Five lead generation strategies to help you get more from lead generation, by Justin Rees, director of marketing and partnerships at LeadPoint

Making contact with consumers is still often the main determinant of success for many lead buyers but once you have mastered this, there are a few other strategies that can increase your return on investment from buying leads.

&ltb&gtMake sure you have a presentable website&lt/b&gt
Despite the fact that buying leads is often seen as an alternative to developing a web presence and spending lots of money on driving consumers to your own website, whether you spend £100 a month on leads or £10,000 your website can still affect the success of your lead generation campaigns.

Lead providers should inform the consumer who is going to be contacting them once they have submitted their details online. As a minimum the lead buyer’s company name should be displayed to the consumer but many lead providers also allow the lead buyer to present their website address to the consumer.

Either way, a significant proportion of consumers will either go to the website before, during or after you attempt to make contact with them and depending on what they find they will make a judgement about whether they want to give you their business.

Your website is your shop window and it is particularly important to make a good first impression as many consumers will not know your company so this is your first chance to sell them your services. It is no coincidence that some of the most successful lead buyers also have the best websites.

&ltb&gtBroaden your filters to get cheaper leads&lt/b&gt
For lead categories such as mortgages where lead buyers can filter by things like loan amount, credit grade, postal area and maximum LTV the chosen criteria can have a huge impact on the lead price.

For example in the current mortgage market, the majority of lead buyers wanting remortgage leads typically look for prime consumers with loan amounts over £50k and a maximum LTV of 75%. These leads can cost over £30 per lead in the current market. That’s because these leads only make up a small proportion of all the mortgage leads generated resulting in a situation where demand far outstrips supply.

While this can make the price prohibitive for some lead buyers, this also presents an opportunity for others as lead prices tend to change in large increments around certain filters. Using the above example, if a lead buyer was to loosen their filtering criteria such as taking leads up to 85% LTV the same leads can be as much as £10 per lead cheaper. A cost reduction of up around 30% in some cases can have a significant impact on return on investment from buying leads.

&ltb&gtDon’t just buy leads from Monday to Friday&lt/b&gt
In a similar vein to broadening the filtering criteria for leads, there is also a huge opportunity for lead buyers to take leads on the weekend as well as during the week.

Analysing daily lead flow, in absolute terms there are fewer leads generated on a Saturday and Sunday compared to most weekdays but at the same time a larger number of lead buyers currently don’t purchase leads on the weekends which means overall there are more leads available in many products.

What this means for lead buyers is that either more leads are available that will meet your criteria on weekends or there might be the opportunity to purchase the same leads you get during the week for less.

For any lead buyers that have preconceptions that weekend leads are of inferior quality to weekday leads there is no compelling evidence to support this and there are many lead buyers that swear by taking more leads on the weekend.

Additionally for any lead buyer considering expanding into weekend lead purchasing, many lead providers have systems in place to allow lead buyers to set up separate orders for weekends leads with separate pricing, filters and volume caps.

&ltb&gtTry some “aged”” leads&lt/b&gt