Whether you are a veteran in the internet lead generation and distribution business or just a rookie, driving affiliate traffic via CPA Ad Networks should be a key part of your leadgen strategy.  You may take a look at my earlier post How to Use CPA Ad Networks for Lead Generation and reduce dependence on Google Adwords PPC, if you are yet to get into the game!

Lead Quality is Key

The success of the leadgen business depends on the lead quality and resulting ability to retain the lead buyers as customers in the long term. If you are using your own traffic generation modes such as SEO, Google Adwords, Facebook Advertising, Banner Ads, etc., you will have pretty good control over the nature of traffic and resulting lead quality.

When you are using CPA Ad Networks, essentially you are outsourcing the traffic generation. In such a condition, you have very little control over the quality of the web traffic driven to your landing pages. As a result the lead quality may suffer, which will affect your business in the long term. This holds good even if you are using the leads generated for your own purpose (and not reselling leads).

Here are some key factors to be taken care of (while using CPA Networks) in the lead capture process, which will help you ensure lead quality to a great extent.

• Research, test and choose a right Ad Network in the first place.
• Design and test Landing Pages for proper / good conversion. Conversion rate alone should not be criteria.
• Track the leads by source. If you are using multiple networks, you should be able to analyze the performance of each network based on lead quality.
• If required, you may use multiple landing pages depending on your offer and ad network used.
• Depending on the quality of leads delivered, stop  / start using those ad networks. Typically, ad networks provide a 10% cushion for bad / invalid leads. However, this may not be acceptable to your customer!
• Customize landing pages as required; do not go with a basic lead capture form. Include filters, dropdowns, etc. so that the information captured will be relevant.
• Make sure that basic validations such as phone number, etc. are handled in the lead capture page in order to avoid bogus entries.
• You may also include security features such as CAPTCHA entry, which helps avoiding bot based submissions.
• Include additional lead verification processes after capturing the lead profile data in your lead capture, distribution and delivery system such as LeadPro247. Based on the verification results, you may filter out the leads to the lead buyer. Note that the lead verification process using 3rd party provider services such as TargusInfo, ServiceObjects, etc. incurs additional expenses (on per lead captured basis).

While implementing these ideas would not acheive 100% quality, it will certainly help improve the quality significantly, save money and retain customers.

Have you heard stories about becoming overnight millionaires by launching an internet lead generation business? Sure, tons of stories. Succeeding in an internet lead generation business takes time, consistent practices and continuous improvement. While it is easy to scale up and grow, it is easy to lose money  quickly and bite the dust too! Here are 10 tips gathered from the industry experience and insiders that will lead you in the path of success.

1. Do the ground work: If you are in the planning / launch stage, this is the time to take a re-look and assess the plan. Even if you are already in the business and trying to ramp up, revisit the basics and make sure that the plan will work. Some of the key factors to be taken into account are: Lead verticals, Customer segments,  Competition in your vertical(s), Lead acquisition strategies, Lead pricing, and Quality Issues. Every lead vertical has its own unique advantages and issues.
2. Deploy suitable lead generation methods: Leads can be generated in a variety of ways. What would be the right method for your vertical and customer segment? Research and select from: Media buying, own lead generation sites, PPC / SEO mix, affiliates, etc. Thorough market research will help you decide the right combination. For instance, there are lead companies who use thousands of their own websites. Some others use exlcusively media partners and digital marketing agencies.
3. Plan multiple Lead Delivery modes: Each lead customer will demand their own formats, interfaces and data conversion. Do not under estimate the customer requirements. Unless the lead buyers are able to reach the prospects within minutes, there is no value in the lead! You may have to deploy multiple delivery modes such as email, SMS text messaging, fax, SOAP based API, form POST, etc.
4. Choose a right Lead Distribution Software system: Many lead providers make costly mistakes in this sphere. If you are generating thousands or even a few hundred leads a day, imagine the complexity involved in capturing the leads, distributing leads to buyers, delivering leads in real time, processing payments and applying credits for bad / invalid leads! Even if you are a business person, educate yourself and see what you can and cannot do with your lead collection, distribution and management software system.
5. Right Source to Right Partners: Whether in lead generation, distribution or lead delivery, choose the right tools and partners. The operations and maintenance are time consuming and costs money. Again, do not under estimate the improtance and costs in this area.
6. Manage Customers Proactively: The lead buyers can easily switch from one provider to another lead vendor. Unless you manage their expectations, requirements and operations, the lead buyers will learn from you and move on. Retaining customers is the most important aspect, as you do not have any hold on them unlike other traditional businesses.
7. Focus on Lead Quality, not Quantity: Unless you are passionate about lead quality, it is very difficult to survive. Because, in the internet lead generation segment there are so many variables on which you don’t have any control! For example, you might depend on the media partners and affiliates to generate leads; unless you have carefully selected them and established relationship, there is no gurantee that they will provide consistent quality leads. You can also provide valued added service such as third party Lead Verification services integrated with your lead delivery system.
8. Educate yourself: You need to keep abreast of the technology development and industry issues such as legal compliance. Research and update your knowledge in the lead generation business and the verticals you are operating. Attend relevant webinars and conferences in the Leadgen domain. Even if you don’t do programming or build software, become technology savvy. Knowledge is power in this internet era!
9. Be prepared for the long haul: Invest for the long term and be prepared for the pot holes on the way. Probably you need to invest more of your personal time than the traditional businesses. The internet does not sleep; you cannot start at 9 AM and close at 5 PM. Your customers will be in all time zones and need to be ready to support them.
10. Measure, evaluate and improve: All internet centric businessese share one common thread: it is continually changing at rapid pace. Using the right tools, measure your operational effectiveness and end results. Improve the processes in an on going basis.

And finally, here is the good news. As mentioned earlier, the lead generation business can be quickly ramped up and scaled. Some leading internet lead companies have grown from zero to 50 million business in 3 or 4 years.

Online Lead Verification is the most valuable and intensive quality assessment and improvement process which comes to the aid of online lead generation companies and lead distributors. Lead Verification can be employed in both B2C and B2B scenarios, though it is most useful in consumer lead scenarios. You may take a look the primer / my earlier post on Lead Scrubbing, Validation and Verification processes.

Again, this is a post-lead-capture process and hence you can not prohibit the bad leads hitting your marketing / leads database. However, by deploying a suitable Online Lead Verification Service you can verify the lead parameters and then make a decision whether to pass on the lead to the lead buyer or your sales team.

The lead verification is carried out generally online and hence it can be used in real time lead generation and distribution situations. Once the lead information is received from the landing pages, the lead management system will subject the key data elements to dozens of tests and determine the quality of the lead.

Lead Verification Properties

The following lead profile parameters are used to verify the lead. Obviously, if the lead captured does not contain all these data elements, then the quality assessment results will be less accurate.

• First name
• Last name
• Email Address
• Address
• Phone Number
• Gender
• Date of Birth
• IP Address

Based on the input values, the verification process will return the corrected values as well as a set of useful quality parameters (which may vary from system to system).

Most of useful results from Lead Verification process will be:

• Overall Quality score
• Overall Quality Result
• Type / technology of telephone numbers

It may also provide alternate telephone number and address.

At the highest level, the Overall Lead Quality Score can be used to take an instant decision and treat the lead accordingly. For example, if the score is less than 50, probably the quality may not be very high and hence you may avoid selling it to your high value customers.

Benefits of Lead Verification

Adding a Lead Verification service feature in the lead capture and tracking system will be a great boon to those dealing with mortgage leads, debt settlement leads, financial services and other consumer (B2C) leads. There are several advantages and benefits of using an online lead verification process in your demand generation and distribution efforts. Here is a check list. These benefits are self explanatory. However we will revisit these in future posts.

• Increased Customer Satisfaction
• Increased Lead Conversion Rate
• Decrease in Wasted Time and Efforts by your Buyers / Sales Team
• Decrease in Lead Cost in the long term
• Identification of poor quality lead sources and providers
• Increased ROI
• Decrease on Price (for Lead Buyers)

Verification Services

Since Lead Verification involves comparision and mathcing with millions of public and proprietory database records, the verification services are generally provided as a per transaction fee based service. The typical cost per transaction varies from 25 cents to 35 cents based on volume of leads verified on monthly basis.

There are a number of verification service providers in the market place. The services include TargusInfo, ServiceObjects, LeadQC, and AccurateAppend among others. You may directly contact the data service provider and request your technical team to establish the interface for online verification.

On the other hand, Lead Distribution and Management service providers, such as LeadPro247, include Lead Verification as an optional service in their lead management and distribution platform. These services use one or more of the database service providers as their back-end partners and hence you can not only get the same benefit as going to the primary provider but better service and more choices. Choosing such a lead management platform might solve a lot of technical issues and maintenance efforts for your team. And your lead buyers and sales team will be happy that you addressing their pain points!

Unlike the leads generated via traditional media, Leads generated on the Internet using online lead generation strategies, methods and tools are highly susceptible to quality issues. If you are lead seller or vendor, then Quality issues lead to customer dissatisfaction and might result in loss of business over a period time.

If you are direct user of the leads generated, then you will be wasting your sales team’s time and efforts with poor quality leads. Implementing Lead Verification as part of your lead generation, capture and distribution will help you control lead costs and improve the lead generation methods.

Business to Consumer (B2C) leads are prone to much more misuse and quality issues, when compared with Business to Business (B2B) leads. However, Lead verification can be used for both type of leads. As an aside, you may take a look at an earlier post on 10 Tips to Improve Lead Quality in Lead Generation, if you have not seen it earlier.

Lead Quality Improvement

The quality of leads reaching the sales team or the lead buyers can be controlled to a great extent by employing multiple methods. These include:

• Lead Scrubbing
• Lead Validation
• Lead Verification

Note that these are post-capture processes and hence you cannot control the quality of leads at the point of sign-up, registration or generation. Let us discuss the Point of Lead Capture quality considerations in other posts.

Lead Scrubbing

Lead Scrubbing is a simple lead cleansing process. A set of words or text strings generally used by the online fraudsters are used as a reference point and the key properties of incoming leads are matched against the same. Any matches are marked as such and scrubbed. The following lead profile properties are used for scrubbing:

• Email Address
• First Name
• Last Name
• Company Name

Lead Validation

Lead Validation is the process of validating the lead data for correct format and layout. Examples of lead properties used for Lead Validation are:

• Email Address
• First Name
• Last Name
• Phone / Fax Numbers
• Zip / Postal Code
• State / Province Code
• Country Code
• Numeric Data fields

The lead distribution and management system can validate the formats and flag the leads, if found to be invalid. Note that most of these validations can be performed on the landing pages and hence you can save a bunch of money if you can implement these checks at the point of sign-up! However, if you are buying leads from affiliates and publishers, and not directing traffic to your own landing pages, then you may not have much control on your landing pages. Post-capture validation is the only option in such cases.

Lead Verification

Online Lead Verification is the most valuable and intensive quality assessment process which comes to the aid of lead generation companies and distributors. Again, this is a post-lead-capture process and hence you can not prohibit the bad leads hitting your marketing / leads database. However, by deploying suitable Lead Verification process, you can verify the lead parameters and then make a decision whether to pass on the lead to the lead buyer or your sales team.

As the name suggests, the lead verification is carried out generally online and hence can be used in real time lead generation and distribution situations. Once the lead information is received from the landing pages, the lead management system will subject the key data elements to dozens of tests and determine the quality of the lead.

The following lead parameters are used to verify the lead. Obviously, if the lead captured does not contain all these data elements, then the quality assessment will be less accurate.

• First name

• Last name

• Email Address

• Address

• Phone Number

• Gender

• Date of Birth

• IP Address

Based on the input values, the verification process will return the corrected values as well as a set of useful quality parameters (which may vary from system to system). Most of useful will be Overall Quality score, Overall Quality Result, and type / technology of telephone numbers provided. It may also provide alternate telephone number and address. Let us dedicate any post entirely for Lead Verification processes and services.

At the highest level, the Overall Quality Score can be used to take an instant decision and treat the lead accordingly. For example, if the score is leass than 50, probably the quality may not be very high and hence you may avoid selling it to your high value customers.

Since Lead Verification involves comparision with millions of publich and proprietory database records, the verification services are generally provided as a per transaction fee based service. The typical cost per transaction varies from 25 cents to 35 cents based on volume of leads verified on monthly basis.

Conclusion

Choosing and employing the lead quality assessment strategies is a scenario specific one. What is highly recommened for a specific scenario may not be suitable for another business case. Hence you need to weigh your specific use and determine the optimum deployment. If you can offord the cost and resources and required inputs are available, certainly employing more than one process is recommended. As a note of caution, employing the lead verification process does not mean that you can rest easy; you have to constantly reassess the lead sources, processes, and results and improve the procedures as required.