Online lead generation industry

The Online lead generation industry exists to sell sales leads that have been generated though internet based promotions to other businesses.  The most popular consumers of internet lead generation services are companies in the education, loan, auto, and financial services industries.  Lead generation works as a marketing strategy for these companies because they are selling big-ticket items so they can afford to spend tens of dollars on a single sales prospect and still turn a profit if they only convert a small portion of their leads.

The second kind of company uses promotional tools to draw the attention and interest of internet browsers and persuades them to submit their information so they can learn more about the product or service being promoted.

A few bad actors in the online lead generation industry have garnered some bad press for the industry as a whole.  For example some companies have used incentivized marketing programs to persuade consumers to submit their personal information to companies without ever delivering the promised incentives.  For example some companies will promise people a new Nintendo Wii or Xbox if the fill out a few questionnaires.  The questionnaires end up being a virtually unlimited number of lead forms and by the time most users fill out a few dozen lead forms they are no closer to getting the Wii or Xbox so they just give up.

These days few companies engage in such deceitful marketing practices and many follow strict ethical guidelines.  The online lead generation industry has attracted many marketing dollars from big companies lately because it is proving itself as a reliable way to generate sales and measure their marketing spend against ROI goals.