What is lead generation?

Lead generation drives most businesses that sell services. A lead is a name with an email address or phone number and a reason to get in touch. Leads long predate the internet: trade fair lists, reply cards in magazines, the phone. Online it became a discipline around 2000, with forms, newsletters and the first search ads, and later with inbound marketing: attracting people with useful content and asking for their details in exchange for something of value, such as a guide or a template.

A lead is not yet an enquiry

For most service businesses the bottom row is what counts. Counting only leads, you can collect a thousand contacts with a free download who never buy. Measure leads, enquiries and customers separately, each with its own price, the cost per acquisition. Call enquiries back within the hour where you can: whoever calls first usually wins.

How the channels compare in practice

For Business Centrum, organic search did the heavy lifting: non-brand search terms on page one of Google went from 13 to 1,593 in five weeks, hundreds of new routes into the contact form, through our SEO work. Search ads on Google Ads work from day one; across US industries a lead cost $66.69 on average in 2026. The cost calculator on the SN Group site shows the tool route: visitors get an estimate, then leave their details. What we learned from six such tools is in a calculator on your website. Whichever channel you use, send ad traffic to a dedicated landing page and track every lead in a CRM, so you see which channel brings customers rather than names.

The email rules in the EU and the UK

Collecting leads means collecting personal data, so the GDPR applies: ask only for what you need and say in your privacy policy what you do with it. Email marketing has its own rules. In the EU, unsolicited marketing email needs prior consent, with an exception for your existing customers and similar products. In the UK, the PECR rules require consent for emails to individuals and sole traders, while emails to staff at companies may be sent without consent as long as you identify yourself and offer an easy opt-out. Buying a list of email addresses to mail fits neither regime well. Tracking cookies on your form pages need consent too; see do I need a cookie banner.