Pros and Cons of Third Party Sales Leads

by | Sep 24, 2013 | PPC Management

Are Third Party Sales Leads Killing Your Brand?

In an effort to grow their businesses faster and simplify the marketing process, Sales and Marketing Managers often succumb to the simplicity of acquiring third party sales leads. But what are you giving up when you no longer generate your own sales leads? The consequences may be more severe than you realize…

Being in the Spotlight – Generating an Online Brand

Whenever web-based sales leads are generated, somebody, somewhere, had to visit a website and fill out a lead generation web form. The question is, whose website is it? Which website is being branded? When a company relies too heavily on third party sales leads, they forego their own branding in favor of the third party website. The money you spend on a third party sales lead is being used to brand the third party website. Today, there are countless companies that have no web identity, because their website is not used to generate a sales lead. Why not generate the lead while also building your own brand?

Your Own Lead Will Out-Perform a Third Party Sales Lead

While third party sales leads provide a simple and quick solution for generating sales, you should not abandon hope of generating sales leads yourself. When you generate your own sales leads, your money goes much further than you may think. By marketing your company, you brand your company. People remember your links, bookmark your website, pass on your email, and recommend your company. When you are fully vested in third party sales leads, you loose the enormous benefit of establishing an online identity.

“Third party sales leads should supplement your self-generated leads, and not vice versa.”

So what is the big deal about generating your own sales leads?

  • What is really happening with your sales leads? When a sales lead is generated you get your copy, but does someone else also get your copy? Are your sales leads resold after they have aged? Will some email house in China start sending spam to your sales leads? Odds are, your sales leads are not as unique as you think.
  • How many competitors are getting your own sales lead? If a lead is generated on your own website, you’ll be the only one that receives it, significantly increasing your sales conversion rates.
  • Imagine, for example, that 10% of your sales leads convert to a genuine sale. What happens to the other 90%? Many of these people simply are not quite ready to buy, or they are shopping around. When they are ready to buy, they will go back to the third party website, rather than your own website. They don’t even know what your website is.
  • When friends or family members recommend websites and pass on links, is it your link, or a 3rd party website link? Who gets the bookmark? Through branding effects and peer recommendations, a moderate volume of sales leads can be generated for free with a higher closing-ratio than non-referred sales leads.
  • What value does your website have? Does it do anything more than show your office hours and a contact phone number? If you tried to sell your company, would your website be an asset?
  • Do your sales leads accommodate you, or do you accommodate the sales leads? If you generate your own sales leads, from your own website, you can collect any information that you need, in any fashion that you need it. Give your sales team the information that they can really use to size up sales leads, rather than giving them the information someone else thinks that they need.

All things in moderation…

The answer is that you probably do need third party sales leads, but you also need to generate your own sales leads. Depending on the size of your company, it may be a daunting task to acquire all of your sales leads by yourself. However third party sales leads should supplement your self-generate leads, and not vice versa. Easier said than done? Not really… turn to search.

Search-based sales leads are superior to 3rd party sales leads.

  • (1) The nature of web search yields high-interest sales leads. This is not a casual click, the potential customer is actively seeking your services.
  • (2) When friends recommend websites and pass on links, it is your link and not the 3rd party web link. Through branding effects and peer recommendations, a moderate volume of sales leads will be generated at no cost.
  • (3) The website that customers look at should have the same message and company name that is used by the sales rep., reducing customer confusion and increasing sales lead closing rates.
  • (4) The campaign is completely flexible and can be turned on or off, or scaled up or down almost instantly. You can turn it off over the weekend when your sales floor is unavailable, or over the holidays. There are no minimum requirements, no long term commitments or pre-pay. The flow of your sales leads will accommodate your sales floor, ensuring that all sales leads are generated when your sales floor is ready.

So your website is not a sales lead generation machine?

If your website is efficient, and can readily generate sales leads from search traffic, then you’re set. However this is not always the case; in-fact, very few websites are designed as a sales lead conversion hot-spot. That’s okay, here is how SharpNet can help.

Generating Sales Leads – How it works

 

SharpNet can develop a custom search-base solution to help you generate high-quality inbound sales leads. Through SEO and PPC management, we can attract prospects who are actively seeking the services and products that you provide. Search-based traffic is the highest-quality internet based traffic, yielding superior sales lead conversion rates vs. all other traffic sources.

If your website is dated or dysfunctional, we can build a new website at a very competitive price to help boost traffic conversion rates and the overall user experience for your website visitors. SharpNet strongly recommends that you accept the sales leads both through both your website and telephone. The website can be constructed so that a phone number is emphasized, generating a high-converting warm phone lead. Phone-based warm leads, generated through your website, may account for as much as 30%-40% of all the sales leads generated through SEO & PPC.

As long as you’re going to be spending money generating sales leads, why not also brand your company and let your money go further? Put yourself in the spotlight, and wedge out your own place on the web.