Lead Generation or Lead Acquisition. Which Way To Go?
It’s all over the marketing stratosphere: lead generation, maintaining leads, following leads, nurturing leads.
Leads are the very blood that pulses through a business model’s veins, and nobody can do business without them.
The real question is, though, how do we get our hands on those precious leads?
As with anything worthwhile in life, there’s a hard way and a harder way, and which you choose will depend on how many resources and what kind of deadlines you are working with.
Lead generation is a slow, complicated and intricate process that requires time, money, skill and patience.
On the other hand,
Lead acquisition is faster, more economical and available to anyone who owns a business.
Intrigued?
Read on to find out more about the differences between lead generation and acquisition and which is the right way to go for your company.
Defining Terms
The main difference between lead generation and lead acquisition is whether or not you generate the lead yourself or buy leads generated by a third party.
Lead Generation is a lot of work, and we mean A LOT of work. Skipping over the entire planning, designing, building, hosting, populating, and maintaining a website stages of the game, there is still a ton of effort that you’ll have to do in order to bring in quality leads.
But wait, there’s more..
You still have to get people onto your site, and businesses spend thousands of dollars and thousands of hours attempting to bring in traffic through email marketing, PPC, ad campaigns, social media, referrals, and the list goes on. These leads are your own, but that doesn’t mean they are always quality. Sometimes the efforts pay off, sometimes they don’t.
Lead acquisition, on the other hand, is a significantly less complex process. It basically gives the heavy lifting over to a team of professionals who do the legwork for you. The entire funnel is already built and setup for you, so you can concentrate on other areas of your business that no one else can manage correctly.
Which is the Right Choice for You?
Here are a few reasons why your business may choose lead acquisition over manually generating leads yourself:
– You’ll pay for a qualified lead.
When generating leads, you pay per lead, regardless of how far down the sales funnel that lead journeys. Alternatively, acquisition leads are only paid for if they are qualified – leads that have the right engagement and the right fit for your purposes.
– You’ll receive stronger opportunities for lead development.
A basic click (like one you’d get if you were generating leads) may last just few seconds. An acquired lead, on the other hand, has the potential to stay with your company for up to three years. That gives your sales and marketing department a lot of time to learn about, converse, nurture, and, most likely convert this lead into a client.
– Lead acquisition is more cost-efficient.
Leads of your own generating will cost you anywhere from $5-$10. Acquired leads, however, only run about $0.5-$1. Lead acquisition is a much less expensive option, making your ROI greater, and isn’t that one of your main business goals?
– You’ll get more control.
When you acquire your own leads, you can choose a specific demographic and filter your target groups.
You can also decide how many or how few you are interested in at the time. As well as, how many or how few sources to choose from, and, most importantly, find the leads that are relevant and valuable to you.