Seven Amazing Lead Gen Tips!!! Absolutely Free!!!

... but to get them you have to fill out a two-page registration form, give your credit card information and they're only free for 3.74 minutes.

This drives me crazy.

I'm referring, of course, to e-newsletters that promise one thing and then in a back-handed way get you to give them something else. Not only is it bad business practice, it's also breaking a cardinal rule of permission-based marketing.

By now you as well might be feeling a bit ticked off too. After all, I promised lead generation tips and so far you haven't got them. The fact is, I can't tell you what that e-newsletter had to say about lead generation, because I refused to pay for something I was told was absolutely free. And not only that, I will never know what kind of pearls of wisdom that service might "share" with me, because I not only deleted the e-mail, I unsubscribed from the service.

I'm not going to give you seven lead generation tips (at least not in this posting). I'm going to give you one tip about permission-based marketing. The advice stands for certain kinds of lead generation as well: to get something, you have to give something of equal or better value in return. This is best done in a climate of confidence and trust. If you say you're going to give me some great advice for free, and then you don't, I won't trust you. But if you say that I can have access to some great time-limited information for free and that I need to register, I will at least be able to respond to you in good faith. You might get fewer click-throughs. But you'll also get a lot fewer people who will unsubscribe from your services in the future.

In my next post, I'll share some advice about using search engine optimization to boost lead generation. I promise.