The Pontiflex CPL Blog

Online lead generation continues to deliver for marketers according to a research study conducted by e-consultancy and Clash Media.

Two findings from the report clearly stand out:

1. Over 80% of agency and advertiser respondents expect online lead generation to be more important to their own or their clients’ organizations over the next 12 months

2. The proportion of company respondents who believe that their organizations are effectively exploiting online lead generation to grow their business-to-consumer (B2C) customer base has decreased from 44% in 2007 to 41% this year.

So while online lead generation continues to grow in importance, the number of people that believe they are utilizing it effectively effectively falls.

There are two main reasons why marketers are not able to exploit the potential of online lead generation advertising to the fullest:

1. A lack of transparency. Many marketers continue to deploy online lead generation campaigns through brokers that block visibility into campaign placements. Due to a lack of transparency marketers do not know where their leads are coming from. As a result, they cannot follow up on leads in an appropriate manner (a lead from a sporting site might require a different communication strategy than a lead from a finance site). They are also not able to optimize campaigns by mapping leads to their sources, which severely impairs their ability to increase campaign ROI - which is the point of online lead generation in the first place.

2. Lack of timely follow-up: Once some marketers have the leads, they do follow up with them in a timely manner. Attention and memory are at a premium in the information age. A delayed follow up is more often than not a lost lead, or worse a lead that has gone over to the competition.

So don’t do business with vendors that refuse to tell you where your campaigns are running. It’s the least they can do. And follow up with your customers. It’s the least you can do.