by Mark Silet
13. October 2011 10:48
Best practices dictate the need to vary your lead generation methods. Of course you could base your entire strategy on repeatedly posting classified ads with phone numbers into various cities on Craigslist, Backpage, or Oodle using a proxy server to attempt to mask your ip address, hope your ads don’t get shutdown, and then wait for the phone to ring. Or you could decide to only buy secondhand data from online form fills, pray that the vendor who told you all these records were scrubbed against the appropriate do not call (DNC) lists was right and then you call people back (let’s hope your vendor knows about the various state DNC lists and the wireless list and scrubbed those too - not to mention that your company needs to purchase a SAN number to do this.)
Of all the lead generation methods I have seen, some clearly seem like better ideas than others. Most importantly - make sure you have a wide variety of lead generation methods in play at any given time – especially if you are relying on any of the aforementioned methods. If you are relying solely on PPC from Google to drive traffic to your lead generation forms and tomorrow Google decides they don’t like the consumer experience of your site – your lead flow stops. If you are solely relying on one vendor to deliver telemarketing leads and they get a higher offer for those leads – your lead flow stops.
The principle of not having all of your eggs in one basket is far from new, but it seems that more and more people keep forgetting to diversify their lead generation methods. I know several individuals whose businesses have been significantly impacted by a Google slap or their main lead vendor getting a higher payout. Work with long standing reputable U.S. call centers that can deliver call verified leads or call transfers. Work with reputable online agencies to deliver online lead form fills. Work with lesser known vendors to deliver multiple PPC sources to drive traffic to your online forms like 7search, Ezanga, or Looksmart. Test contextual traffic from Trafficvance or Affinity. Test driving inbound calls by working with a company like Sales Portal. You simply can’t stop testing various methods of lead generation if you want to continue to maintain a well diversified flow of lead sources.
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