Any time you find your business targeting a specific set of potential consumers instead of just advertising to a general audience, you’re engaging in a process that begins with lead generation. Prior to the internet age, that practice might have focused on soliciting names and contact information at trade shows or simply purchasing existing information from companies that have assembled and categorized their leads to reflect specific customer bases.
To some extent, these practices remain relevant, but in light of new information technology resources, lead generation has become a much more complex – and much more precise – science. Whereas companies may have had a limited arsenal in the past, today some of them are faced with the new problem of having to weigh a range of different options when it comes to lead generation.
One modern option is to put emphasis on marketing one’s website so as to encourage interested consumers to leave contact information in contact forms or on-site surveys. This often generates very strong leads – information from people who are highly likely to make purchases – although those leads also tend to come in small numbers.
Naturally, many of today’s company’s make an effort to balance their efforts between obtaining these sorts of personal leads and purchasing more impersonal leads from lead generation companies. The latter tend to come in large numbers but be relatively weak, thus leaving your company with the task of doing all the work people had to do in the pre-internet age just to whittle down leads lists to the relatively few people who are genuinely interested in your product or service.
There is still value in this, but the beauty of internet resources and local web marketing companies is that they provide companies with powerful opportunities to encourage the best leads to come to them, as opposed to having to go out hunting and still run the risk of ending up empty handed.
