According to web experts econsultancy, online lead generation is coming into its own this year. So what’s OLG all about?
What is lead generation?
Online of offline, lead generation simply means generating warm or hot leads, ie. attracting new prospects who are likely to buy.
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81% of companies quizzed by econsultancy said they were using OLG to win hot leads, which they then convert offline. Last year’s figure was 70%
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OLG is responsible for an average of 42% of sales, an increase of 2% on last year
What methods are businesses using to generate leads online?
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SEO comes top, no surprise since it’s currently experiencing a massive hike in awareness. This year SEO is being used to generate leads by 90% of the businesses researched by econsultancy, up 13% on last year
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the number of firms doing email OLG marketing to in-house mailing lists is up from 74% last year to 83% this year
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pay per click (AdWords) is also popular, with 83% of businesses asked confirming they use PPC for OLG
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two thirds of businesses surveyed say they’ve used social media to generate leads. Last year’s figure was 40%
So, you can generate leads relatively easily and cheaply online. Job done? No. The big issue is converting them to sales. Look at the top bullets again. While 11% more businesses are using it, OLG is only responsible for 2% more sales.
The moral behind the stats? Make sure you have a rock solid conversion process in place before you start generating leads. No matter how hot, they’re worth bugger all unless you transform them into paying customers.
