Online Lead Generation vs. Traditional Lead Generation

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Online lead generation has allowed companies to obtain leads much more cost effectively than traditional lead generation activities.

The reason why online lead generation is much easier is because your customers are coming to you. Whereas, with traditional lead generation activities, you are directly contacting your customer. In today’s world of business, shouldn’t all companies be using online lead generation activities? Well you will be surprised at how many companies are still using traditional lead generation activities.

Online Lead Generation

Online lead generation has revolutionised how we reach out to new customers and encourage them to buy our product or service.

With the internet being used by almost everyone in the Western World, it is now easier for businesses to reach out to customers, by giving them something of high value – which is usually high quality content. This is how customers tend to come you through online lead generation activities.

Typical lead generation activities include content marketing, social media marketing and email marketing. These methods are highly cost-effective and can save you a great deal of time.

The key to successful online lead generation is to fully understand how your target market uses the internet on a daily basis. Thanks to the number of free tools that are available such as Google Analytics and Google Keyword Adword Planner, being able to identify consumer habit has never been easier.

With search engines becoming ever more intelligent, your customers are now able to find answers to their questions. Once you know their questions, you will be able to deliver the answer.

Traditional Lead Generation

Traditional lead generation activities such as running an advert on TV, radio or newspaper can be very expensive. Activities such as directly contacting perspective customers through cold calling and direct mail (or email) can take up a lot of time.

Saying that, traditional lead generation activities do have some significant advantages over online lead generation. As previously mentioned, online lead generation allows your customers to come to you through content marketing, SEO and social media.

Even though it is wonderful having customers flocking to you, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be suitable for all types of businesses.

There are some industries which online customers won’t necessarily think about. The same goes for companies that are providing a service or product that’s not on the market or is unheard off.

In these cases, it would be good to directly contact your customer to try to sell your services. Once you have gained some solid leads/sales through this method, you will be able to use their testimonials to attract new leads through online lead generation activities – at the end of the day, your customers online will read your testimonials for added reassurance.

Conclusion

Even though online lead generation does have more significant advantages over traditional lead generation in terms of cost. Both methods can be useful depending on the nature of the business. If your business is able to provide answers to common questions from your customers, then online lead generation is the best practice.

If your business is in an industry that is not well known, then it is best to find leads through traditional lead generation. Once you are able to establish a strong customer base, then it might be worth looking to go towards online lead generation.