One of the best skills you can learn in today’s competitive business environment is how to generate online leads for your company. In the long run, understanding this system will more than pay for any time and money you invest. Online lead generation systems are used by lead brokers and list brokers and internet marketers. They capture the sales leads through web pages called “landing pages” or “capture pages” because they capture the prospect’s personal information such as name, email address and/or phone number after the visitor lands on the web page. When you generate online leads for yourself rather than purchasing them through a broker, you know that the leads are fresh and exclusive to you. This is simply not the case when you buy your leads from a list broker, unless you are willing to spend a fortune for the exclusivity. In order for lead brokers to make money, they have to resell the same leads over and over. As a result, the people who filled out the contact forms get bombarded with phone calls and emails from people just like you who are trying to sell them something. There is no denying that leads that are generated online can be valuable. The beauty of online leads is that you know the prospective customers 1) searched for keywords (like “insurance quote”), then 2) clicked on an ad or an organic search result and finally 3) filled out a contact form and hit “send”. These are three good buying signs. Traditional lead generation like direct mail or radio or television cannot compare to leads that are generated online. It is much more efficient for business owners to pay to advertise and capture the contact information of only those people who are interested in a specific product or service, rather than having to pay for your message to reach thousands or millions of people who have no interest in what you are selling. So how do you generate online leads? Well, the first thing you have to do is create your landing page. On this page you need to have a contact form for the visitors to fill out. When they fill out the form, the information is emailed to you and it becomes an online sales lead. In order to get visitors to fill out the form, you need to convince them that there is value in doing so. You might offer them some free information like an e-book or a quote or some lessons. The landing page should be created with only one goal in mind- capturing the contact information of qualified leads. You should not use your landing page to try and sell your product and you should not give the prospective customer all the information they need to make a decision- they only get that in return for filling out the form. Next, you need to drive online traffic to your site. Online traffic is simply a phrase to describe people who are searching for things, in this case the product or service you are offering, while online. There are two ways to drive online traffic to your landing page. You can 1) optimize your web site and landing page for organic or free traffic (time consuming and expensive), or you can 2) pay the search engines each time a searcher clicks on your ad. Paying the search engines for your traffic is what I recommend. When you set up a proper pay per click system and drive traffic to a well designed landing page, you will have your very own online lead generation system and you will be able to generate online leads at will.