The Power of Lead Generation For Local Businesses
The growth of lead generation over the past five years has grown increasingly popular. Many local businesses can benefit tremendously from lead generation services. However, the manner in which marketing agencies generate leads are different and results can vary. Many large lead generation service providers have a business model that is not necessarily designed to bring the best lead opportunities to a local business.
Many large lead generation companies provide shared leads which they then sell to multiple businesses.
In essence, the same customer lead is sent to anywhere between four to six local businesses. As you probably could imagine this creates a competitive environment where local businesses are competing against each other. Given that the majority of homeowners are price sensitive when shopping for local services, pressure is typically placed on a local business owner to undercut their prices.
Business owners will often cut their prices in order to land a job which means tighter profit margins. In many situations, local business owners who utilize shared lead services over time find that such services do not provide the best lead opportunities.
Many local businesses who are first starting out may benefit initially from shared lead services but over time should explore other marketing lead generation options.
Alternative Lead Generation Options
The are multiple options available when it comes to lead generation. Local businesses have the option to work with large lead service providers such as Home Advisor and Angie’s List. These large lead service companies are very well known and have been around for many years. However, as mentioned earlier these companies typically provide shared leads.
There are also agencies who offer lead generation services that may target a specific marketing channel such as Youtube, Facebook or Google Ads. These agencies tend to only focus on one marketing channel when it comes to generating leads for local businesses. You may also find agencies who target multiple marketing channels when generating leads. However, there likely far and few agencies who actually target multiple marketing channels for lead generation.
Every local business niche is different and therefore the marketing channel you choose should be aligned with your business niche. As an example, with plumbing companies the typical approach is to advertise on either Facebook or Google Ads. As another example, a dentist office may find that advertising on a marketing channel such as Facebook can bring better results than Google Ads.
Therefore when your considering what lead generation service may be the best fit for your company, you should also look at what marketing channel would provide the best results.
Lead Types
As mentioned earlier, many lead generation service providers send shared leads to businesses. This is a common business model for some of the larger lead service providers. However, there are marketing agencies that offer exclusive leads to businesses. What this means is that all leads generated will go directly to one local business.
Many local business will find that this is by far the better lead type option. In fact, many local businesses tend to achieve better results when leads are not shared with other local businesses.
In Summary
Local businesses looking to expand or grow their business may opt to work with a lead generation service provider. When doing so it would be in the best interest of the business owner to explore all lead generation options. There are different lead types as well as marketing campaigns that perform better on certain marketing channels versus others.
A few factors should be explored further when considering which lead generation service provider would best serve the marketing needs of your local business.
If you’re a local service based business looking for more information about exclusive lead generation opportunities, be sure to visit our main site.
