April 01 2007

Search still most effective for generating leads

The majority of multi-channel organisations are generating leads online with the intention of converting them offline but many feel that there is room for improvement when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of their online lead generation activity.

It's not just e-retailers who believe they are not performing as well as they could be in this area: 57% of respondents to E-consultancy's Online Lead Generation (B2C) Report say that their organisations are not effectively exploiting online lead generation as a way of increasing revenue - and 47% of marketers say they are not effectively exploiting it in order to grow their B2C business.

This is a growth area in the marketers' arsenal of tools. Some 64% of online marketers see it as its own distinct area of online marketing with paid search, natural search and email marketing using in-house lists cited as the most used and most effective methods for generating leads. The largest share of the budget is allocated to paid search in 28% of respondent companies.

Affiliates, viral marketing, rented email lists, price comparison sites, online aggregators and display advertising are also used to generate leads and traffic.

Linus Gregoriadis, E-consultancy's head of research, said: "There are huge opportunities for companies to generate leads online irrespective of whether these are eventually converted online or offline, for example in stores or by telephone.

"The research found that online methods are deemed to be more effective than offline methods when it comes to generating leads in the B2C context."

Emma Herrod