The Prospektor - Uncovering Qualified Lead Generation

Education is the best incentive – in nervous times

In relatively carefree times, it may seem that all online promotion equals Free iPod’s.  But if marketers want to find and motivate their ideal new customer prospects when consumers are worried, education can be a lot more rewarding. 

With yesterday’s stock market free fall, many investors think the world may just be coming to an end.  But somehow the sun came out today and financial marketers haven’t closed up shop.  But if markets continue to be down or turbulent, these marketers will need to turn to substance to motivate new accounts

Education is often the key to starting substantial new relationships.  There’s a really broad definition of what education means: it could be a White Paper explaining a strategy such as using options to protect gains in a down market.  It might be a Webinar demonstrating a trading methodology.  Or perhaps a link to a hands-on trial of stock selection software.

Whatever the educational component, there are a few ideas in common:

• Education attracts the right prospects.  Free iPod’s or sweepstakes attract people who want something for nothing.  Only people with a real interest in your product, your category – and your thinking – will respond to an educational offer.
• Dialogues are better than monologues.  When someone has read your White Paper or attended your Webinar, it transforms an initial call from a cold call to the beginning of a relationship.
• Education lets you demonstrate how your product works and what it will be like for the prospect to work with you
• And immediacy of that education is important when you look to build relationships online.  PDF’s and access to canned Webinars get that dialogue going faster and better than mailing a book or CD-ROM.

At the end of the day, consumers who are motivated by education offers are more likely to be seriously interested in what you’re offering.  And in challenging times, that means more conversions and better ROI.

A lead or a customer?

Just read the article from Performance Insider titled "Qualifying Your Online Lead Generation Partner".  In point 4, Jere talks about a provider's ability to provide real-time performance statistics to the advertiser and that made me think about an advertiser's response time to a lead.  Do advertisers want real-time reports because they plan to respond in near real-time?  And should they respond that quickly? Here is a thought to explore:

Lead programs typically deliver leads in various manners:

• Near real-time: I define this as the receipt of a lead's personal information at almost the same time that it is submitted by the prospect.  I say "near" because the lead should be scrubbed and qualified before it is sent.
• Defined time frame: end of per day, X times per day or week, weekly.

About 10 months ago when I started at PPI, I was surprised that more of our clients were not opting for the receipt of near real-time leads.  As I started to research lead programs, white papers, offers, etc. I found an offer for a white paper about lead generation programs.  Brilliant!  Well within about 5 minutes of clicking that download button, I got a call from a sales person.  I had not even printed the paper yet!  Even worse, the sales person asked me the same information that the form had just asked me to fill out! 

So I guess the moral here is that real-time isn't always a good time.  Treating people like a cold lead and not a future client (who's time is important to you) may not be the best way to start a relationship.  Patience pays off because advertisers can get a real dialog going:
1) once a consumer has read the information AND
2) the sales person understands something about the user by actually reading (and using) the data provided.

Resources:
Qualifying Your Online Lead Generation Partner
http://blogs.mediapost.com/performance_insider/?p=8

What business are we in?

It’s always fun to explain what we do to when we get together with friends who live in very different worlds.  Can you explain the difference between Cost per Lead and Cost per Click in three sentences?  How about possible commercial implications of social networking?

So we’re at dinner the other night with David, our 10 year old and a friend who is a professor of Medieval Studies of all things.  David was saying how much he loves “Club Penguin” a sort of “Second Life” site for the Tween set.  Our friend, who is pretty computer savvy within her academic world, didn’t quite get the implications of growing up with avatars and trusting peers over authorities and experts.  And we discussed Wikipedia – was it really a threat to the accepted interpretation of history?

But when we talk about Cost per Lead – what’s the best analogy?  We sometimes say that it’s like a prestige dating service, where you pay only when you meet someone who meets your high standards.  But is that really what we want to be compared to?  Instead, it was interesting to try some academic analogies, such as “Imagine that you could find only the historical documents you want when you do your research.  Would that save enough time to be valuable?”  Well, it’s a start. 

How do you explain what you do?

Lead Development and the Long Tail

LEAD DEVELOPMENT AND THE LONG TAIL

The buzz surrounding Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail centers on the triumph of the niches.  According to the theory, radical change occurs when books or DVD distribution is freed from the limitations of distribution and retail shelf space.  Anderson shows dramatic numbers: books that sell between 5,000 – 50,000 copies already outsell blockbuster books by more than 15:1!  This disparity will only accelerate as consumers recognize it is easier to find the obscure stuff they didn’t know how to get and begin a dialog with marketers who serve tiny vertical markets.

So if niche is becoming King, what of the Long tail for online advertising?  Search has certainly enabled anyone to find anything and has brought advertising price/value.  As performance advertising is evolving, vertical search and behavioral targeting begin to recognize the power of niche markets.

Newer advertising approaches, such as CPQ, let large or small marketers correspond directly with consumers who want niche information.  It didn’t make sense before for a major brokerage firm to promote their 401k rollover or options trading abilities, but smart marketers today are finding new ways to sell this kind of niche service without sacrificing other, broader advertising objectives.  Let the Tail wag!

Resources
Background on Chris Anderson's The Long Tail:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

The Long Tail blog: http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/

Close the Loop - Or Else!

If Eric Obeck had been in my office this morning he would have heard clapping and "BRAVO!" from our staff. I agree with all of Eric's key points.  Additionally, we challenge our customers to take the data they purchase (using lead programs) and take it one step further: To create meaningful communication.

It makes little sense to segment users and then take all the responses and throw them into a single pot.  Unfortunately it appears that most marketers' CRM systems are truly not designed to engage with prospects as opposed to current customers.

Rather, marketers need to use their lead-generation data for more than just cold calls.  The best approach would be to segment responses based upon the answers customers give to screening questions and then respond with a series of communications targeted to their specific needs. 

Resources:

MediaPosts Performance Insider Blog
"Close the Loop with Online Lead Generation - Or Else!"
by Eric Obeck posted on February 15, 2007 

MediaPost's Performance Insider

I am  happy to announce that Precision has been working closely with MediaPost's Performance Insider.  Most notably a recent article by Gary Kreissman titled "Cost Per Lead - Why Stop There?".  MediaPost's dedication to Performance Advertising is a great indicator of the importance of this space.  Here is a teaser from the most recent article:

...Best of all, while it sounds like this cost-per-qualified-lead process would be complicated, it is actually based on a very straightforward exchange of information between marketers and prospects.  To find qualified prospects, marketers place ads, typically text-based, that offer high-quality, relevant incentives, such as webinars, white papers or books, that are tied closely to the marketer's business.  In exchange for the opportunity to learn more about specific topics, prospects answer a very brief -- but highly focused -- set of qualifying questions at a landing page that is unique to each company, product, service or offer. 

While the programs are straightforward, to get the most out of cost per qualified lead programs, marketers should be sure to keep in mind the following six recommendations...

Resources:
You can find the entire article at http://blogs.mediapost.com/performance_insider/?p=6
Join MediaPost here