Many lead generation firms and vendors focus their energies on affiliate management, web traffic generation, lead acquisition, lead quality and lead distribution processes, but often times forget to develop their own client base. Acquiring leads for their customers and signing up their own buyers are equally important tasks for one to be successful in the lead generation business.

Lead Back Office Systems

If you are using a lead capture and distribution system such as LeadPro247, you can easily leverage the lead back office solution offered as part of the software for client acquisition and retention. The back office systems can serve the following functions, depending on your software version and subscription plan:

• Lead Retrieval
• Credit Request
• Sales Tracking
• Lead Nurturing

Lead Retrieval

While you may be delivering leads to the lead buyer by email or SMS text messaging, it is preferable to provide a back-office access so that the client can login and retrieve the leads. Many savvy and experienced lead buyers insist on a back office access as part of the contract. Lead retrieval system access also allows them to download the leads at their convenience and they won’t miss any leads due to email issues.

Credit Request for Invalid Leads

It is natural that a small percentage of leads delivered to your client will be invalid. Using a lead back office system automates the entire process of credit request and approval. The clients can make requests online and you would be able to review the requests and process at your convenience. There is no need to use email.

Sales Tracking

If your customers are end users of the leads purchased from you, you can provide a value addition by providing the sales lead tracking and management feature as part of the lead retrieval system. Your customers need not go for lead tracking and management software from another service provider. You may provide this service as free or charge a small monthly fee. Your customers can capture their own leads in the system along with leads provided by you.

Lead Nurturing

The lead buyers can leverage the drip email messaging feature available with lead retrieval and management systems to nurture their leads until conversion to sales. Drip email marketing is a lead nurturing process where the system sends marketing and informational emails automatically to the prospects based on certain triggers and events. This will be a great value addition to your lead buyers and if they are the end users of the leads.

Lead Distribution Systems

Lead distribution software systems such as LeadPro247 include these value added functions. You may have to select the required version based on your customer requirements. By leveraging such services, you can step out of the basic “lead generation” business and become a full fledged “lead service provider”.

You may also refer to this earlier post on Back Office System features and comparison of functions.

]]> http://www.lead-distribution-software.com/how-to-use-back-office-lead-systems-to-acquire-and-retain-lead-buyers/feed 0 http://www.lead-distribution-software.com/how-to-succeed-in-internet-lead-generation-business-10-insider-tips http://www.lead-distribution-software.com/how-to-succeed-in-internet-lead-generation-business-10-insider-tips#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:52:36 +0000 Paddu http://www.lead-distribution-software.com/?p=90 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.

Landing Pages

The very purpose of landing pages is to convert the web visitors into leads (or prospects). While it serves as a funnel to attract the web site visitors, unless the visitors are converted to leads with contact information there is no meaning in attracting the traffic. In others words, landing pages should be treated as conversion pages.

Typically web site traffic (for lead generation) is generated via one or more of the following practices and visitors are sent to the lead capture pages:

• PPC (Pay Per Click)
• SEO / Search Engines
• Email Marketing
• Blogs and Web 2.0 sites
• Social Networking Media
• Direct Mail (with web URL)

All of these traffic sources costs money and significant efforts. While some may term traffic from social media and SEO as free, it is really not free. Search engine optimization and social media maintenance is a time taking and long term process.

Lead Conversion Pages

How to convert the money loosing sign-up pages to profitable lead-conversion pages? While every step of the page design, development and deployment is a candidate for improvement, the following key factors are to be taken into consideration.

• Layout and Design are primary components to attract and convert visitors. Make them simple, clear and precise.
• Avoid distractions and unwanted links on the page. Address the specific product or service.
• Provide Clear Call to Action. If you want them to fill up a form, tell them clearly what to do and why they should do so.
• Include a Compelling Offer. Whether it is a Whitepaper, Quote, or a Free Trial, make it compelling.
• If you are using Advertising (such as PPC) to drive traffic, make sure the Ad and the Landing Page talk about the same offer
• Page content should be relevant, short and to the point.
• If you are using Lead Capture form on the page, make it as short as possible, unless all the data fields are required to fulfill the offer.
• Let the sign-up form be above fold on the page.
• If required, make multiple lead capture pages for different  purposes and different target audience, so that the content will be relevant.
• Validate all sign-up form fields for required content and type, ideally using JavaScript (rather than separate error pages)
• Capture the meta data such as source web site, publisher, key words, etc. which will help in the sales process.
• Provide a meaningful Thank You page with relevant information. This will set the right expectation for the prospect and will help in closing the sale.
• Lastly, do not forget to use a good lead management and tracking database system in order to track the entire conversion process.

Ad Tracking Software

There are several ad tracking software tools available in the market. Tracking202 is one of the leading software tools used by several online advertisers. It is available as an open source, self-installable software as well as a free, hosted software. Obviously, if you are a Pro, you should consider using the Tracking 202 Pro version, which is based on monthly subscription pricing model. The following picture shows some of the other tracking software products available in the marketplace. I would suggest using a hosted solution, so that you can get going immediately without the hassles of installation, hosting setup and maintenance.

Ad Tracking helps you to easily monitor your PPC campaigns through Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Some of the tools provide Click Fraud tracking protection too.

Lead Distribution Software

Please do not assume that if you are using a Lead Distribution Solution (such as LeadPro247), you can do the ad tracking using that software. Generally, lead capture, distribution and sale tracking software does not include ad tracking function, as online ad tracking is a totally different domain.

If you are using Ad Networks referred to as CPA / CPM networks  (other than Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc.) and bulk media buying strategies, then your ad tracking requirements may be significantly different. You may be needing ad tracking at Ad Publisher level. And note that each network may be different in serving your ads through their publishers and how they code and track the URLs. Let us reserve the discussion on handling and tracking the ads served through the networks for a future post. You may also start with basic tracking and then grow as your advertisement reach increases.

The success or failure of lead generation strategies rests on the success or failure of landing pages,which in turn is dependent on the following factors:

• Conversion ratio, and
• Quality of lead information

Whether you are generating leads for your own use or for further sales to lead buyers / clients, the fundamentals of landing page design and development are the same. Here are the most common mistakes committed by even by experienced lead companies while implementing landing pages and signup / registration forms.

1. Asking for too much information on the sign-up form in landing pages. Decide upfront what information is critical and collect only critical information, without which the prospect info is meaningless. Providing more fields for input forces visitors to enter garbage.
2. Avoiding Field Validations. This is the most important mistake committed by designers and programmers. Current programming technology provides for extensive validations in the front end without irritating the user. In fact, good prospects will love error traps and exception handling. For example, it is common to make spelling mistakes while entering domain names in the email address (ex. typing .con instead of .com). Top level domain names can be validated easily. Similarly email address format can be verified. The following type of entry fields should be validated:
   • Amount or Numeric input fields
   • Email Address fields
   • Geography fields (such as Country, State, County, etc.)
   • Mandatory fields (for presence of data)
   • Phone entry fields (do not ask the visitor to enter in a specific format, let the system format it.)
3. Improper use of Drop Downs. This is yet another frequent mistake committed by the designers. Particularly, if you are a generating leads for resale, the numeric fields should be captured as numbers rather than tiers. Your customers may be needing totally different tiers and hence the accuracy of the data will be lost. Applying filters will be difficult, if tier based drop downs are used.
4. Avoiding or missing Source Tracking. If you are driving traffic to the your common landing page, capturing the traffic source and passing it to the Lead Distribution System is a critical requirement. This helps to analyze the quality of leads by traffic source and tweak the lead generation campaign accordingly.
5. Designing landing pages without analyzing the end use requirements. Unless you know and fully understand the requirements of the lead data usage, it will be difficult to plan the sign-up form. This problem is more aggravated in the case of lead companies selling leads to more than one customer, since each customer might have different requirement.

Note that implementing some of these suggestions might even reduce the conversion ratio; however it will be compensated by the quality of the leads generated and customer satisfaction. The real prospects also will appreciate your professional approach and work, there by resulting in more quality leads.