Great Sales Leads: Are They An Endangered Species?

Whenever the subject of leads is brought up these days most lead buyers will talk about how bad the leads are getting, how hard they are to find, and how expensive that they are to buy. In addition to these challenges, the companies that have traditionally supplied leads are dropping like flies. This is because the methods used to generate leads are disappearing fast. This includes email marketing, telemarketing, and fax broadcasts.

The ultimate sales lead has the following characteristics:

· The prospect is ready to buy right now
· The prospects IS the decision maker
· The prospect has the money to buy now
· The prospect has already seen your offer and
has made the decision to buy from you
· The prospect is not being talked to by a large
number of your competitors

Does this sound like the perfect lead? Of course it does. Is there some magical potion to produce such a lead? More importantly, is that potion available to me? Actually there is a magic potion, but it only works if you have the right ingredients. What is this magic potion? Search engine marketing, otherwise known as paid search advertising coupled with a carefully designed lead generation site.

Consider some facts, Google is considered by many to be the major player involved in the search engine field. Google Adwords™ is very effective if the ad campaign is set up correctly. That is a big if though. It has been found that over 50% of all companies that attempt to use Google fail in their efforts.

So the question is how can a company find success when so many fail? The answer is actually quite simple. Hire a search engine marketing firm. Beware though, not all search engine marketing firms are equal. One can use a firm like In Touch Media Group (www.intouchmediagroup.com ), who have gained certification directly from Google (no easy feat), to correctly set up one's campaign or one can hire other independent consultants who promote a certain level of expertise, but whose qualifications are unverifiable. Watch out if someone claims that they can set up a campaign overnight. It is simply not possible to establish a proper and successful search engine campaign without several weeks' worth of detailed research and testing. Companies like In Touch Media Group get results the others only dream of.

The other key to lead generation is the use of a proper web presence that is designed to create leads. Many web sites are simply designed to graphically impress a visitor, yet produces nothing in terms of leads. A good lead generation site or page educates the prospect and then gives them specific action to do. You have to ask yourself as a website owner, how many of my visitors are converting to leads or sales and how many are leaving to go shopping elsewhere? A web site must elicit a response from the consumer. An excellent web site firm is DRC Marketing (www.drcmarketing.net ). This company has a long track record of success in terms of producing effective lead generation sites.

In short, the magic potion consists of having the right web site presence, driving traffic to it through paid search ads resulting in the ultimate leads. Don't forget that people who are searching for something on the internet have already made a buying decision. The key is how economically one can push prospects to a web site and then whether the site is effective or not. There is no shortage of prospects on the internet looking.

On a typical day at the end of 2004, some 70 million American adults logged onto the Internet to use email, get news, access government information, check out health and medical information, participate in auctions, book travel reservations, research their genealogy, gamble, seek out romantic partners, and engage in countless other activities. That represents a 37 percent increase from the 51 million Americans who were online on an average day in 2000 when the Pew Internet & American Life Project began its study of online life. This trend is ONLY going up.

Another Pew study identified that fact that over 50% of all online purchases are now PRECEDED by an internet search. 36% of all internet users under the age of 30 say that they could not live without internet search engines. This illustrates what many in ad agency executives now take for granted-that people, in higher and higher numbers, are using internet information, not mainstream media related advertising, to make buying decisions. Every day, more and more people are turning on computers versus the TV set for information and entertainment.

The lesson to be learned here is that one has to control one's own lead generation. Companies can no longer depend on third party lead providers as a sole source for their new prospects. The ultimate lead can be found. They are all over the internet searching right now.

Bruce Prokopets
Executive Editor
http://www.pressdirectinternational.com

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