Are you prepared for September, asks Justin Rees, head of marketing at Leadpoint UK

The holidays are over, the summer is fading into a distant memory and September is already upon us. Rather than lamenting the end of another British summer lacking in sunshine, for those in the world of financial services there are many reasons to be cheerful. For many businesses much of July and August will have been a total write-off. The phones probably didn’t ring much and many of your clients were probably on holiday in some far flung corner of the world. But the arrival of September means back to school, back to work, back online and most importantly more leads and more new business opportunities.

In the world of lead generation, the next three months are the busiest of the year and September is usually the busiest month of all as advisers start to get back to work from the summer break and re-activate their lead buying campaigns. At the same time, the usual summer slowdown will have exacerbated an already slow year and many advisers will be looking to lead generation to help give their business a boost.

However, before starting to buy leads, advisers should make sure they have laid the foundations for a successful lead buying campaign. One of the most important things for any lead buyer to consider is lead flow – i.e. the way that leads are distributed to a lead buyer. Whether buying one lead or one hundred leads a day the lead flow itself is as crucial to the success of the lead buying campaign as how the leads are generated. The reason is that however good the leads are, if you can’t contact the consumer you can’t convert the lead into business. What this means is that you may find a lead provider offering life insurance leads for £3 but if you get these leads at 3am in the morning then how valuable really are they? At the same time you may pay £35 for a similar lead from another supplier but if a lead is delivered at 11am while you are sitting at your computer and you follow the lead up immediately then you could have converted your first lead before lunch time.

That is not to say that lead price doesn’t matter at all but contrary to conventional wisdom it is quite a long way down the list of things that determines a lead buyers’ success. For example, an adviser buying 100 leads might have to pay £10 per lead from company A (overall cost £1,000) but £15 from company B (overall cost £1,500). Armed with only this information any rational lead buyer would choose to buy leads from company A. However, leads are purchased to be converted into business and it is the size of the revenue generated that matters most for any lead buyer. If the leads from company B generate £20,000 in revenue and the leads from company A generate £10,000 in revenue then suddenly the leads from company B look the most attractive.

Any adviser looking to start their lead generation campaigns in September should focus less on price and more on the many other variables that can affect lead performance.