If you haven’t been getting to know your customers through progressive profiling, you could be missing out on one of the most powerful strategies in B2B marketing. Progressive profiling allows you to gradually engage prospects while learning more about their needs on each visit to your company’s website.
For example, a prospect who initially downloads a technical whitepaper and later returns seeking detailed product data sheets or a free trial is likely getting closer to making a buying decision.
Each subsequent visit gives you the opportunity to gather additional 
detail such as company size, purchasing budget and details regarding their company’s needs and interests. To do this effectively you will need to have a “smart” form on your website. This application saves each bit of data gathered during a prospect’s visits to your site.
One of the key advantages of this method of customer profiling and lead gathering is that it avoids the use of lengthy forms. Often, persons seeking business services will have already visited several sites by the time they encounter yours, and may have tired of filling out forms.
Progressive profiling can become an indispensable part of your marketing strategy, but it does require time to effectively plan the process and manage the data you gather.
If your site does not initially produce enough qualified needs, you may want to complement your efforts with pre-qualified leads from a lead generation company. Many businesses find that purchasing at least some of their leads helps keep the pipeline full and compensates for any lack of qualified leads gained through the company website.
To be certain you’re getting leads of the highest possible quality—ones that would be equivalent to those you gather through progressively profiling visitors to your site—make sure the lead gen company utilizes this methodology in their own lead-gathering process.
The ones who do are very adept at collecting information about your prospects and categorizing leads according to detailed demographics. Some have a highly refined scoring system that will rate leads by their online activity during each visit to the lead gen company’s site. This type of system delivers warm leads in real time, ones that will bring an excellent return on your investment.
It seems you can’t go online, turn on the television, or even step outside without being bombarded with advertising by companies desperately trying to convince you of their superiority. Most people, however, are so accustomed to these ads, they simply tune them out. Which is bad news for the B2B marketers who are still spending much of their budget on these outbound lead generation methods.
According to the Direct Marketing Association, 65% of business-to-business marketing is focused on lead generation. In the quest to maintain a constant stream of leads, many companies choose to purchase leads from a lead supplier. This can be an excellent way to boost your sales, provided you are getting high quality leads.
Ideally, in order to achieve real growth in your business, you should maintain a steady stream of premium, real-time leads. In reality, however, there may be times when budget considerations or lack of sales staff compel you to look for ways to ‘fill in the gaps’ between premium lead purchases.
If the marketing campaigns you have in place are producing a certain amount of leads for your business, you may wonder if it’s really necessary to purchase additional leads from a lead generation company. And if so, what kind of returns can be realized by using such vendors? There are actually several compelling reasons for considering this step.
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