Rather than buying leads for your business, you’re much better off creating a leads program. A leads program is a system which continually gives you fresh, qualified affordable leads that convert to sales at a rate which allows you to make a profit. This adds real value to a business. Your business is worth a lot more money to a potential buyer if you have a documented leads program in place. The buyer knows that the business can continue to prosper even after you have left because you have set up a leads program which they can scale and help grow the business. So how do you set up a leads program? The first thing you have to do is drive traffic to a landing page. This is done through either Search Engine Optimization or Pay per Click Marketing or some combination of both. Both Search Engine Optimization and PPC can be expensive and time consuming (especially if you don’t know what you’re doing), so either way you’ll end up paying for traffic. Once the traffic gets to your site or landing page, you need to convert it into leads. This is done through an “opt-in” or “contact” form located on the page. People landing on your page will probably make their decision about whether or not they’ll fill out the contact form quite quickly so you have to have it set up just right. The form should be easy to fill out and not ask for too much information. The page itself should be very simple with not too much going on. Videos are great to help encourage folks to fill out the contact form, as are promises of free stuff like e-books and newsletters. Be honest with your audience. Give them exactly what you promise them for filling out the form. Make it very easy for them to stop receiving information from you. This is their right. All of this serves to build trust which will make the prospects more likely to buy your product or service. A successful leads program is when in which the elements (the seo, ppc, landing page, contact form, etc.) are constantly being tweaked to improve performance and lower costs. Are you split testing your pay per click ads? Are you adding unique content to your site? Are you using negative keywords? How about your landing page? Are you testing different images or layouts? Those marketers who look at their business as a work in progress that can constantly be improved are the ones who will ultimately find success. A good leads program is always changing – lowering costs of the leads and increasing conversion. Like everything else in the world of online lead generation, your leads program should constantly be tested.