Two second day LeadsCon panels (Kings of Counter-Cyclicality and The Future of Lead Generation – Getting to 2.0) touched on tactics that companies should follow in order to succeed during our current economic conditions.

Key takeaways include the following:

• Stay focused.  Don’t get distracted by other companies’ successes and lose focus of your core competency.  Stay true to your business model and be the best within your given niche.

• If you can, take advantage of lower prices in ad inventory.  Current low costs provide an excellent opportunity to significantly ramp up one’s business and attain critical scale.  By growing now, you may be able to better absorb subsequent ad increases later on through economies of scales.  Focus on technology to create barriers to entry (this is sound business advice in both good and bad economic times).

• Recognize that lead generation is really about connecting consumers with something they want.  Thus, be sure to leverage consumer information to provide consumers with the services they are seeking.  Companies that invest in technology that processes data to better target consumers will be dramatically smarter than their competition and will serve their customers better.

• Be cognizant of the power of social media.  Over 100 million Americans are currently on the Internet communicating through social networking sites.  Consumers are blogging about bad experiences they have with companies.  All one needs to do is search Twitter to see what consumers are saying about a company.  If a company provides a lousy consumer experience IT WILL get picked up in social media.  Both employees and consumers are ganging up against companies that provide poor services.  Get information back from your customers and use it to better serve them.  This will enable you to provide more value to your customers and subsequently grow in scale.

• If you are a customer, give feedback to the company you purchase from so that they can improve the services they provide you.