The lead generation space can be compared to the wild wild west of advertising. The barriers to entry for lead providers are fairly low and becoming lower and lower every year. Just about anyone can start a lead gen company by aggregating the leads and reselling them or by actually generating the leads themselves. The demand for leads are high and either the lack of quality or the inability to close the leads keeps this demand for new sources on the rise.
There is a lack of trust between buyers and sellers. Buyers are afraid of getting stiffed and sellers are afraid of not getting what they paid for. The easy solution is to this problem is to buy and sell your leads through an escrow account. iMediaEscrow is a company that offers this type of service specifically for the lead gen industry. This is a good idea for both sellers and buyers to take advantage of. I don’t think it would make sense in all instances, but for the ones where you as a buyer are completely uninformed about a seller and a little worried on whether or not they are going to hold up to their part of the deal, it may be the perfect service. For sellers and especially for some in specific industries it would seem to be a good idea to set up an escrow account for every sale.
Last week iMediaEscrow announced their “Trusted Lead Generator Program”, which again is another good idea. Whether or not it catches on, we will have to wait and see. Simply stated, the service takes the escrow payments and dispute histories of the lead sellers and either gives the seller the ability to show their iMediaEscrow “Trusted Member” badge or not.
It would be nice if this catches on, because the industry definitely needs some type of policing. The downfall to this program is that you have to use the iMediaEscrow service to participate. This make sense for iMedaiEscrow – they will make a little money and possibly get a few links back to their website from the badges, but does it make sense for already established lead sellers? I think what would get more participation would be an open and free lead ratings portal. The are major problems with that idea too, so maybe this is at least a good start or maybe the problem that is trying to be solved simply not has important as some of us think.
What do you think?
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I think this is fantastic. Anything we can do to clean up the industry is a big plus for lead buyers and sellers. I’m all for it and have signed our company up for the service. It has already brought credibility to us for 2 new clients.
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