The study was based on paid leads generated on Classes2Careers, an online EDU lead generation website. While the scope of the study and the scientific approach are not robust enough, it is a good starting point. The study results are summarized in the short pdf report, which can be downloaded from the EduDirectResponse site by clicking on the image.

According to the report, the following are the highlights:

1. More females than males are interested in online classes.

2. Over 60% of prospective online college students have a High School degree or have at one time in the past attended college.

3. Business and Health Care are the two most popular majors for prospective online college students.

4. 90% of prospective students want additional financial aid information after agreeing to receive information from a college.

5. Over 80% of prospective students want to receive a college related newsletter.

6. Prospective students do not mind entering their email address and other personal information but feel that their phone number is the most intrusive piece of data they give.

For lead generation and distribution companies operating in the EDU space, this survey report provides some useful information.

While BankRate is well known player in the lead generation industry, NetQuote and CreditCards.com are equally popular in their own verticals. Note that BankRate owns InsureMe.com, another player in the insurance lead industry.

What does this mean to the lead buyers in the insurance and credit card verticals? Will it increase the lead prices in the long term? Does it lead to another mega company stifling innovation and flexibility? Only time can provide answers to these questions. Obvious positive benefit would be the addition of legitimacy to the online lead generation industry.

For more about duplicate URLs and use of canonical links, see the following video by Google’s Matt Cutts.

You can get the Canonical URL Plugin for WordPress from Yoast.com. Note that the canonical link concept explained above can be used in any of the websites (not just WordPress sites). If your sites are based on WordPress, then this plugin will automate the process.

While you will understand the sarcasm in the advise, you can really grow your business by avoiding these pitfalls. If the list looks too long or if you think, if following the best practices is a waste of time, then you have to rethink you business strategies.

#1 Buy old / aged leads generated via Internet: This is self explanatory, I guess. Buying old leads is a recipe for disaster. The consumers (and businesses) want immediate response when they submit their contact information on the internet. When you buy old leads, there is every possibility that the prospect has been contacted already by one or more sellers and they tired of talking to more sellers.

#2 Decide by Lead Pricing: Use the Lead Price as the primary decision making criterion. When there is a clear quantitative factor, why bother about other qualitative factors?

#3 Don’t waste your time by researching Lead Sources: There are tons of lead providers and sources if you it Google. It is physically impossible to research, verify and validate lead sources. They why bother? Just pick the top one or two sources and order the leads.

#4 Don’t bother about leadgen methods and practices: You are paying and buying leads. Just trust that your lead provider will do every rule in the book and make sure that you are getting the right leads. After all you have too much to do and cannot waste time investigating what your vendor does, right?

#5 Do not open email box in the evening; you can call the prospects tomorrow: Don’t you have a life? Just because the lead information was sent by your lead vendor in the late afternoon, you cannot afford to lose your baseball game on the television. Remember that your competitor who got the same lead info would have contacted the prospect and closed the deal. Also, revisit point #1 above.

#6 Trust your Lead Supplier: You spent a lot of time sifting through all the search queries in Google or Yahoo and finally have chosen a lead supplier. Can you doubt the capabilities of the vendor who came on top of the search results? Also remember that they had a flashy website and busy sales reps.

#7 Don’t generate leads on your own: It is time taking and painful to generate your own leads, even only a fraction of what you need. Why spend time in understanding the technology buzzwords and deciphering the jargon? You strength is working the phone.

#8 Deal in multiple lead verticals; one might work: Try your hand in multiple segments or verticals. Core competency is an old phrase.

#9 Don’t be proactive: Well, you have spent awful lot of time in learning new things. After a couple of months, you hear that there are new toys in the game. How many times a person can keep updating stuff? Who invented this continuous improvement process, as if you are manufacturing air plane engine?

#10 Don’t deploy a web based Lead Tracking and Management system: The email is easy to handle. You can take a peek and act on it immediately. If required, you can also throw in a couple of spreadsheets and cut and paste the prospect information. Why waste energy learning a new tool?

You got the idea now. Unfortunately, internet adds to the complexities in life, contrary to the claims that internet simplifies life. Whether you like it or not, if you want to sell anything (or grow a business), leveraging internet is critical. If you don’t want to lose money in the web lead buying process, practice the opposite of the above mentioned advise and you will reap the benefits. Happy selling! Or buying Internet Leads!

Many lead distribution companies and agencies, especially when they are new to the online lead generation and distribution business, struggle to survive and grow. While it looks easy and enticing from the outside world, it is often laborious and error prone, unless you understand the intricacies of the web lead sales business.

Customer Feedback

The other day, I was speaking with one of our long time customers who has branched out recently into online lead generation for a specific industry niche. Whenever I have a chance to speak with the clients, I always make sure that I inquire about their business with questions such as (1) if they are doing good, (2) how is the industry doing, (3) how their CUSTOMERS are doing, (4) their sales projections and actual sales numbers, (5) technology trends in the industry, and (6) how we could help them further by adding / enhancing our lead distribution and management software solution.

I make sure that this conversation is casual and personal, rather than formal and rigid. If you ask these questions genuinely, most of the customers respond positively and open their thoughts. It gives a chance for them to reflect on their business from a different (supplier’s) perspective. Unlike formal online surveys sent via email invites, which is a great tool to collect customer feedback and opinion, this personal one-to-one discussion can be constructed instantly based on the situation without any pre-planning. The conversation could be a couple of minutes or it can be 20 or 15 minutes depending on the customer’s comfort level and positive engagement.

Leadgen Case Study

Coming back to my specific discussion with a client, I inquired about quite a few support requests from him. He responded immediately saying that several of his customers have dropped out immediately and he had to make changes in the system configuration to alter the lead delivery flow for other customers.

When I probed further about the reasons for clients dropping out, he mentioned that they were buying leads from a new internet lead generation media agency and it seems that the conversion rates for these leads were very low.

He immediately started researching the lead sourcing practices. As you know, many leadgen companies will not give you the sources or methods of their leadgen practices. He found out after some research that the leads were generated using co-generation method! Obviously, it was not their first choice of the online subscribers. Probably the visitors were either forced or enticed into opting into the additional service categories.

Generally, the leads generated using co-registration methods will convert less. These could be used  for long term nurturing or up-sell processes, but not for immediate telephone follow-up.

This scenario shows how your lead quality can be affected without even your knowledge. Hence lead sourcing (or buying internet leads) should be taken as a continuous improvement process. The quality of purchased or outsourced leads can change overnight as the affiliates and media agencies change their processes.

Solution

If you want to be successful in lead generation business, you have to leverage third party lead vendors. If you need to use vendors, you have to be proactive in doing the research on their leadgen practices and make sure that the led quality is on par with the leads generated by your own company using pay per click (PPC) or search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Also, measuring the consistency of lead quality on an ongoing balance is an essential step. As mentioned earlier, you don’t need a special measurement tool for this; just speak with your clients. Another easy check is to see if they are placing repeat orders with you. If not, you have a problem on hand and you need to diagnose the same for treatment. Happy selling!

Per LeadCouncil website, the organization’s objective is to create and increase awareness about online the lead generation and distribution business. In addition, it will also help to connect the lead buyers and lead sellers using tools such as directories, research studies, certification, etc.

Online lead technology vendors who provide software and related services for lead generation, distribution, delivery and management will also be part of the membership organization.

The impact and success of the organization will become clear in the next few months. We need to wait and see how small organizations will be brought on board, as most of the online lead vendors and buyers fall into this category.

Apart from evangelizing, I assume that the organization will take up public policy and advocacy related activities in the longer term. You may take a look at the LeadsCouncil website and explore if it is worth associating your business with the independent alliance.

With the recession in the economy and squeeze on student loan availability coupled with increase in tuition fees has led to significant growth in the online education industry. The lead volume requirement has gone up significantly because of focus in this segment by several universities.

In the education leadgen practice, content is the king. Unlike in other verticals, where lead companies focus on small websites and per per click (PPC) strategies, education lead generation businesses build significant amount of web content in order to attract the potential student community. While this is certainly a barrier to the easy entry into the education marketplace, the same fact serves as an attractive niche if you can build and generate useful content to attract student traffic.

Generally, the education leads are distributed to the schools in real time. Hence using a robust lead distribution and delivery system is a basic requirement. Also, most of the leads are delivered as dedicated, exclusive leads, though there is some market for shared leads.

Of late, there is a lot of buzz in the education lead generation industry. Quite a few M&A activities are also rumored and / or reported. It is reported last month that All Star Directories is in the market. All Star Directories is a Seattle based company which helps educational institutions attract students in a dozen disciplines, from engineering and business to culinary arts and psychology. Founded in 2001 by former Microsoft manager Mike Mathieu, All Star Directories met with early success through its lead generation model first designed to pass on qualified candidates to nursing schools. By 2005, the company was profitable and had annual sales of $15 million. Later on it was sold to Austin Ventures. The company says more than 5,000 schools use its lead generation service, including Johns Hopkins, Columbia University, University of Phoenix and DeVry.

In another development recently, EducationDynamics, higher education’s leading marketing services company, announced the acquisition of Education Connection, a valuable resource that helps prospective students find colleges that are ideally suited for their academic and career interests. EducationDynamics acquired Education Connection from Kaplan which is a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company. The acquisition of Education Connection marks an expanded student prospecting portfolio held by EducationDynamics, which also includes several high-visibility websites such as eLearners.com, EarnMyDegree.com, GradSchools.com, StudyAbroad.com, and more than 50 special interest microsites. The company also offers a full suite of web-based solutions for higher education institutions proven to drive enrollment growth and increase student retention.

Western Governors University marketing director announced that she is noticing a surge in online education and they are ramping up online lead generation and conversion efforts.

When speaking about Lead Conversion, a recent survey pointed out that over 30% of the prospects do not receive a call from the school! If the prospects are not contacted within a few minutes, the chances of further follow-up and conversion is very remote.

This is another area of opportunity for small businesses entering into education leadgen vertical. If you can provide additional support to the schools by way of immediate telephone follow-up, that will serve as a value addition. However, engaging generic call center or agents will not help in lead conversion; in fact, you might lose prospects if the agents are not professionally trained. The team has to be a dedicated, fully trained team with a long term perspective.

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.

Even experienced professionals and established businesses have to play catch up at times. Online scams and poor oversight bring in a lot of bad publicity for online lead vendors. However, invention and popularity of devices such as iPhone and iPad are bringing in more tech savvy consumers into the internet as potential online prospects. The number of areas of lead generation possibilities is growing rapidly. This provides new opportunities for entrepreneurs and small businesses in online marketing world.

Traditionally, online lead generation is restricted to very few verticals with large market sizes but ultra competitive environment. Newcomers may not even go near these business segments, unless they have deep pockets and business background. However, things are changing overnight and enormous new opportunities are opening up.

This is a good time to take stock of the industry scenario and review lead verticals, both old and new. Let us look at each one of these verticals (and possibly more) in the upcoming posts. Here is the list of vertical segments (or niches, as some would like to call these), both traditional and recent ones.

• Financial Services
  • • Mortgage leads
    • Insurance leads
    • New Credit Card leads
    • Pay Day Loan leads
    • Business / Commercial Loan leads
    • Loan Modification leads
    • Debt Settlement leads
• Franchise Opportunity Leads
• Biz Op / MLM leads
• Real Estate leads
• Education leads
• Satellite TV leads
• Time Share leads
• Auto Warranty Leads
• Home Warranty Leads
• Home / Improvement Services
  • • Windows and Siding leads
    • Basement Finishing leads
    • Remodeling leads
    • Pools and Supplies lead
    • Lawn Care leads
    • Painting leads
    • Solar leads
    • Home Security leads
• Home Care leads
• Home Care Medical Device leads
• Accounting Services / CPA leads
• Onsite Catering leads
• Auto Loan leads
• Automotive / Vehicle leads
• Medical Spa Service leads
• Dentistry Service leads
• Legal Service leads

If you are already in the lead generation business, you may be looking for expansion and diversification opportunities. If you are new to the industry, you must do in-depth research in the niche market you are planning to enter. Keep in mind that as a lead generation and distribution company, you need to find your customers as well as the leads for your customers.

Our LeadPro 24|7 Lead Distribution and Management Software System customers leverage the technology, internet industry knowledge and domain intelligence to succeed in their lead gen businesses. I am sure that everyone can succeed in their venture by applying the knowledge and right skills as there is enough space for growth. The industry will grow furiously in the coming years, although some niches may see growth fluctuations.

P.S. If you are an expert in a niche or vertical segment (whether listed above or not) or in the leadgen industry, please share your ideas and thoughts here.

#1 Lead Posting / Integration Options to meet your Customer Requirements

Most lead buyers will be have different lead posting requirements depending on their lead distribution, delivery and management system. The following are some of the options, which in turn will need customization or minor tweaking:

• Basic HTTP Posting
• Advanced HTTP Posting with return of critical information
• SOAP based API
• Advanced Authentication
• Fixed / Converted  data formats

If your lead provider cannot have multiple lead posting options with flexibility, you may not be able to satisfy certain customer requirements.

#2 Capabilities of Lead Vendor’s Technical Team

Even if the lead posting system is flexible enough, the customers will come with a ton of custom requests. Unless your vendor’s technical team is capable and willing to address these requirements, customer needs cannot be met.

#3 Response Time to address Technical Requests

The vendor support team should be agile and quick to respond to the requests. The turnaround time should be short enough to service the customers. Your lead providers should be flexible to accommodate the work at short notice. For example, if you need to post 100 sample leads to a large customer’s lead management or CRM system, the same should be done within hours; not in days or weeks, unless it requires super customization!

#4 Quality of Leads

Assuming that the vendor is able to deliver leads in time, the quality plays an important role in lead conversion rate. Understanding Vendor’s Web Traffic Generation strategies and processes might help you get an insight into the lead quality. Other traditional methods such as reference check will add great value in this area.

#5 Optimum Pricing

As pricing is relative to the quality and performance of the leads, evaluating and arriving at an optimum price is critical. The pricing is very elastic and hence the vendor’s pricing should be assesses based on both objective and subjective factors.

While evaluating lead vendors and partners, the above considerations should be factored in. If you are new to the business you may be content with your lead generation using Search Engine Marketing (SEO and PPC) and Social Media / Web 2.0 strategies. However using lead gen vendors who specialize in specific verticals and have long experience is required to scale up your lead business operations. Any missteps in lead buying will lead to customer churn and loss of revenue. Hence spend some time researching the vendors and their processes, ask questions and make a decision that will be a win-win for both the all the parties concerned.