Lead Aggregation – An Edge Maintaining Essential

Through effectively consolidating large numbers of leads to help streamline and simplify the sales process, lead aggregation has become a very profitable tool for many businesses around the world. Once leads are aggregated, they are either pursued by the company who has procured them or sold to other businesses for sales and marketing purposes. While lead aggregation isn’t new to the online marketing scene, the advancements of new technology are changing the way it’s done, and vastly increasing the efficiency through which it can be successfully accomplished.

Aggregation or generation – what’s the difference?

Although lead aggregation and lead generation are often used interchangeably, they have substantially different meanings and functions. Lead generation is the process of producing leads, usually in mass quantities, for the purpose of sales outreach (from your own business or another). Lead aggregation, on the other hand, is the process of collecting, sorting and distributing leads that have already been generated. 

Why does it matter?

Lead aggregation is an essential tool in maintaining an edge on your competitors and the market. The most successful lead aggregators collect and distribute mass amounts of quality leads, giving their clients the chance to convert those leads into sales. As a general rule of thumb, the more quality leads produced through lead aggregation, the higher a business’ conversion rate. Those who forego the modern lead aggregation and generation tools available today in lieu of the more traditional, manual (and tedious) methods (like cold calling and mail solicitation) will not only spend unnecessary time and energy attempting to convert their leads, but fail to keep up with their competitors as a result. 

Systems – the essential backbone 

A lead aggregation system is a framework or tool that helps businesses be more efficient and successful with their conversion of leads through websites, landing pages or custom forms. Most lead aggregation systems are customized around a company’s website, as that’s where the majority of leads tend to be collected. 

An effective lead aggregation system will be built to incorporate different ‘phases’ in which leads will enter and progress through, so that only the highest quality leads are aggregated in your system. Examples of these phases might be an automated email sent to your lead, or a call-to-action for the booking of a follow-up appointment or phone call. 

Don’t forget the traffic 

A lead aggregation system will not work properly without visitor traffic that has the potential to convert to a sale. While there are many ways to drive traffic to your site, paid traffic generation is one of the most effective, and can be broken down into the below three primary categories:

• Pay-per-click (PPC) – As the most well-known and popular form of traffic generation, PPC means you are only charged after people search for terms relevant to your product, see your ad or link and actually click through to your landing page or site.  
• Click-per-action (CPA) – Another option is the pay-per-action method, where you only pay after one of your visitors completes an action on your site, like filling out a form or requesting more information. 
• Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) – With this method, you pay when someone views your advertisement regardless of whether they click through it or not. Generally priced per every thousand views, this method is more effective for brand-driven exposure or visibility campaigns and tends to be less targeted than pay-per-click or pay-per-action methods.

At AffilyAds, we’re well-versed in implementing lead aggregation strategies to secure quality leads for your business. With an increasingly saturated market landscape, it’s never been more essential (or easier) to maintain your competitive edge with this simple approach.