Advice and assistance required

What is 'lead generation'

[KeepTrying]

I have my own website, and today I received an email from a company who manages lead generation for a business that's the leader in its field.

The company works on a per lead basis, rather than a sale basis.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is all this about?

Thanks

[Syzygy]

Lead generation is a means whereby an organisation will find companies, or individuals, that have expressed an interest in your range of products or services.

Lets say that you filled in some sort of questionnaire...

Do you intend to go on holiday in the next year?

Do you intend to make any major home improvements within the next 12 months?

Do you want to feel healthier in 2005?

Answer 'yes' to any of those questions and now I have generated three leads which I can now sell to the travel sector, the DIY sector and the healthcare markets respectively. When I sell your information on to interested parties, they can then bombard you with phone calls, junk mail & spam. After all, you did express an interest...

That, basically, is 'lead generation' working on a 'per lead' basis.

Try finding a company that wants payment on a 'per sale' basis, if you actually feel the need to go down this route...

Syzygy

[eWhisper]

Per lead basis is also how some people measure success. We have some clients the only numbers they want to know is how much it costs them per lead. They don't care about CPC, CTR, etc - they want to know how much it costs them to get a relevant phone number and name of someone they can contact.

Some properties sell advertisement on per lead instead of CPM or CPC. Therefore, you can run a banner ad on a site, but only pay when someone submits a certain set of criteria instead of the traditional banner CPM.

Then you have others who do massive PPC/SEO (sometimes they even look like they're the company providing the service) and then they resell the leads they receive to 3-5 companies for a flat rate.

Per lead is just a different pricing model, just as CPM, per call, and CPC are.

[ugamis1]

Quick suggestion. Were they attempting to place advertisements on your Web site and pay you 'per lead'?

I am going to assume they are and just give you my 2 cents. Every small company and their brother would love to do a CPL campaign on your Web site if it is the least bit relevant to what they are selling / offering.

Why?

There is no risk to them. Free advertising. Bad idea for you unless you have failed to monetize your property in another fashion (and I would really try to make some money a different way).

Unfortunatley I may step on some toes of people with that comment. This is my opinion though and we sell advertising and buy it at my company in rather signifigant amounts so I am not biased from being just an advertiser or publisher.