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May 3 10

LeadsCouncil to Increase Online Lead Generation Awareness and Connect Buyers with Sellers

by Paddu

LeadsCouncil was launched recently by Dave Wengel and Jay Weintraub who are known for their LeadsCon conferences. Prior to this Dave was with TargusInfo as Vice President. It is reported that over three dozen organizations have become members of LeadsCouncil. The current roster of members seems to be pretty impressive as most of these companies are high profile organizations.

LeadsCouncil to increase awareness in Online Lead Generation

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.

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May 2 10

Education Lead Generation and Distribution Industry Update

by Paddu

Higher Education Lead Generation is one of the major verticals in leadgen industry. There are several large, established companies involved in education leadgen business. Since this vertical is matured, several new entrants are coming into the market. The industry which started with catering to the requirements of traditional schools and colleges has now expanded into the online schools and universities.

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.

read more…

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Apr 16 10

10 Signs You Need an Automatic Web Lead Distribution System – Checklist

by Paddu

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.

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Apr 15 10

In-depth Look at the Online Lead Generation and Distribution Industry Opportunities

by Paddu

There are tons of recent news items in the internet on online lead generation industry. Social media, coupled with web 2.0, revolution is increasing the decibel level. It is often difficult for newbies to select a niche and get into the web lead generation and distribution business.

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.

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Apr 12 10

5 Important Tips for Lead Generation using Affiliates and Partners

by Paddu

If you are in lead generation and distribution business, you are most likely to leverage affiliates, partners and other third party lead gen companies for increasing your lead volume. Here are 5 important tips while buying web leads from the vendors and partners. Using these tips will help save a lot of time in managing the lead business operations, insure consistency of lead sales and improve client satisfaction.

#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.

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Apr 11 10

5 Key Considerations to Choose a Lead Distribution Software Service Provider

by Paddu

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.

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Mar 20 10

How to Get Ideas for Blogging and Generate More Sales Leads

by Paddu

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.
Blogging Ideas for Generating More LeadsHere 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!

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Mar 18 10

State Of Social Media Survey Results Show Positive Outcomes

by Paddu

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:State of Social Media Marketing by MarketingProfs

  • 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.

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Feb 28 10

Will Facebook Advertising challenge Google AdWords in Lead Generation?

by Paddu

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.

Will Facebook Advertising challenge Google Adwords?

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.

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Feb 28 10

How to Ensure Lead Quality while using CPA Ad Networks and Affiliate Traffic for Lead Generation?

by Paddu

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.

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