Buying Internet leads from Lead Generation service providers - Best Practices

The following lead types / industry segments are the most commonly involved in lead selling / buying practices. However, it can be applied to any industry or niche segments. Companies such as LendingTree and LowerMyBills popularized the lead generation and selling practice. Many new lead companies are getting into additional market segments.

• Debt Settlement leads
• Loan Modification leads
• Mortgage leads
• Insurance leads (Auto, home, health / medical, life, business / commercial, etc.)
• Real Estate leads
• Automobile leads
• Credit Card leads
• Auto Warranty leads
• Home Warranty leads
• Higher Education leads
• Payday Loan leads
• Structured Settlement leads
• Accounting Service leads
• Dentistry Service leads
• Legal Service leads

Lead Buying Criteria

If you are buying sales leads generated by 3rd party service providers, you should know what you are doing. Unless you understand the process and follow the best practices, you will loose a lot of money and hurt your business. Following are some of the important factors that you should take into consideration:

• Exclusivity of Leads: Lead suppliers offer exclusive and / or shared leads. While exclusive leads are costly, the conversion rates will be higher. On the other hand, shared leads are supplied to more than one lead buyer/ client, and hence the competition is stuff. Also, the sales person who made the first contact has a higher chance of winning the deal.
• Delivery of Leads: The leads should be delivered to you in real-time. If not, you will lose out; this is especially important for shared leads, as the leads are delivered to more than one buyer.
• Quality of Leads: There is a great variation in quality of leads provided by internet lead generation service providers. Depending on the methods and practices used to capture prospect information, the lead quality may be high or low. Some providers follow unhealthy lead generation practices and try to make a quick buck. You should stay away from such leads. Note that it is not easy to identify the lead quality upfront. For example, you should avoid buying leads generated with incentives tied to the promotion. Also, lead profile information such as email address, phone number, physical address, etc. could be bogus. The lead company should employ various quality improvement methods to capture the right leads.
• Price of Leads: The cost at which you are buying the leads is an important. This directly ties into your Lead Conversion rate. Volume buying may reduce the lead cost significantly, but increase the risk if you are not able to follow-up promptly and covert the prospects to sales and customers.

Lead Buying Best Practices

In order to gain the maximum benefits out of the internet leads, you must identify and follow the best practices. Here are some key indicators:

• Identify the right lead companies and service providers.
• Evaluate lead generation methods and practices employed by the lead companies.
• Do research about your industry segment on the Internet and compare various lead providers.
• Avoid suspicious / fly-by-night operators
• Analyze their landing pages and lead capture web sites
• Ask for genuine referrals. You should compare similar leads. For example, if you are buying shared leads and comparing with referral who buy exclusive leads, then there is no meaning in it.
• Make sure that the leads are delivered in real time.
• Automate your lead capture process by choosing a suitable internet lead capture, tracking and management system, such as LeadPro247.
• Avoid manual entry of leads received from Lead Sellers. Establish direct interfaces or other automated processes, so that you need not wasting time in entering leads received via email alerts.
• Send a drip email message to the prospect immediately after receiving the lead in your lead database system. Include your personal information such as name, address, and phone numbers in the email.
• Attempt to contact the lead as soon as you receive the leads. This is very important if you are buying shared leads. Examples are insurance industry, mortgage industry, debt service industry, etc. You may use automated dialers, text-to-speech tools, etc.

If you are buying internet leads or planning to get into the buying practice, please get in touch with us. We will evaluate your system requirements and configure LeadPro247 lead system to suit your requirements. Please note that we do not generate leads or sell leads. We help integrate the lead sellers and lead buyers.