Why you need a lead generation strategy

Net Imperative
04-30-2009 

Lead generation is often considered only as part of a general online marketing strategy. Justin Rees, Head of Marketing at LeadPoint, explains why the discipline needs more attention than that…

Any advertiser with a budget to spend on online marketing should have a separate ring-fenced lead generation strategy because those that don’t are– without even realising it – effectively wasting a significant proportion of that budget paying for poor quality leads.

Any response geared marketing campaigns with the objective of capturing the information of interested consumers either through paid search, banner advertising, email marketing or even with affiliate networks often just amounts to bad lead generation with little or no measurable return on investment.

Expertise in paid search or media buying is not the same as expertise in generating good quality leads. Eliciting the initial response from a consumer whether it is from a Google click or a banner click is only a small part of what lead generators do.

A paid search campaign might get thousands of clicks but it is what happens to those clicks that determines what the return on investment will be. Not only is a lead more than a click; it is also more than a consumer’s name and number.

A lead should contain full contact details as well as a suite of information about the product or service the consumer is interested in.  In addition, all leads should be generated and delivered in real-time. Expert lead generators know how to generate the initial response but they are also experts in form optimisation which is the skill of getting consumers to fill in up to 20 fields of data with no more incentive than to be contacted by the advertiser.

Buying media in the form of clicks, banners etc. is also very risky and at best, takes time to optimise. An advertiser buying media is paying for everything, i.e. consumers who exit a website after a few seconds, fraudulent clicks and consumers that aren’t right for the product or service. Lead generation cuts out the noise and buying leads on a cost per lead basis gets that crucial step closer to a converted customer.

This dramatically reduces the media risk as lead buyers are only paying for consumers that responded to the initial marketing and left their full information requesting to be contacted. In addition, the lead data will have passed through a data verification system which would screen out leads with invalid numbers, fake names etc. which means the advertiser will only receive leads with the highest likelihood of converting to business.

If the advertiser objective is to capture these interested consumers in order to contact them and sell them a product or service then decentralised marketing campaigns will also result in a great deal of wastage in the form of duplication of lead data. This effectively means paying for the same interested consumers more than once.

Rationalising marketing campaigns by buying leads – the successful results of somebody else’s marketing spend – not only allows the advertiser to utilise a whole range of online marketing methods but also reduces wastage as de-duplication will mean you only pay once for each lead which immediately saves money and increases ROI.

In the current climate where marketing spend is becoming increasingly more accountable, lead generation offers a compelling proposition for any advertiser marketing a product or service that requires customer contact. Advertisers should make sure they have a lead generation strategy rather than leads being generated as the incidental result from a marketing spend. 

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