What is Lead Generation?

Lead Generation is a marketing term that refers to the creation or generation of prospective customers, business clients, consumer interest or inquiry into a business' products or services. Leads can be generated for a variety of purposes - list building, e-newsletter list acquisition or for winning customers. Although there are many ways to generate leads, for example cold-calling in telemarketing, modern lead generation is generally conducted online through the search engines, becuase of its effectiveness, cost-efficiency, and non-intrusive manner.

A lead is a sign-up for an advertiser offer that includes contact information and in some cases, demographic information. There are many different kinds of leads such as mortgage leads, debt & loan modification leads, bankruptcy leads, education leads. Leads can be bough and sold online in an open-marketplace or directly to buyers. Leads can cost anywhere from a dollar, to as high as $100.

A Billion Dollar Industry?

Leads generation is really about customer acquisition, and without a doubt no other period has seen such innovation and growth in customer acquisition. The question among those interested in lead generation and online customer acquisition has always been what will break through to become the billion dollar business. From flash sales to location based services, the question is not if or when, but how many billion dollar online customer acquisition businesses will we see.