The importance of introducing lead generation is that it is the most basic activity before publishing an advertisement or conducting any other strategic activity on the Internet. Advertisements formed by a true understanding of the target customers, their wants, motives, and the main reasons for purchasing are more efficient and effective. Thus, marketers always try to adapt their solution based on the sensitive needs and wants of their audience. These efforts of marketers on the one hand, and emergence of new technologies in interactive media on the other, have led to the creation of a new concept of lead generation in marketing and online advertising with the responsibility of collecting information, trends, and surfing methods of various customers. This chapter focuses on lead generation as a new responsibility of interactive agencies and its role in B2B and B2C. Also, the way of launching a successful lead generation strategy will be reviewed, and new concepts such as behavioral targeting and behavioral marketing will be mentioned. Meanwhile, by studying forums and online communities, the chapter will show how focus groups based on traditional marketing research are being replaced by free online focus groups. The main emphasis of this chapter is the application of new technologies for making Internet advertising more effective.
TopWhat Is Lead Generation?
In today's digital world, through the emergence of concepts such as RSS, Social Bookmarking, Social News, Social Recommendation Engines, Photo Sharing Sites, Social Search Engines, Video Sharing Sites, Social Networks, Widgets, and Wikis, marketers are able to address their customers with a rather complete background (see Figure 1). When a user registers at a publisher’s website, this information results in lead generation offers being provided by the advertisers. During registration, the user might record interests, fill in several forms or provide Personally Identifiable Information (PII). The user may also allow the sharing of PII with the advertiser or third parties. In general, publishers provide the advertisers with two kinds of online lead generation forms: (1) simple offers in which the user might sign up to receive the current offers without entering extra information; (2) custom offers in which the user is required to enter extra information in order to receive offers (IAB, 2008). Information entered in registration forms includes first name, last name and email address. Additional contact information such as physical address and phone number, or demographic information such as household income and other pertinent information for the offer, such as average monthly mortgage payment, may also be collected.
Figure 1. Social media and its new technologies
Lead generation is a winning approach for both buyers and sellers; buyers can get information from several companies, and sellers have the opportunity to fit their goods and services with the people who want them. The lead generation approach is becoming more and more popular due to the following reasons: Pricing on the basis of the primary leads provided by the customer.
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Focusing on the products which are more compatible with customer preferences.
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Selecting the target market according to the regions in which the company does business.
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Controlling the number of leads the organization receives in each period, helping with budgeting.
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Optimizing advertisements. Considering the expenses of weak advertising activities such as direct posts, yellow pages and flyers, expenses will be reduced and advertising efficiency will be increased. Advertisement efficiency involves issues like accuracy, ease and measurability. By examining the expenses for buying the leads versus the number of customers added, marketers will easily be able to evaluate their ads’ efficiency.
We define lead generation as follows:
Lead generation is the process of online data gathering with the purpose of creating and promoting customers’ personalized profiles whereby companies are able to create and deliver customized product and services to those customers.
TopDifferent Kinds Of Lead Generation
Lead generation involves two main operational areas: B2B lead generation and B2C lead generation. B2C is more related to that group of Internet sales areas which are in direct contact with the end-users and must continuously identify customers' IPs in order to create profiles. In contrast, lead generation in the B2B area relates to businesses which are in contact with their agencies rather than the users of the products.