Understanding How Lead Providers Generate Leads

Success with Internet leads has much to do with how you manage those leads. Maybe even mostly to do with how you manage them. However, that lead management process can very effectively be adjusted to smooth and leverage the diversity of there generation methods.

This brief guide will introduce you to several of the Internet marketing methods lead providers use to generate the leads they sell to you.

Email Marketing – This is still the most consistent and responsive form of Internet marketing. Building a targeted and responsive email list is a guaranteed lead generation money-maker. Consequently, the best in the business will do some form of email marketing to drive lead generating traffic. Often this is in the form of an education-based newsletter–giving customers valuable information and motivation to trust their referral (to you).

PPC Marketing – There are few faster ways to drive large volumes of traffic and generate a lot of targeted leads than to buy the traffic. That is the principle behind Pay-Per-Click (PPC) marketing. Most popular in this genre is Google AdWords–those brief little text ads in your Google search results.

PPC lead generation generally brings in well targeted and generate consumers with buying intent.

SEO Marketing - Those trying to build sustainable lead generation capabilities have to eventually invest in understanding Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Learning to get Google to love you is important to driving high intent consumers to your website or landing page. This approach has to be a strategy versus a tactic. It can only bring significant traffic if it is systematically applied with the mind of a publisher, not a marketer.

The advantage of SEO-based lead generation is significant–bringing in active researching and searching buyers.

Co-registration – This strategy is a common way for marketing companies to monetize additional elements of the lead generation process. Obviously they are monetizing form submittals (leads), but co-registration allows them to monetize other elements. Some examples are: pop-ups and the like for non-submitting visitors, thank you and confirmation pages, etc. The results in your lead flow will be lower intent, but for the price possibly valuable prospects.

I equate these leads to the “impulse buy” racks at retail check-out counter. They work…sometimes, but don’t pay a premium for them.

Social Media Marketing - This is a newer genre of media, but has some interesting aspects that may be valuable if mastered and scaled. Essentially, you have the subtle elements of friend’s recommendation or referral. The challenge to date has been scale and generalizing the lead generation–creating a lead that can be passed (sold) generically to a vendor or service provider. Some of the most promising lead generation campaigns have been launched within Facebook, which has a nice viral component with Walls and Newsfeeds. And now Twitter is set to launch an Ad network.

So, watch for more movement in this lead generation strategy.

Aged Leads – I love aged leads. They are the left overs. The slop in the Internet marketing and lead generation business. They’re cheap and probably under-served. What’s more they are probably still relatively responsive as a few days sitting for dead. Why?

Sales people often aren’t as diligent as they should be and buyer often procrastinate or drag their feet in responding. A few days can open another positive sales window (the first and best obviously being minutes after submission). And for the price, pennies-on-the-dollar, you can get a lot of valuable training and experience working these Internet customers–odd birds at best.

As you can see most of these methods focus on how the traffic (consumer views) are generated. This approach can give you a high level understanding of who your prospects are going to be upon delivery.

Learning how your lead provider generates traffic can give you clues as to where leads might be in their buying process. Asking how your lead provider generates your leads can give you the leg-up on creating a more effective lead management and nurturing process.