Lead landing pages-How much time & money to get to the top?

[Jennifer Ward]

I am doing research on generating off market leads. I really like the idea of creating a lead landing website/page to generate warm leads.  However I am learning that in order for this to be effective you need to come up as one of the first organic websites people see on Google and to get there you will need to buy ads and/or have a really good SEO site.  I understand to get the to the top with SEO this will take time, minimum 6 months.  But you also have to be skilled in SEO and this means knowing how people search on Google. If you are not skilled in SEO or just starting out, then you will likely want to hire a consultant to help you.  So either way as a beginner you will be spending money.  I am trying to gage how much people invest in their lead landing websites to get to the top?  Should I anticipate to invest close to 20k initially, or even more, or have you figured it out for less?  Then, how long did it take your site to get to the top?  

Any insight people can offer on how much (money & time) you realistically need to invest to create a successful lead landing/generating website, I would appreciate it.