Lead Gen: Evolving to Meet the Needs of the Millennial Generation

Direct marketers should heed these facts from recent Deloitte and Disney studies on the millennial generation:

• The average teen/tween uses their cell phone for ~3 hours per day
• 44% of teens use text messaging as their primary means of communication
• 58% of teens use their cell phone in class
• Millennials spend 51% of their online time at user-generated sites while the overall population only spends 24% of their online time at these sites

Clearly, the next generation uses voice and email communication less and is more dependent on text communication and social networks.

A lot of pundits, investors and entrepreneurs have written about the future of lead gen (see Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners's excellent post from January). All these predictions have to be viewed through the lens of the overriding macro trend here - which is that outbound calling will be even less productive in the future as customers move toward other means of communication. So, what will happen? Here are a few thoughts on how lead gen businesses and associated industries will have to adapt:

1. Lead vendor landing pages will give many options - (i) the ability to chat with a sales rep., (ii) use click to call via eStara or another vendor and (iii) fill out the form in a traditional way
2. Each communication channel will need to be trackable and CPL will be determined by ultimate conversion rates (e.g. a chat might have a CPL of $5 while click to call might be $40)
3. Lead forms will contain a space for IM screennames
4. All sales and customer service agents will have IM on their desktop to communicate with clients

I know I am missing many of the implications - please chime in with comments. What else will lead vendors and their clients need to do to adapt as the millennials age?

Comments

[LeadCritic]

Jason,
I think you are right on target with regards to the different future/current tactics in capturing leads. We are currently seeing lead providers that implement the click to call. I believe leadpoint is selling a version of this.
My concern is that I can't really see the Chat feature working well for lead-gen or see a person giving their IM on a form. However both of these tools are strategic when communicating with a prospect on your own website. I could only imagine every time I logged onto my computer a broker or LO would bombard me with IM messages.
It is something to think about though.

Good post.

[eStara]

Thanks for the mention Jason. At eStara, we certainly agree that companies must evolve to meet the needs of their consumers, but I wouldn't count out the power of voice just yet. While we firmly believe that chat/IM can play a role in lead generation, there are certain situations when it’s just not as practical as a telephone call, which is why solutions like click to call can be so powerful...they deliver the real-time data and reporting that make chat so appealing, but also deliver contact in a form factor that many people still prefer, the phone.

Finding the right balance, and delivering the right form of contact at the right time is essential, so providing customers with a choice on how they transact with your business is also crucial.