Generating high quality leads in a most cost-effective manner has always been the primary role of marketers in any industry. The traditional approach has been to maximize the use of the appropriate media to reach potential customers. The emergence of online media as a leading form of information and content provider has resulted in a major shift in the way leads are generated.

What's keeping the Head of Marketing awake in the night?

Marketers around the world are being challenged to deliver results in the face of intense competition. ROI (Return on Investments) and ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) are the new buzzwords. Further, they are faced with shrinking marketing budgets as organizations try to enforce efficiencies in their cost structures. To add to these pressures, commoditization of products is the order of the day making the job of marketers even more difficult. On the other side of the equation, consumers are suffering from information overload and have grown immune to mass market advertizing campaigns.

Interactive marketing aims to address these issues. With a right mix of technology, knowledge of consumers and organizational processes, marketers can bring in the desired results from their marketing efforts.

Lead generation defined

The goal of lead generation is to attract the attention of the prospect and get him act upon your offer. The success of any lead generation campaign can be measured based on the following parameters:

Volume - How many leads were generated as a result of a particular campaign?

Quality - How good are the leads? Did they come from the right prospects? Do they have the budgets to purchase the products/services being offered?

Cost per lead - How much did it cost to generate these leads? Was it worthwhile spending the amount of money for the given volume & quality?

Time to generate these leads - How long did it take to reach the desired volume of leads?

Technology has enabled businesses to track all the above performance metrics and in turn maximize returns on the marketing dollars invested.

Technologies aiding online lead generation

The beauty of online lead generation is the ability to track every step of the process - from generation to qualification to routing and finally to closure. This is also known as close loop marketing and is enabled by the usage of internet technologies. Below are some of the tools and techniques that can be deployed for inline lead generation:

Email - Emails have been the backbone of online lead generation efforts in the last 10 years. However, with the flood of spam and junk mails, emails have lost their effectiveness to some extent. Yet, with the application of the right techniques, they can still deliver the desired results. Using the right email engines and customer database, Emails can be customised on the fly to address the specific needs of the customer segments and encourage them to act upon the offer presented.

All email interactions such as open, clicks and bounces can be tracked and insights generated from this data can help business improve their marketing efficiencies.

Web Analytics - All user behaviour on websites can be tracked and analysed by using web analytics applications. Given that company websites have become a key lead generation channel, web analytics software is an indispensible instrument in a marketer's toolbox.

A well designed website should result in more high quality leads and this is enabled by continuously optimising the site based on the insights gained from web analytics.

Search engines - A prospect searching for information on search engines like Google is usually an indicator of purchase intent. This means that if someone is searching for a product or service on a search engine and is directed to the relevant page on your website, there is a high chance that the prospect is a high quality lead.

However, the challenge is to stand out among the millions of web pages seeking to provide the same information. Enter Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). SEM allows you to purchase the right keywords from the search engines for prominent placement of your website among the search results. SEO is an approach of improving your website rank by deploying a variety of techniques.

Other tools such Ad Serving, Blogs and Teleweb among others, are also available at the disposal of marketers to further enhance their online lead generation efforts.

Case Studies

Case study 1 - B2B - A major ERP application vendor

This ERP vendor is a market leader in the large enterprise sector and wanted to gain a foothold in the small / medium business segment of the market. A campaign website was created and traffic driven to this site via online media exposure, SEM and targetted emails. Prospects were asked to answer question on the web form which filtered out the good quality leads. Automated follow-up of these leads and actively engaging them through dissemination of useful information via emails further enhanced their relationship with the ERP vendor.

As a result of this campaign, the ERP vendor acquired a large number of fully qualified leads in the small/medium business sector at a fraction of cost compared to that of traditional methods of lead generation.

Case study 2 - B2C - A leading consumer product company providing beauty care products

This leading company wanted to re-invigorate its female beauty product line which had seen sagging sales for the past few quarters. An online survey was carried out to gather insights on the perception of his brand among the consumers. Based on the results of the survey, ideal market segments were identified and an online campaign emphasizing the benefits to the target segments launched. Prospects were encouraged to register themselves online and were invited to free beauty consultation at the retail outlets. Further information was captured at the retail outlets and this information was used to drive repeat purchases.

The campaign was an unqualified success and the company reported increased sales of up to 30% at a significantly lower cost as compared to their usual methods of mass marketing. 

Waheed Bidiwale is the Managing Director - Americas of BLUE Interactive Marketing based in Palo Alto, USA. The views expressed in this article are his own and do not represent that of the BLUE Interactive Marketing.

Issue BG83 Feb 08

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