Lead generation marketing is the way to go. For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, think of Search Engine Marketing on steroids. LGM is everything that the standard SEO practices are, plus more. It works wonders because it's shows greater results than just putting a site at the top of a search results page. So, how does it work?

Take a survey for example. Online surveys are growing in popularity because of their ease of administration. Survey companies such as SurveyMonkey offer a variety of tracking and analysis services outside of just the survey administration. For a few hundred dollars, users can run cross-tab analysis and regressions on their collected data. This doesn't mean that marketing research businesses will go out of business, but it does make it easier for the average company to gather useful marketing information about their products and services.

Everyone's talking about the tricks to good surveys. Search for it on Google, and you'll find entire tutorials on how to ask questions, what type of questions to use for each situation, and so forth. But are market researchers overlooking a very important point? Quite possibly.

It's not in the nature or job description of a market researcher to find innovative ways to take advantage of information gathered from surveys. In fact, it's unethical. All survey information is confidential, and should only be used for the purpose in which it was outlined for. But in the eyes of a lead generation marketer, that's exactly it. Play with the words a little, and you've got yourself an excellent way of producing a fine list of potential customers.

The truth is that a majority of individuals who do online surveys do it for the end-product. A prize. More and more gimmicks and free offers are popping up all over the Internet, giving away the “now-commoditized” iPod or a brand new car. While most of these are spam-fodder, there is some good in online surveys if you do them right.

For example, a survey that is administered on the host company's site is more likely to get a response than one that is simply through a banner advertisement or pop-up. But even then, if you're not interested in the company and what it has to offer, why would you waste your time doing a survey? Well, for those who are catching on, that's the whole point.

An online survey itself is a filter that acts to ensure that participants are within your target market. Pair it up with a prize that is also relevant to your target market, and you're well on your way to becoming a market research guru. The truth is that the people who sign up for these survey are interested in what you do, so when you tell them that you'll be using their information that they submit for a prize draw, they're likely to go along with it. After all, if they receive information about you in their email inbox, it just saved them the time of having to log on to their web browser and get to your website.

So surveys are not exactly a bad thing. Use them in the right way, and they can be a powerful lead generation tool.