In earlier posts, I focused on purchasing one name at a time and co-registration. In this post, I will look at Online Lead Generation (AKA online lead tracking, online demand generation or post-click marketing), which is essentially tracking the more than 97% of visitors who come to a site and leave without identifying themselves – the ones that got away… for now.

Suppose you built a program that attracts visitors to your site but they didn’t call you, sign up for your newsletter/information center/resource center, they just left. Now what? You have quite a few options, but basically it boils down to:

1. A passive approach: hope they come back (but, does your site have interactive features or useful content that may warrant a return visit?).
2. An aggressive approach: identify which companies have visited and chase them down.

If you like the aggressive approach, then you’ll love online lead generation.

Here’s how online lead generation works:
You add a snippet of code to the pages of your site that you would like to track, similar to the same way you would set up Google Analytics. Your lead generation partner is now able to track in real time with pretty good accuracy:

• Which companies are coming to your site?
• When they are coming to your site?
• What areas of your website are they visiting?
• How long they are staying on your site?

The software not only identifies visiting companies, but, often times, the actual location from which they came. This is much more information than Google Analytics is able to provide.

These online lead generation programs cannot tell you which individual person within a company has visited. However, after you identify your targeted job titles or functions at each company, your lead generation program can provide contact information for likely candidates. Most of the providers are linked up with large, compiled databases in order to provide the contact information. On a side note, if you are targeting smaller companies then this is not the right tool for you as many of the programs focus on companies with more than $5 million in sales.

Because you are likely not receiving the actual information of the person who has visited your site, I recommend proceeding as if you just bought a (very) targeted list of contacts that, theoretically, are more likely to be interested in your product/service. Do not assume that the contacts have actually visited your website.

Is online lead generation right for me?
Online lead generation can be a great way to build up your database of prospects. However, this is not where you start; online lead generation is for the marketing person who has a strong base and wants to capitalize on…

• Excellent site functionality and usability
• Well devised optimization programs
• Targeted Adwords campaigns.

If you haven’t focused on the functionality, usability, optimization or marketing of your website then you are missing a great opportunity to make a stronger first impression. Before investing in a program that tracks down companies who have left your site, pay more attention to converting first time visitors when they are on your site.

There is definitely a market for online lead generation. Some of those leading the way are Demandbase, eTrigue, LeadLeader and VisitorTrack.

What’s next? Still looking for more about online lead generation?
Here are some ideas on how to effectively follow up with online lead generation contacts.

P.S. In case you were wondering, you are not being tracked.