Here is a checklist with 10 signs that shows your business needs an automatic web lead distribution system. If you are new to the internet lead generation business or a recently established the lead company and you are not using a lead distribution software system, compare your lead gen and delivery operations with this checklist. You might be surprised what opportunities (that will help you in scaling up the business) are being missed.

If you are already using some sort of lead management system and you still some of the problems described in the checklist, then it may be good time to reevaluate your software solution and match with your business requirements.

#1 Too much time spent in emailing leads: Are you spending too much time in emailing the leads received from your lead generation websites? When you started the business, probably it was good idea to focus on lead gen and business development. You could have emailed the few leads received to a handful of lead buyers. But, if you are following the same process, then you are not growing your business.

#2 Leads fall through the cracks: Are you missing the leads and the captured leads never reach the intended customers? Every lead missed is money wasted – in terms of lead generation efforts and cost. When you go on vacation, what happens to the leads? Either you need to subordinate to take care or your customers might slip away from you.

#3 Wasting time in re-formatting Emails to Customers: Even if you are dealing in a specific vertical such as Education Leads or Insurance Leads, each of your customer may be needing the lead data emailed to them in a specific format. If you sign-up more customers, more pronounced will be this problem. Your lead distribution and management system will support multiple email layouts and format to meet each customer’s requirement.

#4 Have to ignore potential buyers since they need automated Lead Delivery: I am sure that every has to avoid signing up one or two clients for some important reason. However, ignoring customers for want of an automated lead delivery management system will fatal to the business. Sophisticated / savvy / large customers will demand more automation features.

#5 Have more than a handful of websites or leads generated: If you have a more than a few websites, then managing the capture and distribution process is tedious. Also, measuring the performance of each website is essential to optimize your leadgen efforts. Even if you have one or two lead capture websites, if the volume of leads generated is high, then you will face the same issues.

#6 Using Google / Yahoo / Bing PPC for leadgen: Are you using PPC (pay per click) programs with Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Bing AdCenter to drive web traffic and generate leads? If so, you cannot live without a solid lead management system to manage and analyze the leads captured on your PPC landing pages. Don’t waste your inbound marketing efforts without fully monetizing.

#7 Don’t find enough time for Lead Generation: Are you spending too much time on your operations management? You must be focusing on traffic generation strategies and activities. Another important aspect needing most of your time is the business development and enrolling more customers. Deployment of a lead company operations management system can take care of capture, delivery and tracking.

#8 Lead Buyers complain about delay in lead delivery: Have you heard any complaints from your lead clients that leads are not reaching them on time? If you promise real time leads, the leads should be delivered in real time. It means that the data should be delivered within a few minutes, not after 30 minutes. Remember, the first responders have the advantage of converting the prospect to a customer.

#9 Losing Revenue: Are you leaving money on the table? If you don’t automate the distribution process, you may not route the prospects to all buyers. If you are promising multiple quotes for the prospects, you need to deliver the lead info to multiple customers. For example, if you are generating insurance or mortgage leads and the routing is based on geography (zip code or state), imaging how error prone the delivery routing process will be.

#10 Spending time on analyzing leads: Do you know where the leads are coming from and how these are distributed? What is your profitable lead source? Unless you know answers for these questions you cannot optimize your investment and generate revenue. If you are not using a good lead distribution database system which will provide instant answers on questions such as these, you will be wasting time in trying to get a grip of the business operations.

If you think that even one or two signs are visible, then it is time to take an in-depth look at your business operations / practices and analyze if an automatic lead distribution system can help you.

Choosing a lead distribution software service provider is a critical decision to be made by lead generation companies. If you are new to the online lead generation industry, you may be facing a number of options while considering a decision in this regard. Especially, the fees charged by various software providers may be all over the place and zeroing in on a provider based on pricing alone will lead to issues and consequences in future. Once you have selected a system provider and invested significant efforts, switching to another system is a time taking process in terms of the learning curve.

Here are 5 key considerations that you should take into account while choosing a Lead Distribution Software Service for your business.

#1 Flexible Software System

The lead distribution software should be flexible to accommodate all your requirements. A large / complex system may not necessarily mean it is flexible. You should weigh your current requirements and needs in the near future. If you are new to the lead generation and distribution business, invest some time in understanding the systems in the marketplace, industry practices, and technology developments. Remember that online lead generation and distribution business is closely tied to the internet technology trends.

#2 Match your business requirements

As mentioned above, a ton of features in the lead system may not address your business specific requirements. Understand your verticals, do some research or consult with couple online lead generation and distribution consultants. Money spent on these aspects will be worth the investment in terms of risk avoidance and mitigation.

#3 Agile technical support and services

If the software service provider is a behemoth and you are small business organization, probably they may not match your speed. Success of internet lead generation and distribution is all about timing and great customer support. You cannot be waiting for days and weeks to address specific technical support requirements. Remember that the internet works 24X7 and consumer lead requests are generated 24X7. If someone says that “our implementation team lead is on vacation for couple of days and hence the lead posting integration has to wait until next week”, better watch out. You customers (lead buyers) can just opt for another lead provider in a matter of minutes.

#4 Full Service as an option – a must

While you may prefer to go with self service options in the initial phases of your lead business, full service option will be way to go once you establish yourself. You must focus on generating leads and signing up customers, not on day to day technical operations management, unless you are restricted to a small niche which will leave you with plenty of free time. Make sure that your lead distribution software provider has the full service option when you need it.

#5 Double as your Business Consultant

As I mentioned above, the internet industry and online lead generation practices undergo constant change. You might be often needing help in using the technology trends to your advantage. A good lead system service provider can help you leverage the technology in terms of lead generation as well as distribution and delivery improvements. Small customizations and tweaks to the processes would be able to bring in significant benefits and maximize profit. For example, if you are generating internet leads using Pay Per Click (PPC) method with Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., managing the campaigns could be integrated with the real time lead delivery system, so  that you can save money when sufficient lead orders are not available. If your system can help in Tracking and managing the demand for real time leads, it will be a great help for you as a business owner / executive. You would be able to figure out other improvements and benefits by working with your service provider acting as a consultant.

While there are several other factors to be considered while choosing a lead distribution system, these five key considerations should be the top ones in your mind. Whether you are operating in one lead vertical or in multiple industry segments, you can leverage lead distribution the tool to grow your business.

If you have got into the blogging world recently or slow in catching up with leading bloggers and pros, you may be wondering how these folks are turning in so many blog posts. The primary motivation for prolific blogging is that it pays; provides great return on investment; number of leads generated can be multiplied.
Here is the link for a presentation on this subject by HubSpot and Vovici. While the presenters refer to HubSpot’s blogging tool, you can follow the best practices with any blogging platform. If you use WordPress, the most popular blogging software platform, make sure that you are using the self hosted version. Most of the web hosting service providers include WordPress as part of their hosting services and the entire blog system can be setup in about 10 minutes with simple clicks.

The following sources could be tapped to gather ideas and information for writing blog posts. Depending on the nature and objective of your blog, blog ideas can be generated from a number of internal and external sources.

• Your business whitepapers can serve as great inputs. However, the blog posts should be short and should not be mere reproduction of the content.
• If you are (you should be)  listening to the social media conversations around your business and industry, you can develop blog posts using the theme.
• You own customer surveys or subscriber / prospect surveys can be leveraged to create multiple blog writings. If you are using a web based survey software tool such as LeadPro247, it will be great addition to your idea gathering arsenal. However make sure that you are not over doing the survey strategy, which may backfire.
• New additions and enhancements to your product / service can provide basic ideas to explore on blog posts.
• You marketing and customer support teams are important sources to gather information that is relevant to the prospects and customers.
• If a particular idea / subject is large in scope, split the same into multiple posts. Long posts are generally ignored by blog readers. However, make sure that individual posts can standalone and will make sense, though all may be related to a specific subject.
• Keep an eye on the feedback and comments to your own posts. These could trigger ideas for additional posts explaining / improving the concept.
• Finally, blogging need not be an individual project. Your colleagues can contribute to the ideas as well as developing and publishing efforts.

By sparing a few minutes a day and keeping your eyes and ears open for blogging ideas will not only help you become a pro blogger but also bring a good number of leads leads to your business. Happy blogging!

MarketingProfs, a leading online marketing research organization, conducted a survey with over 5000 professionals regarding the usage of Social Media by B2B and B2C companies. The State of Social Media Survey results seems to show that the social media is beneficial to marketers and will help silence the skeptics.

Here is the summary of the survey results:

• 81% of businesses surveyed gained positive exposure
• 61% increased their online traffic or subscribers
• 56% created new business partnerships
• 52% boosted search rankings

This is a comprehensive report with over 240 pages containing detailed charts and statistics. Note that this is a paid report, but may be worth the money for those who are into social media as a marketing platform. If you are a lead generation /distribution agency or demand generation consulting service provider, the report contents would be a great addition to your knowledge base.

In the recent weeks, I have noticed a theme running in the internet marketing industry and inbound marketers with the question “will Facebook Ads challenge Google AdWords?”. The quick answer is no; at least not any time soon. However the emergence of such a thought itself is a good sign for the industry. Some sort of credible competition is good ifor the online advertising. Facebook, as a leading social media tool with over 300 million members is growing as a credible advertising platform. As a lead generation business professional, it is essential to take a critical look at the Facebook Advertising platform. Obviously, any new medium should not be ignored for the sake of it.

Facebook Advertising

There are several advantages of advertising in Facebook. Here are some:

1. The primary factor  is the phenomenal growth of  Facebook user base. However whether it will turn out to be a major search platform competing with Google is doubtful. Google’s ads are basically driven by people who search for products or services.
2. The prices are cheap when compared with Google. How long it will stay that way is anybody’s guess. The moment it gains critical mass, advertisers will flock to the Facebook Advertising platform and the prices are bound to go go up significantly.
3. The targeting with keywords and demographics is much better with Facebooks Ads.
4. Even the basic ads support images in the advertisement. The text copy can go up to 135 characters (unlike Google’s 75 characters).
5. The overall userbase is much younger. This could serve well for advertising in certain industry segments and verticals such as dating, music and entertainment, consumer electronics, beverages, education, etc.
6. Conversion rates are much higher. Again, as the ad volume increases the rates will go down.

While some project that Facebook ads will be as big as Google AdWords, many are not so sure. But did you ever guess two years back that Twitter will be creating such a revolution? Hence keep your options open, evaluate your lead business vertical(s) and start sampling the Facebook advertising.

Many lead business customers using our LeadPro247 Lead Distribution and Delivery software system that I spoke with have started experimenting with CPA Ad Networks in their lead generation strategies. During the discussions, I strongly encouraged them to test the waters with solid research and well planned strategies.

Since there are dozens of ad networks operating in the marketplace, it is essential to do a thorough research about the companies’ practices and support services before putting your offers on the networks. Also, the process is an ongoing one as new networks keep popping up in the field and some fade out of the scene.

Another area of research and exploration is that of the competition. By understanding the advertising strategies and offers of your competitors, you can avoid of a lot of mistakes and reduce the learning curve substantially.

Offer Vault service brings CPA Ad Networks and Ad Publishers together. The ad publishers (i.e. website owners and operators – known as affiliates) can compare the offers from various networks and pick the suitable ones. The ad networks send their offers (from various advertisers) to Offer Vault on a regular basis in order to attract more publishers. Your landing page and offer related information will be made available to the ad publishers.

Offer Vault service was founded by Mark Roth and I understand that Howie Schwartz, a well known internet marketer is also involved in it. The Offer Vault is completely free for anyone who registers on the site.

As a lead generation company and advertiser, you can leverage the features of the Offer Vault service to  compare advertisements from competitors and offers through other CPA networks. For example, you can visit and compare landing pages of other leadgen companies in your market segment.

CPA Ad Networks can be leveraged to maximize the return on your  lead generation efforts and reduce dependence on Pay Per Click (PPC) strategies. With the Google Adwords pricing sky rocketing in recent times and Google enforcing strict rules for quality assessment of websites and landing pages, it is critical that you diversify your leadgen practices, tools and strategies.

There are dozens of Ad Networks in the marketplace and hence you have a wide selection to choose from depending on your budget, nature of business and industry vertical.

How the Ad Networks operate?

The ad networks are basically centalized portals acting as intermediaries for publishers and advertisers. As an Advertiser you can submit your advertisements to one or more networks. Web site owners or operators (known as Publishers) choose the advertisements based on their specialization and preference and run the ads on their sites.

Typically you have to specify a rate per action performed, which is nothing but a lead acquired. This is referred to as CPA or Cost Per Action. You have to provide a suitable landing page to which the advertisers will drive the traffic from their websites. When the web visitors submit their information successfully, a thank you page need to be displayed. The thank you page will include a tracking pixel so that the ad networks can track the successful conversions and invoice you accordingly.

Importance of Landing Pages in Lead Generation via Ad Networks

As mentioned above, the Landing Page is the most important component of the lead acquisition process. Even if you get a ton of traffic to your site, if the landing page does not convert (i.e. visitors do not submit their info) you are not going to get any value out of the traffic. Make sure that the landing page is designed to convert and tested well.

You may take a look at the blog post on landing page design and optimization for lead conversion.

If you are using third party media planning / buying / ad agencies, they should be able to help you design the landing pages, negotiate the offer rates, choose suitable ad networks and track the ad performance.

CPA Ad Networks

Start with a small budget, test out the results and then ramp up your leadgen efforts with a network. Note that some offers (i.e. your advertisements) might work well with some networks and may not work with others. Also, the same ad might produce results at one time and might fail to perform at another point time. Since there are so many variables in play, it is very difficult to generalize and rate the networks. However, you should be able to evaluate their business practices, support levels, etc. over a period of time.

Here is some of the popular and not so popular networks listed not in any particular order. Note that there are dozens of networks operating in the marketplace and hence this is not a comprehensive list.

• Ad Canadian
• AdMedia
• Adjuice
• Adjump
• Admax Media
• Adscend Media
• Axon Media Group
• Clickbooth
• Click Fusion
• Commission Monster
• Commission River
• Commission Junction
• Convert2Media
• Copeac
• CPA Underground
• CPaway
• CXDigital
• DirectLeads
• eComLeads
• FluxAds
• GetAds
• HybrydAds
• Hydra Network
• Leader Markets
• Lead Expose
• Market Leverage
• Max Bounty
• NetPartner
• NeverBlue
• Offer Fusion
• PeerFly
• Pepperjam
• Revenue Ads
• Revenue Loop
• Revenue Street
• UniBlue Systems
• Unique Leads
• Y Multimedia
• Zeno Ads

Advantages and Disadvantages of using CPA Ad Networks for Leadgen

Just like any other mode of lead generation, using CPA Ad Networks has its own advantages and issues. If you understand the issues, you can plan and reduce the impact. Let us reserve this discussion for another post.

Video Blogging is a great tool to leverage your demand generation and brand building efforts.  If you are a internet marketer and involved in lead generation and inbound marketing using SEO practices, I am sure all of you must be on one or more blogs, not just reading, but contributing your ideas, suggestions and best practices. Here is the take on vlogging from the lead blogger of Cisco.

While personally I am not a vlogger yet, video is a great addition to your social media marketing and inbound marketing efforts. Video is obviously not as easy and simple as text simple text blogging. For example, video search is still its in infancy. Search engines deliver video links by keywords and tags. Also, video is still not very popular among the smart phone users, as the bandwidth issues are plaguing the industry. However, it is a good time to start using the video in your blog posts so that your will be a master when the practice becomes more mainstream.