When you market your business on the internet you are actually trying to attract people’s attention. As a result, people start inquiring about your product or service and this way initiate a relationship with you. The more people asking about your business the more leads you have. Now it is your job how many among them you convert into your customers. Thus, the process of attracting people and capturing their contact information is called Lead Generation. Lead generation is important for the growth of your business, without leads no sales are possible.

Before the arrival of internet businesses generated leads through classical ways like:

  • Meeting people
  • Networking and
  • Cold calling

Today technological advancements have given us more options to generate leads. Search engines like Google have made it easy to connect sellers with those who are seeking their products or services. Then there are social media platforms like Facebook and Linkedin where buyers and sellers can instantly find each other. Apart from this, there is email marketing strategy which according to some researches is still the most effective way to generate relevant leads.

The process of online lead generation is cost effective and a great time saver. Now it is a proven fact that more leads you have the more sales you are likely to make.

Organic vs Paid Leads

Organic leads are those that come to know about your business after interacting with your content at your site, blog or social media channels. If your content, that may be some blog post, infographic or a video, is useful for your prospects then it will rank higher in search engines increasing the chances of being discovered by the people easily.

Your offline efforts like attending conferences, and distributing flyers and business cards there to participants are equally effective to generate natural leads. In short, organic leads are those where you do not pay directly to win them, and instead, people take interest in your business when they find some value in it.

Paid lead generation is that when you pay Google Adwords or social media channels like Facebook and LinkedIn to expose your business through advertisement to the people who go online. Running paid campaigns does not undermine the value of useful and relevant content. Visitors who after clicking your paid advertisement hit at your landing page and don’t find the information they are looking for might leave without dropping their contact to convert into a lead.

Leads Are Sold

Leads are sold even, yes! Though they are sold expensive yet, many people rush for them as a shortcut to winning customers. This is, however, not recommended. Generating leads organically is, though, a time taking process but brings you leads that actually know you and have purposely ‘opted-in’ at your site or social media pages. But when you buy leads and communicate with them this may cause problem for you since they do not know who you are. Such leads may mark your messages as spasm which is dangerous for your business tarnishing your IP and email deliverability reputation.