SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
Choosing an Online Lead Generation Vendor
April 30, 2008
Five Questions You'll Want to Ask
Directly driving revenue for the company is quickly becoming a priority for the modern day marketer. Top level executives are pushing harder on marketing departments to produce ROI from every campaign and justify their spending. With this in mind, many marketing executives are expanding their online lead generation initiatives in 2008.
At first glance, all of the vendors appear to be one in the same. But, contrary to popular belief, there is no one solution that works for every company. How can you be sure which vendor is the best fit for your company's products/solutions? Here are some key questions to ask yourself when researching and evaluating online lead generation vendors.
1. Is my vendor flexible to my needs?
Flexibility is highly important when choosing a lead generation vendor. It should be the priority of a marketing professional to make sure your vendor is tailoring the campaign to specifically meet your company’s unique needs. That being said, your vendor should have the following:
• Flexibility in Collateral. Each campaign has its own specific goal, and thus collateral designed specifically for achieving that goal. Whether it be a whitepaper, Webinar or a free trial promotion, a vendor should have the flexibility to promote any and all of your collateral with confidence and success.
• Flexibility in Campaign Invoicing. Does your company have invoicing guidelines set up that must be adhered to? Some companies prefer to invoice their campaigns up front, while others prefer to pay as the leads are generated. Is your vendor willing to accommodate your invoicing needs?
• Flexibility in Campaign Management. Currently there are endless lead management and nurturing systems available to businesses. Its important that your lead generation solution can work with your particular CRM system. Vendors should have the ability to send people directly to a landing page or send your leads to you directly in your preferred format—.XLS, .CSV, ect.
2. Does my vendor offer the right audience for my solutions?
Probably the most critical element in deciding which lead generation vendor to work with is whether or not their audience is a match with your target audience. Some vendors offer a blanket approach to reaching prospective buyers while others offer incredibly focused niche channels for reaching prospects.
Which one is best for you? Find the middle ground. The key to running running a great campaign is finding a vendor that can deliver the best of both worlds. While a vendor who can reach a large target audience is appealing at first, your sales representatives then have to sift through leads that simply don't match up with your company's solutions. Your vendor should be able to deliver a large audience segmented down into specific targets. Common segmentation can be broken down by industry topic, vertical, and/or job title. The key is generating the most consistent flow of qualified leads per campaign.
3. Does my vendor offer a lead guarantee?
A minimum or guarantee should be attached to every campaign you run with a lead generation vendor. The vendor should contractually commit to delivering an set amount of leads to you within a set timeframe. If the lead guarantee is not met within the set time perameters, the vendor is still obligated to deliver the remaining leads. A good lead generation vendor will review your collateral and design a campaign which not only meets your needs, but does not exceed their limitations. Beware of empty guarantees and upfront invoicing.
• Be precise in the terms of your campaign. Will your vendor be provided a set amount of leads
at a fixed CPL or be running your campaign for a fixed period of time with a set minimum and maximum amount of leads at a fixed price?
• A good lead generation vendor will give you the option to add profiling/qualifying questions to your leads without an additional charge. These questions are specifically designed to direct your salesteam to the hottest opportunities first, thus immediately impacting ROI.
• Be on the look out for hidden costs. The goal for a lead generation vendor should be providing the highest quality collateral to their audience. A vendor should be 100% flexible to all of your collateral and give you the opportunity to promote as much of it as you like without additional costs.
4. Is my vendor focused on customer service?
Lead generation via content promotion can be incredibly labor intensive and time consuming for today’s marketing managers. With tradeshows, database management, corporate comminications and branding all being on the same plate, most marketing managers simply don't have the resources to put extensive effort into their lead generation. It is important to find and work with vendors who are willing to take upon the bulk of the workload involved with your demand generation intitiatives.
• Does your lead generation vendor offer creative services/support? Writing and designing copy for your promotions is incredibly time consuming. But different audiences react to copy differently, so it's important to have a vendor who knows how to best market your collateral to their audience, and keep your legwork to a minimum.
• How many contacts to you have with your vendor? Common rule of thumb: the larger company, the more red tape. If you call to inquire with a vendor and it takes their sales team more than 24 hours to return your call, imagine how long it will take if the campaign has unexpected problems? Customer service begins way before the contracts are signed, and can be a huge factor in making or breaking your demand gen programs.
• Has your lead generation vendor ever said "No"? A good vendor will always put you as the client in the best possible situation for success. There will come a time where you have a campaign or initiative that does not match well with their products/services. A customer-service-focused vendor will openly and honestly pass on the opportunity, keeping your best interest in mnd. A bad vendor will "take the money and run."
5. Does my vendor adapt to the constantly changing marketplace?
No matter what product/service your company sells, there is one common demoninator: The marketplace is always changing/growing. Thus, it’s important that your lead generation vendor is expanding and adapting to mirror the marketplace. Would it be possible to market to IT professionals if your lead generation vendor's audience was still focused on Windows 95? Probably not. Every year companies are revolutionizing their industries with new products and services. The key to their success is finding a vendor that has the adaptibility and forsight to expand their audiences to maximize lead flow and thus sales revenue.
Perfect Pairings
Lead generation is the foundation of growth and stability for any organization, directly impacting the sales revenue and thus bottom line of the organization as a whole. Thus, choosing a lead generation vendor is a key element in the success of your company. While there are numerous considerations, concentrating on the essential elements mentioned above should keep your marketing campaigns on the right track. Never settle for second best or a subpar campaign. Demand the very best from your demand generation.
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
|
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Sales Index |
|
|
