Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard of “The Best Job in the World.” The job paid $100,000 for six months and involved “exploring the islands of the Great Barrier Reef for six months and report back to Tourism Queensland and the world via blogs, a photo diary, video updates and interviews.”

Sounds like a great job, right?

Turns out it was also a great PR campaign by Tourism Queensland to promote tourism to the area.

“This is probably the first time that a campaign has achieved this sort of reach with so little advertising spend other than a few strategically placed job ads around the world,” said Australian marketing analyst Tim Burrowes, editor of media and marketing website Mumbrella.

“This has all been about the power of people passing things on, largely through YouTube. The main lesson to be learned here is that if you have an original, exciting idea that gets people talking you don’t need to spend huge on advertising.”

The “Best Job in the World” campaign began in January with Tourism Queensland launching an advertising campaign centered around the lure of a job that is more like a paid holiday.

Within days, the campaign was one of the most popular items on the web, as applicants from all over the world sent in 60-second video applications and news of the contest spread on social networking sites….

Tourism Queensland has hailed the advertising campaign as an enormous success, calculating the $1.7 million spent had reaped an estimated $110 million in global publicity.

“The worldwide response to Tourism Queensland’s “Best Job in the World” campaign has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Tourism Queensland’s CEO Anthony Hayes.

“The key now however is to convert the global interest raised by “The Best Job in the World” into visitors to Queensland — to bring more tourist dollars into Queensland’s economy, protect existing tourism jobs and hopefully create new ones.”

If they can accomplish their goal, this could go down as one of the best PR campaigns in history.

If you’re not seeing the quality or quantity of leads from your marketing efforts, you might want to reconsider how you’re generating them.

According to Forrester Research, the following are the top 10 methods of lead generation.

1. Email
2. PR
3. Tradeshows
4. Direct mail
5. Print ads
6. Search marketing (SEO, PPC, etc.)
7. Sponsorships
8. Executive seminars
9. Inside sales
10. Webinars

But are these methods the most effective ways to generate high quality leads?

Nope.

The top 10 effective methods of lead generation are as follows:

1. Executive Seminars
2. Inside sales
3. Search marketing (SEO, PPC, etc.)
4. Webinars
5. Tradeshows
6. TV advertising
7. Email
8. Radio
9. PR
10. Online video/podcasts/rich media

Of course not all of the above, like TV advertising, are within the budgets or means of every marketing department. However, find out what methods work within your budget and use them.

In the meantime, put the less effective approaches on the back burner and see what a chance in approach can do for your lead generation.

Part of an effective lead generation strategy should include working with your organization’s public relations person or an agency. Free advertising that can come from a news article about your business or service is a good way to get people to take notice of your business that may have not heard of it before.

Today Sapha was featured in an article about one of our clients, AskPatty.com – the leading automotive advice site for women.  Despite slumping automotive sales, AskPatty.com has seen an increase in dealers looking to become certified as female friendly. (Women are more than half of all automotive buyers.) We garnered a mention in their press release because our HookTour was driving most of their leads.

Though too early to gage the effectiveness of the mention we recieved in the press release and news article, a little free publicity never hurt anyone – something you can easily get with a little bit of PR knowhow.

Read the AutoRemarketing.com article here.

Read the press release here.