Online lead generation has its first ever set of best practice guidelines in the UK, drawn up by the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Online Lead Generation (OLG) council.
The IAB guidelines are designed to demystify the discipline and help develop more robust self-regulatory standards, resulting in an increase in trusted consumer experiences.
The area of online lead generation is growing rapidly and is quickly becoming a recognised discipline within the digital marketing arena. The proportion of companies who are generating leads online with the intention of converting them offline has increased from 70 per cent in 2009 to 81 per cent in 2010, while on average OLG is responsible for 42 per cent of total sales, up from 40 per cent in 2009 (Econsultancy, 2010).
The council believes that for this reason, now is the time to set stringent guidelines to help this growth continue and retain the disciplines positive reputation. The six guidelines offer helpful recommendations for both advertisers and lead suppliers to abide by, as well as council recommendations for creating a transparent, successful lead generation campaign.
Council chair Robin Caller, chief executive of Goallover, said: “Within the past 12 months, the Council published the Buyer’s Guide, held a best practise workshop, published case studies and white papers, spoken as a Council at AdTech, and most recently delivered on our pledge to produce the first edition of a ‘best practice’ document. We’re close to completing a first edition ‘Data Transfer and Storage’ best practice too. All in all, we’ve taken steps to pre-handle issues we have seen emerging, and I’m proud that we’ve decided to tackle issues before they demand being tackled.”
The release of the guidelines comes at the same time as the appointment of new chair Trine Buus. Buus is international product director at ad pepper media, and was elected as chair to further emphasise the importance and abilities of online lead generation to advertisers.
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