An important aspect of marketing, specifically internet and Business-to-Business or b2b marketing is the process of lead generation, often achieved by sending e-mails or through telemarketing techniques. Generating leads is in simpler terms building a database of potential customers who have or will show interest in your company’s product or service. The purpose behind a company’s lead generation can be varied. From creating an emailing list, a newsletter list or just as a direct marketing technique to reach customers and businesses easily, it is generally up to the advertising and marketing department to generate leads.

Typically it is the marketing department’s duty to come up with new and interesting ways of generating leads so as to beat monotony and repetitive patterns. The most common techniques of acquiring leads are through existing customer referrals, or through responses because of an advertisement or publicity stunt. Lead generation is also obtained through the process of search engine optimization these days. A company’s marketing department is forever striving to generate quality leads and targeting specific markets, inbound and outbound telemarketing and advertising via social media websites are good ways to achieve quicker and better results.

Today there are in fact specific agencies that take lead generation as a serious business and specialize in providing the same to different organizations and businesses. What they do is pretty simple, yet highly effective. The agencies build partnerships with different companies and use the internet to promote and advertise their products or services. A prospective consumer or business who comes across this website via a search engine, then needs to fill up a form that makes note of the customer’s personal details along with his preferences, and the agency sends back this information to the organization in question.

Earlier, trade fairs and exhibitions were used by a company to display their wares to the public, where a prospective buyer would be the lead and each time an enquiry was made about the company’s product or service, a new lead would be generated. These leads are also known as sales leads by the company and are a major part of their marketing strategy and generating quality leads is a daily requirement for the successful functioning of the company in the marketplace. Keeping these in mind, company’s employ a three-step strategy to ensure maximum lead generation.

The first part is generating the lead itself. This is called lead generators in marketing term and involves any advertising or publicity activity that captivates the prospective client’s interest in the company’s product or service. The next step involves nurturing the lead that has been generated. This involves coming up with strategies that the company has to come up with to handle any potential lead. The final stage is called lead scoring which uses specific software to sift through all the leads and rank them according to the company’s preference and importance.

With the growing requirement of business-client relationship today, companies are coming up new and improved marketing techniques to ensure maximum lead generation, be it via event marketing, relationship marketing, search engine optimization and internet marketing, social media marketing, CRM, telemarketing, direct marketing or email marketing, etc for both b2b and b2c markets.

Steve Kent Lim has more than twenty years experiences in telemarketing. He currently works as a direct sale telemarketing consultant and spends his time writing articles related to telemarketing at http://www.howtotelemarketing.com/

Steve Kent Lim has more than twenty years experiences in telemarketing. He currently works as a direct sale telemarketing consultant and spends his time writing articles related to telemarketing at http://www.howtotelemarketing.com/

Author Bio: Steve Kent Lim has more than twenty years experiences in telemarketing. He currently works as a direct sale telemarketing consultant and spends his time writing articles related to telemarketing at http://www.howtotelemarketing.com/

Category: Business
Keywords: lead generation, b2b, telemarketing