Which advertising mediums tend to have the lowest cost per lead relative to the rest?

Outdoor (billboards) in a metro area is the lowest cost per set of eyeballs. Really though, it depends on what you’re marketing that should determine where to put your message. If you want to provide more detail either here or via comment I might be able to help with a direction to pursue.

Thanks for the response, basically I work for a small medical practice and was looking to evaluate various local advertising mediums. We’ve invested heavily in the phone book in the past but I wanted to see how those ads perform relative to other mediums like radio, newspaper, targeted direct mailings, local magazines (magazines have been very poor performers for us for example) etc. I just haven’t been able to find some centralized source comparing the cost-effectiveness of the various mediums that wasn’t trying to sell me a service or have some kind of agenda.

We’ve been tracking our past efforts, but this trial and error process seems to be fairly wasteful and it would be nice to have more data to make our decisions from. The yellowbook rep for example claimed that 27 radio ads would generate about as many leads as a single newspaper ad. I was just wondering where I could verify claims like that independently of the dude trying to sell me stuff.

I did health care marketing, but for a large delivery system with a bigger budget, no doubt. Assuming it’s primary care, you may want to do mail drops in nearby zip codes stating that your docs are accepting new patients. You can track responses by getting them to bring the piece back or having new patients fill out how they came to the clinic on a form. Get the docs on a radio call in to answer health questions or to author a health article series in the local paper or local weeklies (this is work to stay on top of).

if you have a website, you should use google pay-per-click. it is very easy to track and to target your specific audience. and you only pay (whatever your bid is) when someone clicks on your listing. and you can decide/change your bids to get higher ranking in the search results.