[blindbid]

“I’ll never buy another lead again,” so says a disgruntled sales person after failing to close quickly a lead he bought from a third party company. Being in the lead business, I hear this all the time. Rarely do you hear, “I’ll never advertise again.” Yet, in many cases 99% of the people who see your ad won’t buy your product or your service. (Advertising serves other purposes like branding, but for most small businesses, advertising is to produce sales.)

I once did a consulting job for a company that sold uniforms to Fire and Police depts. Their shtick was to send out catalogs every quarter and hope that 0.25% of those receiving the catalogs bought. These guys would have been happy with an incremental increase of 0.10%. Compare that to the Victoria Secret catalog that gets 11% of its catalog receivers to purchase. Uniforms are not as sexy as lingerie. But there is a huge gap between 11% and .25%. Even with such a small return on its catalog, this company was profitable.

In the lead business, the standard is raised even higher. A company will typically pay a higher cost for a lead campaign than an advertising campaign. Lead Campaigns are a more targeted approach rather than the rapid fire shot gunning of advertising. Or the lead campaign is the residue or the results of an advertising campaign.

A good lead campaign should be bringing the buyer and seller together for a discussion of services. You have to keep in mind that leads are not deals. A good lead campaign may only close 5% to 25% of the leads purchased. The percentages vary according to the industry. By comparison, on average only 2% to 3% of the clicks in a Google Merchant Cash Advance PPC campaign convert to sales. A reputable lead generation company can provide better averages than Google.


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[JayBallentine]

“I’ll never buy another lead again,” so says a disgruntled sales person after failing to close quickly a lead he bought from a third party company. Being in the lead business, I hear this all the time. Rarely do you hear, “I’ll never advertise again.” Yet, in many cases 99% of the people who see your ad won’t buy your product or your service. (Advertising serves other purposes like branding, but for most small businesses, advertising is to produce sales.)

I once did a consulting job for a company that sold uniforms to Fire and Police depts. Their shtick was to send out catalogs every quarter and hope that 0.25% of those receiving the catalogs bought. These guys would have been happy with an incremental increase of 0.10%. Compare that to the Victoria Secret catalog that gets 11% of its catalog receivers to purchase. Uniforms are not as sexy as lingerie. But there is a huge gap between 11% and .25%. Even with such a small return on its catalog, this company was profitable.

In the lead business, the standard is raised even higher. A company will typically pay a higher cost for a lead campaign than an advertising campaign. Lead Campaigns are a more targeted approach rather than the rapid fire shot gunning of advertising. Or the lead campaign is the residue or the results of an advertising campaign.

A good lead campaign should be bringing the buyer and seller together for a discussion of services. You have to keep in mind that leads are not deals. A good lead campaign may only close 5% to 25% of the leads purchased. The percentages vary according to the industry. By comparison, on average only 2% to 3% of the clicks in a Google Merchant Cash Advance PPC campaign convert to sales. A reputable lead generation company can provide better averages than Google.


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The guy who said "he'd never buy a lead again" is a very smart man, unless that lead is live and exclusive, and the buyer of the lead is the first voice they hear, then buying leads is not smart.

There's a bunch of data to support this produced by M.I.T. Google; "lead response management study."

Your assertion that a "lead generation company can provide better averages than Google" arouses my curiosity because if that was the case, wouldn't the secret be out by now? After hundreds of billions of dollars spent on Google?

Most lead generation companies pound the phones and hammer people into giving them enough data to "qualify" as a lead, then they go on to sell that data to one or more brokers.

This study here: http://www.leadresponsemanagement.org/lrm_study shows you that buying a lead thats more than 30 minutes old makes as much sense as showering in a poncho.

Most lead companies sell leads that end up being garbage. In this business, there is no such thing as an exclusive lead, you'd be out of business if you were selling your leads on an exclusive basis.

So, with all due respect Michael, I wholeheartedly disagree with you, that you could produce a higher quality lead than Google, because we know for a fact that folks are not lining up around the block pounding your doors for a business loan. They are going to Google, lining up around the block, and pounding on the door for a business loan.

If lead companies felt they were able to produce superior leads - they'd just service them and not sell them. The fact of the matter is, most "lead companies" (B2B) use interruption marketing as a means to generate leads.

I've only come across ONE premium lead company in my entire time in this business. I call them premium because their leads are always exclusive. There's never a buffer "someone qualifying the lead" - and guys continue go back over and over again.

Here's the bottom line, when you receive a lead, and you have to call that lead an hour or so later, that lead is no longer a lead. That's a record. When you have someone call you for help with their problem, and you answer the phone, or e-mail, that's a lead.

[funding-consult]

Well described. Agreed.
mca leads