Today’s prospects no longer respond to the marketing tactics of the past. Online marketers face a new set of challenges today and approach them from fresh perspectives. Many of the factors that were present in “the good old days” don’t have much influence today. Let’s look at some of the new considerations that influence online lead generation.

1. Selective perception
2. Ordering your message components
3. Message balancing
4. The experience factor

One of those factors is selective perception. Selective perception plays a key role in online (and offline) engagement. Selective perception refers to the moment when a prospect or customer suddenly notices more about a particular topic than they have in the past. In other words, they’ve thought about the topic that’s being presented before, but it’s been on the outer limits of their thought consciousness. Suddenly you bring it to their attention again by way of online content like an article or maybe an ad. Once they notice your message and recognize its meaning, they find themselves asking the question, “Why haven’t I focused on this topic more in the past?”

This type of thinking kick-starts the process of consumer research and reflective investigation. Prospects who engage in thoughtful targeted research are simply expressing the need to find better solutions. These prospects seek information that is well-suited to addresses specific and pressing business concerns. This quest for information is not arbitrarily triggered. This is a reaction that is performed with an end-game in mind. This is particularly true if questions are rooted in business issues that remain unresolved. The desired result is a better way of doing things. Perhaps a better financial outcome is the goal they seek.

Any business that recognizes this process is ahead of the curve. Innovative businesses recognize this as a marker of sorts. This marker suggests a vacuum within the marketplace. This is an opportunity to deliver smarter more efficient solutions to the marketplace.

Sometimes capturing the attention of prospects is a simple matter of delivering the right message to the right people at the right time. This is an ideal scenario for the online marketer. Once an audience is defined, frequent exposure increases the chances of positive responses. This of course is very dependent on an audience that is well targeted.

Paul Postma is the author of The New Marketing Era. When we examine today’s online lead generation process, we can reflect on an interesting point he makes in his book. His observation focuses on ordering your message components for better consumption and less prospect resistance. This is yet another consideration that is influencing the online advertising space. He suggests the use of this well-studied scientific tactic further optimizes the effectiveness of the message itself. This tactic is message presentation ordering. The concept says the order in which a commercial message is conveyed is important. That order has a distinct impact on the way we perceive the intent of the message. This is without regard to our own preferences about the real core meaning of the message.

Here’s an example. When using text and illustrations to deliver a message, most people are naturally drawn to the illustration first. This is why careful scrutiny of the images and pictures in your web content and online ads are extremely important. Where is the image placed within the ad? Has it been placed before the text or after? If people, objects and other images are shown in content, people tend to look into the eyes of the person in the image first. This is done without regard to the text used in the ad.