Lead generation marketing is the ultimate ‘pull’ marketing strategy.  It allows people who are interested in your product or service to pull information for themselves about you and your business, rather than the usually ‘push’ marketing that you usually see.  Almost all “Madison Avenue” marketing is push marketing.

What you need for prospects to ‘pull’ information from you is great bait, or a lead generation magnet.  This is something that you’re prospects request from you.  They come in many forms, but the most typical is free information about your niche.  They can include:

• White Papers
• Free Reports, such as:
  • “The 7 Questions You Must Ask…”
  • “9 Secrets They Don’t Want You
  • to Know About…”
• Free Recorded Messages
• And other types of gifts appropriate for your niche.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is that the more desirable your ‘bait” is, the better response you’ll get. The 3D Mail Results webpage is a great example of ”bait,” with our free Guide to Using 3D Mail, Swipe File CD, and tons of free information and videos to get you started.

With almost all marketing, you’re severely limited with the amount of information you can send or use in a cost effective manner.  How much can you possibly say in a 30 second TV or radio spot, a yellow pages ad (even in a full page ad), a billboard, or a postcard?

With lead generation marketing, you’re able to move your client or prospect to another media in which you have more cost effective means to tell your story.  You can move them from offline to online, and vice versa, move them to an audio CD, DVD, print and just about any other type of media.

One very popular technique I’m seeing a lot is to send an inexpensive postcard, and lead them to a personalized website, or PURL, which has, theoretically speaking, unlimited space.

You also have the ability to spend more money per prospect.  Let’s take our PURL example from above.  You send your client to a unique webpage that is only for them, and you’re able to track it.  You know this person is at least slightly interested in whatever it is you’re offering. 

Now, you’ve ‘shrunk your universe’ to only include those people who visited their unique webpage.  They obviously have an interest in what you’re selling, and you can spend more per qualified lead, and actually end up spending less overall in the campaign.  This would be a great time to send them clutter busting 3D Mail!

However, you must know your total lifetime value of both a prospect and a client.  That’s a discussion for another day we’ll get to down the road.