Buying Leads Is Not Lead Generation

When it comes to getting new customers, there’s a temptation to take a shortcut and simply take any leads that come your way. After all, a list of potential customer contacts seems like a great quick fix to boost your business, right? Not quite.

As countless business owners have discovered, purchased leads often lack genuine interest in your brand, and they may even harm your reputation.

In contrast, generating leads organically through compelling content, SEM, and reputation management is a smarter and more sustainable approach. After all, nothing is more effective than having a conversation with people who are genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

Let’s explore why lead generation and buying leads aren’t the same and how you can build stronger, more fruitful relationships without paying to win!

WHAT ARE THE KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BUYING LEADS AND LEAD GENERATION?

While buying or generating leads can help you reach potential customers, the way they approach the process is completely different. If you want the most effective and highest-quality leads, developing an effective strategy for cultivating leads that work for your business is critical.

Buying Leads:

Buying leads is essentially purchasing a list of contacts from a third-party company. That may provide a quick boost of people to contact, but they are often people who haven’t opted into hearing from your business. Because of that, purchased leads lack any connection to your brand, which can do more harm than good.

When leads have no connection to your brand, it’s likely your company may not be relevant to them, which means your sales team will waste time and resources following up.

Not only that, because they didn’t ask to be contacted by you, it may create a negative brand image of your business with them. Think about how often your own inbox is flooded with spam emails from businesses you’ve never heard of and selling products that you’re not interested in. Did that email convince you to make a purchase?

Another major issue with purchased leads is that you’re sharing them with other businesses. That means that a person in that purchased list may be receiving similar messages from multiple brands at the same time.

On the surface, that means that you will be directly competing for the same person’s attention with other businesses in the same industry, making it harder for your message to stand out. But because that lead didn’t actively choose to be marketed to by you, their engagement with your message will likely be low. In fact, they may flat-out ignore your message or worse, think poorly of your business.

Lead Generation:

Conversely, lead generation marketing focuses on carefully cultivating your customers who are genuinely interested in your products and services.

Lead generation begins with targeted SEM, SEO, reputation management, and ensuring your local listings are up to date to draw in prospects. With these approaches, customers voluntarily engage with your brand, making them more likely to convert.

Because these customers find you while in the research stage of the consumer journey for your products or services, they’re more exclusive to your brand and you’re less likely to be competing directly with other companies. That gives your message an easier chance of standing out and being well-received by your prospects.

These leads came your way, in some form, because of messaging that originated from your business or they discovered you through a search. Since generated leads have taken an active step toward interacting with your brand, they tend to be of higher quality than purchased leads. That means they’re more likely to engage with your products and services as well as any future campaigns you may run. Building that initial trust is crucial to building brand loyalty (and future sales)!

EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES FOR LEAD GENERATION

Okay, so, you’re convinced that it’s better to be doing lead generation than buying leads. But, how do you start? Let’s take a look at how you can optimize your lead generation strategies to start getting more high-quality leads.

SEO: This approach relies on two things to be effective: customers searching for you and customers being able to find you. Customers rely on search engines like Google and Bing to help them sort through noise and find the results that are right for them. You can help your chances of being found with things like regularly published, educational blogs and a well-designed website.  SEO is a service that is being provided to you, most likely by a vendor, and is not considered advertising.

SEM: While SEO relies on doing organic groundwork you lay, SEM takes a different approach. SEM gives you more control over who sees your content by relying on paid ads, allowing you to bid on keywords and only pay when someone clicks. This is a more targeted approach and is a complement to SEO. At Federated Digital Solutions, we recommend starting with SEM because that can have instant results, while SEO is a long-term strategy.

Reputation Management: One way to bolster your visibility outside of SEO and SEM is through reputation management — how your business is perceived online. When you monitor and respond quickly and professionally to positive and negative online reviews you help bolster your reputation. It may not seem like much, but think about how often you look at reviews and comments before making a purchase. Your customers are doing the same thing!

Making sure your reputation is credible and trustworthy is also important for search. For example, if someone is searching for, “best pizza place near me” they are only going to be served results with places that have 4-star reviews or higher. If you’re not keeping after your online reputation, you could be missing out and not even know it!

Updated Local Listings: There’s nothing worse than trying to call a business or find their real-world location than coming up with inconsistencies or wrong results. Making sure your address, number, and hours are up-to-date is critical for helping your leads find you! While it may seem simple to update your listing on your website and Google and Bing, those are the only places your customers are searching. Voice assistance and apps on their phone often scour the internet using listings sites you’ve never heard of to provide results. If your listings are right across the Internet, you could be driving away leads.

Planning SEO and SEM strategies, managing your online reputation, and updating your local listings can take valuable time and resources your business doesn’t have.

Fortunately, the team at Federated Digital Solutions can help! Let us help you with lead generation so you can get back to doing the things that are important to you — like running your business! Contact us today to find out how we can help you start generating more leads.

Learn More