How Understanding the Best Leads to Use Can Make or Break Your Business

Most companies have marketing dollars and want to advertise and generate clients, this much is obvious. But very few of those same companies have a clear perception of their actual marketing budget or have a legitimate marketing plan.

The way you spend your money and how your sales team uses these paid resources can be the main factor in making (or breaking) your business.

There are various types of leads avaliable in today's world, some more effective than others. Let's take a look at a few of the most popular types of sales leads avaliable to the smart businesses of 2009:

Cold Data: data gathered from public information like phone books, title companies, county records, or data aggregation companies.

Referrals: persons sent to you via a friend, family member, or previous/current client

Dialer Leads: phone dialer campaigns that generated interested people by dialing mass amounts of numbers, telemarketing your product or service

Internet Leads: potential clients find your site on search engines, paid advertising, or email messages, then communicate their information via a landing page to be contacted by a representative of your company

Self Generated Site Traffic: your companies main web site generates a form fill or a phone call from the content provided on your official company site

Mailer Leads: sending out mass amounts of snail mail, advertising your product to a niche group of people that may meet the requirements for potential clients in your business

Print Ad Leads: publishing ads in magazines, newspapers, or any publications in hard copy to generate phone calls or website visits

Radio Leads: advertising via radio to generate phone calls or website visits

TV Leads: television commercial spots or infomercials to generate prospective clients phone calls or website visits

To make sure everyone further understands each respectively, I'll be writing an article on each lead type individually to let you know the strength and weakness of each, and how you can benefit from focusing (or avoiding) each specific marketing tool avaliable to you.