Deciding between trade shows, Twitter, texting, and telemarketing means sorting through an almost infinite number of options for getting contact information from customers – and the wrong choice means sizable expenditures for negligible returns.

Example: Texting is hot, right? Well yes – among teens. If you’re in the mp3 business, text campaigns might be just the way to make first contact with potential customers.

But high-net-worth individuals almost never text. So sellers of yachts, Italian silk suits, and vacations on the French Riviera would do well to explore other alternatives.

Unfortunately, there’s no simple formula that calculates optimum lead-generation strategies once one has entered one’s industry, product, and price point. But there is a wealth of useful information readily available on the Internet, information which can help guide you to the media and methods that might work best in helping you achieve your customer acquisition and lead generation goals.

And Proterra knows where that information is.

We’ll be blogging on lead generation and related issues in this space in upcoming months. Our emphasis will be on steering readers to articles and blog posts that contain specific information on how best to use the many lead generation tactics available today, what strengths – and pitfalls – each entails.

Our goal is to help you select the techniques that will work best for your business, make optimal use of the techniques, and ensure that the lead generation campaign that results is aligned with your core business development strategies, and achieves sales channel optimization in the implementation of those strategies.

Here’s a good place to start. It’s a recent report on lead generation from Adweek, which we drew from heavily in drafting up this blog. We found the surveys we quoted from above in it, and the fact that high-net-worthers don’t text.

It’s full of insights on how to use new media, the lasting value of many time-tested old media lead generation techniques, advice on how to manage leads once they’ve been generated, and more. We recommend that you delve into it at your first convenience.

And for lead generation rookies, see the links below. You’ll find compelling information that will help put you on a course to building customer acquisition strategies and campaigns that will maximize your business’ – and sales force’s – vast potential.

Lead Generation Online Resources