Interview with Rob Poynter
Here is a short interview with Rob Poynter, co-founder of Vinyl Interactive. In this interview he talks about what he's learned in this industry, how and why his company has earned success, a few challenges, and what advice he can give fellow marketing entrepreneurs.
Q: How did you get started in Lead Generation? What have you learned about this industry over the years?
A: I got started in lead generation roughly 9 years ago through what was then a small start up called Quinstreet. Quinstreet mainly focused on search marketing for education clients, like UOP and CEC. What I've learned is a lot, but I'll hit on the high level notes. Performance based advertising has really grown up in the last several years. For any advertiser to really make a strong online push, while trying to focus on quality and bang for their buck have to invest in their internal reporting and technology. Performance based companies have rarely had many challenges of delivering large amounts of leads, but have always had a problem sending volume matched with quality. Without proper reporting and tracking, clients can often times have a very unpleasant and bumpy online experience. Those who are able to learn from those initial stages and build on that foundation tend to be very successful, then there are those who don't care to suffer through a repeat and prefer to keep their dollars in the traditional world.
Obviously as the owner of an online lead generation company, you get a lot of proposals for business that want to market their company online. There are those that make sense, and then there are those that don't. If properly done, we can measure the results of our campaigns right down to the check outline.
Q: Why does Vinyl stay one step ahead of its competitors?
A: The industry has obviously changed during the last 9 years as competition heated up quickly in the performance based market field and advertising costs have risen. This leads lead small companies like us to be very product development focused. The average ECPM that you hoped to hit 8 years ago was $1.00 today it's 7 to 8 times that, and that's just start. We've managed to keep our ECPM rising steadily while our cost per unit to our advertisers has largely stayed the same or gone up a fraction. With proper investment in both our product marketing team, as well as our technology and analytics departments, Vinyl has very clearly shown that we can be cost effective, and a strong value for every dollar spent with us. Our goal is to maximize every media dollar that we spend, to carefully police and monitor our publishers, and to ensure that our advertisers are receiving what they fairly deserve. We do this painstakingly.
Q: What has made some of the other small-shop lead-gen companies lose their momentum in the long-haul? What did they not think of?
A: I think the answer to that is fairly simple. Investment. When times were flying high in our industry, there were many churn and burn shops everywhere you looked. Rarely did they make any investment into either technology, or staff. Their products were shaky to begin with, but given the low ECPMs that were being commanded at the time, they could easily get away with it. Once the tide turned, and people were required to "put up" something more significant, they found the resources and funding weren't there.
Q: Vinyl Interactive is currently the preferred lead-generation company for online education. Is this recipe for success applicable to other products you've been trying to launch? What have been obstacles thus far?
A: I think all companies have that "second product" challenge. Vinyl has always given most of it's focus to the one vertical, and attempted to make it the very best that we can. However, there is a need for ourselves to diversify, and I think we're done that well. Our technology and work on analytics and graphic design is fairly universal. What worked for one vertical should and has been proven to be successful for another. The major sticking point is distribution. If all of your media is focused on one particular vertical it's more then difficult to make that same distribution work for another. So in that sense it's like starting over again.
Q: What advice to you have for marketers (potential new clients) trying to achieve sales & revenue goals for their product?
A: make sure you've outlined clear metrics that you need to achieve with the ability to properly achieve them. Technology, and innovation are two key areas in our space. Without a lot of both, your chances for success aren't high. Companies like Vinyl can and do go beyond in trying to offer full service to our clients, and bridge the gap where they fall short, but that said, there's only so far you can go with that. The client does need to meet at the half way point. Of course, this is only the case if you're looking for a large scale campaign. Buying search terms on Google and Yahoo are always a safe option, albeit a very expensive alternative these days.
Q: What is your opinion of the power of the internet? Have we fully seen it's potential.
A: As far as we're concerned, no we haven't. I don't think you'll find anyone who feels that the end is near with direct marketing. We're still in our infancy as an industry. Right now there are only so many industries that are taking full advantage of what companies like Vinyl has to offer because the investment hasn't been there. In the next 10 years, I imagine most if not all companies will have some presence in online marketing.
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