Lead Generation

Lead generation:

Online lead generation, particularly pay-for-performance continues to grow according to the IAB. Old news to the post-secondary education market, but new marketers and publishers are entering the market. The reason is most likely about control over measurement and ROI - buying leads at a given conversion rate is safe and defensible to your boss. The risk of a pay-for-performance is the loss of control over the brand and a growing dependency on third parties. Balance is the key objective. A glossary can be found here that argues there's a difference between a 'sales lead' and a 'marketing lead.'
The common question about social media is: How can we generate leads in social networks? It is possibly the wrong one: A better question is: How can we use the fact that social networks are integral part of 40% of Gen Y's in the acquisition process?
Conventional wisdom doesn't apply to non-conventional sites (duh!). So no surprise that 99.8% of users don't click standard IAB ads on social networks - successful campaigns are custom, labor intensive, and frankly done with an act of faith. (BTW, only the strong should apply.)
If done well, Wikipedia can be a good source of leads - maybe not in volume but in conversion.
Whitepapers, and not the usual dribble written by techno-marketers, are also valuable tools -- with emotion explain the pain, take the audience to the brink of disaster and then bring them back with your satisfaction. Write it like a Shakespearean comedy in 5 acts.
Attribution is 'easy' if you buy leads. It is pretty much impossible across a multi-channel environment with a mix of campaigns, strategies (brand vs. lead) going on at the same time. Rather than look at the individual leads look at the entire milieu as one big problem. Take a page out of the CPG companies 'marketing mix modeling' approach.
Managers are people too: B2B and B2C lead generation follow certain paths, even if the the business decision is often made by a committee.
Lead nurturing focuses on increasing the conversion rate over an extended period of time; not on first contact. This requires a different mind set and like investing, a long-term horizon with a diversified portfolio.
The rules for landing pages aren't the same as for a web site - two different purposes; so don't try to serve two masters. There is one, and only one, objective for a landing page - collect the minimum information to get to the next stage in the process. Microsites have a slightly different role - provide enough information to raise interest above the inertia threshold of 'doing nothing'. That means be compelling.