Ashleigh Horrobin, LeadPoint UK’s Marketing Executive, discusses the use of social media in the financial industry.

Flares, lava lamps, yo-yos and the moonwalk are just a few examples of fads that have come and most definitely gone. A few  years ago many predicted social media might go the same way, but even the harshest critic would now accept that social media is here to stay. Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin alone have attracted over 1billion followers worldwide, with millions of businesses taking advantage of the cheap marketing tools and free PR the sites provide.

While nobody would ever advocate ditching all other forms of marketing to solely focus on social, it seems clear that social media is now an integral part of any marketing strategy, and an increasingly important tool for creating wider conversation about your brand, products and services. This in turn will have a positive effect on all your marketing – including lead generation campaigns.

So with a huge proportion of the global online audience onboard, why is the financial industry still ‘umming and ahhing’ about embracing social media for business purposes?
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The following article was written by Justin Rees for myintroducer. To read the original, click here

It may seem strange reading a blog about Christmas when it is only August but when it comes to lead buying, planning well in advance will pay dividends.

With the traditional summer slowdown and the Olympic effect, August is set to be a quiet month for many but don’t despair as this leaves a great opportunity to focus on your lead generation strategy for the rest of the year.

The difference between an average lead generation campaign and a successful one can come down to small margins and while it takes time to perfect a strategy to maximise your conversion rates and ROI from buying leads, there are a few simple things you can do now to get ahead and now is the time to try a few of these things out.

Revise your budgets

Budgeting ahead should be an integral part of planning your lead buying campaigns. When trying new campaign techniques it is important to set a budget that will enable you to get a large enough sample of leads to ensure maximum likelihood that the outcomes are determined by true performance rather than pot luck. For lead buyers with smaller or limited budgets, this means making sure you get as many leads as possible for that spend. Try “aged” leads that are a little bit cheaper or loosen your filters to enable you to get more leads for your budget.
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Ashleigh Horrobin, LeadPoint UK’s Marketing Executive, discusses how technology has evolved lead generation.

A lot has changed in online lead generation over the last few years. There was a time where the only option was for lead buyers and sellers to work directly. For buyers needing to connect with multiple suppliers simultaneously or for large lead sellers looking to supply leads to a number of buyers across a range of products there were no efficient solutions.

These problems for buyers and sellers have largely been solved by the emergence of lead exchanges and platform using technology to connect thousands of buyers and sellers in one environment. In the financial services industry, lead trading platforms are increasingly becoming the top choice for advisers as they can add real value in addition to making lead buying from multiple suppliers much simpler.

One of the key benefits that a platform can provide is that new technologies can be implemented rapidly across all suppliers. For example, real-time lead verification such as checking consumer phone numbers to ensure only leads with connected phones are passed on to advisers has dramatically improved the lead buying experience. Typically 20% of leads have invalid numbers so these types of technologies can save the lead buyer time and money. This is just one example of lead verification and platforms routinely do things such as running leads against blacklists and 3rd party and proprietary databases in order to determine whether the contact information is accurate and the likelihood that the consumer can be reached. These systems can also flag any suspect data points for further review.
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The following article was written by Justin Rees for myintroducer. To read the original, click here

The conventional wisdom is that real-time internet leads have the highest conversion rates and are therefore the most expensive while aged leads are significantly cheaper with lower performance.
With this in mind, should prospective lead buyers only consider real-time leads?

The first thing to point out is that both real-time and aged leads are generated through the exact same process, the difference lying in the time frame in which the lead is sold. Real-time leads are sold immediately after the consumer has filled out a form online whereas aged leads can be anything from a few hours old to weeks old.

It is also important to clarify that leads that do not find a buyer in real-time are not necessarily any less desirable in terms of their criteria.
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Ashleigh Horrobin, LeadPoint UK’s Marketing Executive, discusses budgeting for success .

Thinking about budgets is often put at the bottom of the list of priorities for lead buyers but setting the correct budget is vital to your campaigns and can often be the difference between success and failure. It should come right at the top of the list and should be an integral part of planning your lead buying campaign.

As a general rule you need to set a budget to enable you to get a large enough sample of leads to give you the maximum likelihood of the outcome of your first campaign to be determined by true performance rather than pot luck. For lead buyers with smaller or limited budgets, this means making sure you get as many leads as you possible can for that spend.
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