Leads are the lifeblood of any network marketing business, or most any business, for that matter. Back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, people used to buy leads on lists of green bar computer printout. The leads typically and phone numbers, and sometimes an address. Some people would sit by the phone, calling one lead after another.

Then there was the two phased concept: 1) Make a list of everyone you know (and ever knew since kindergarten), and 2) utilize the “3-foot rule”, i.e. strike up a conversation with anyone within three feet of you.

Gone are those days. Thank goodness for the internet. It is now possible to visit a website, plop down your credit card, and have as many leads as you want delivered directly to your website within hours. The beauty of this is, that you don’t have to talk to a single person; at least not until they buy something, or respond to one of your offers.

Lead companies generate leads several ways, often with pop-ups, pop-unders, or banner-ads. They are able to re-route those leads directly to the URL that you specify. If 100 people click on your site, how many real leads to you get. That’s the difference between a click and a lead. There is now way to follow-up on clicks (with the exception of a fairly recent concept called re-marketing or re-targeting).

If 10 out of the 100 people give you the their name and email, then 100 clicks turned into 10 leads. In other words, a 10% conversion from click to lead. The second important conversion ratio is lead to customer; out of those 10, maybe only one will become a customer.

Experienced marketers keep track of every dollar they spend on leads, and keep track of ratios such as above. This helps decide where to spend advertising budget in the future. Any bad campaigns are terminated, and of course, the good ones are continued. It may take a while to find a campaign that works for you and your opportunity.