails.
This strategy is especially effective for businesses in B2B industries since generating quality leads is more difficult here compared to B2C companies. There’s also a lot more money involved in B2B contracts, which is why generating leads for these businesses is often very profitable. In Lead Gen Incubator, Leevi teaches his students how to go after established companies that can pay premium prices for leads.
What Do You Get With Lead Gen Incubator?
In Lead Gen Incubator, you’ll get a 10-week program that’s designed to take you from complete beginner to earning 6-figures from your lead generation agency. The course is action-based, students don’t only watch the modules but are assigned tasks every week to get their business up and running. Lead Gen Incubator also puts a strong emphasis on building a high-quality community of students, which sets it apart from other lead gen courses.
What Is the Lead Gen Incubator 10-Week Program?
The Lead Gen Incubator’s 10-week program teaches a different aspect of the lead generation business every week.
You don’t have to finish the entire program in 10 weeks. However, the course expires after 6 months, so you’ll be forced to take action. Aside from the 10-week program, Lead Gen Incubator also comes with a private community, a success agent, and a few other bonuses.
What Is the Lead Gen Incubator Community?
The Lead Gen Incubator Community is a Skool group you join when you buy the course. Skool is the platform that hosts the course modules, and it also allows students and instructors to interact with each other through posts, comments, photos, chat, and more. The Lead Gen Incubator community has 3 group coaching calls a week, and there are currently 210 members inside.
While there are no public reviews of the Lead Gen Incubator community, Leevi’s other program (Agency Velocity) gets high praises specifically for its community, with some people saying it’s the best part of the course.
Are Students of Lead Gen Incubator Successful?
There are no student success stories outside the sales process for Lead Gen Incubator yet since the course is relatively new. However, there are several successful students from Leevi’s other program, Agency Velocity. Someone in Trustpilot even reported making 20k in a month after just 70 days in the program. He also praised the course advisors’ willingness to help in getting clients, getting results for clients, and “everything in between.”
People in Trustpilot also comment on the strong community Leevi has created a lot, with some saying it’s the strongest asset of the course.
On Reddit, people also comment on how willing Leevi and the team are to help their students.
There are currently no negative reviews of Lead Gen Incubation, Leevi Eerola, or Agency Velocity online. However, it’s important to note that Leevi doesn’t allow people who aren’t “fit” to join his courses. This may be the reason for the lack of negative reviews and the high success rate of people who join the program.
Who Is Leevi Eerola?
Leevi Eerola is an online entrepreneur from Porvoo, Finland, who is currently based in Tallinn, Estonia. He is the founder of ROI Studio, a B2B lead generation agency that targets SaaS companies, as well as Agency Velocity, his online course where he teaches how to build and scale lead generation agencies. He is very active on Twitter and YouTube, where he posts plenty of free lessons on lead generation and cold emails.
Leevi studied at Linnankosken High School in Porvoo from 2016 to 2019 and joined Course 256 of Finland’s Reserve Officer School in 2020. While studying, Leevi says that he was constantly trying to make money online through dropshipping, affiliate marketing, social media marketing, and working as a freelancer. He was also exposed to sales when he worked for the Nordic Sales Crew and a few other companies, which Leevi says meant going door to door in the cold winter.
While working in sales at Norders, a Revenue Operations company, Leevi experimented with lead generation strategies for the company. It was during his time here that he discovered the cold emails strategy, which allowed him to leave Norders to create Agency Velocity with the help of Rob, his partner from the USA.
What Is Agency Velocity?
Agency Velocity is Leevi Eerola’s flagship lead generation agency consulting program. Agency Velocity targets people who have existing digital marketing agencies and are looking to get more clients or scale their business. Agency Velocity was launched in August 2022 and Leevi claims it has since helped over 200 students build $10,000 - $30,000 a month agencies.
Both Agency Velocity and Lead Gen Incubator teach the same strategy - generating leads through cold emails. However, the difference between Lead Gen Incubator and Agency Velocity is that Lead Gen Incubator is for beginners, while Agency Velocity is more of a consulting program to help people scale their lead gen business.
What is Leevi Eerola’s Claim?
Leevi Eerola often claims that you only need one skill (cold emailing) to start a successful lead generation agency. He says that if you master writing 60-word cold emails, you can use them to generate leads and clients for both yourself and your clients. Finally, he says that this can make you anywhere from $10,000 - $80,000 a month.
Debunking Leevi's Claim
While writing cold emails is a valuable skill for getting clients, there’s a lot more you’ll have to master to create a successful lead gen agency.
Learning to identify target audiences - Learning to identify a specific target audience is very important for lead generation. Not only do you have to choose a niche for yourself, but a lot of companies you may work with don’t have a specific target audience. Running a successful lead agency often means helping businesses with their marketing strategy, not just writing the emails for them.
Finding the emails of executives - Leevi tells his viewers to target established B2B companies. The problem is many executives don’t display their email addresses specifically because they don’t want to be bothered by offers like yours. And even if you find the emails, only 23.9% of all cold emails are opened, and only 1% - 5% get a reply depending on the niche.
Being good at sales - Even if a business sets an appointment with you, you’ll still have to close the deal. According to Marketing Sherpa, 79% of leads don’t convert into sales. That’s because closing deals on calls or in a meeting is a completely different skill from copywriting (Note: Leevi had extensive experience in sales before jumping into lead generation).
These are skills that Leevi teaches in his courses. However, to say that you only need to learn cold emailing to create a successful lead-generation agency is not true. This is likely one of the reasons Leevi limits who can access the course, since they need students who are willing to learn everything, not just cold emails.
Is a Lead Agency Business Worth It in 2024?
Yes, a lead agency business is worth it in 2024, especially if you have a knack for writing, are good at sales, and want quick, tangible results. However, Leevi Eerola's cold email strategy can be very challenging for people who are new. Cold email lead generation requires established business to open your emails, set up an appointment, and partner with you, which is extremely difficult in 2024. This is especially true since business executives are bombarded with emails nowadays.
Most established businesses already have their own methods for getting clients, and buying leads from a third-party agency may not be on their agenda. The easiest target for lead gen agencies are startups, but small businesses like these may not have the funds to pay the high rates agencies like Leevi’s ROI Studio are getting.
There are other lead generation strategies like social media and cold calling, but these all come with their own set of challenges. Social media, it often takes thousands of views and likes before generating a quality lead. At the same time, cold calling marketing campaigns have some of the lowest success rates of all.
Create Sustainable Passive Income With Local Lead Generation
While building a lead generation agency using Lead Gen Incubator’s method is possible, getting in contact with established B2B businesses is harder than online courses make it seem. However, there is another type of lead generation that gets rid of this problem: local lead generation.
Despite the similar name, local lead generation is a completely different business model from lead generation. Local lead generation is a legit business that works by generating leads for physical businesses like tree trimming, towing, or plumbing services. Instead of sending cold emails, local lead generation entails creating optimized websites and Google Business profiles, then renting them out to local services (you can think of it as a digital billboard).
Since the websites are rented out, they generate completely passive income - allowing you to scale to as many local services or zip codes as you want. Plus, maintaining a local lead gen “billboard” only costs around $30/month. Non-local lead generation forces you to constantly work hard with A-B testing, writing new emails, and even coming up with campaigns for your clients. Scaling and automation are very difficult in this business since you are the one with the knowledge and skills to make things work. Meanwhile, in local lead gen, you just need to own the digital assets and money comes flowing in.
Finally, there are hundreds of different local businesses, and 41,704 ZIP codes in the United States, and all these businesses need as many phone calls as they can get. That’s why finding clients for your digital billboard is much easier than getting an uninterested B2B business owner to open your email. That’s why even though their names are similar, local lead generation is the superior lead generation business!
