Imagine a car burning up the autobahn leaving even the best European designs in the dust. The only catch being that the fuel needed to power this vehicle was far from perfect.
The online lead generation market is a lot like this vehicle.
Innovations enabling superior ROI in the online lead generation market have not kept pace with the explosive growth in the industry segment. Consequently, online marketers are finding it difficult to find a simple way to buy and sell leads effectively.
It isn’t difficult to see why online lead generation marketing has grown at more than twice the rate of the overall advertising market. In a slowing economy ROI minded marketers are wary of paying for clicks and impressions that might not even convert to leads. As is the norm in CPL campaigns, they would prefer to pay exclusively for leads that fuel the sales pipeline and drive business.
That said, marketers are finding it difficult to buy and sell leads effectively, primarily due to the lack of transparency in the online lead generation marketplace. In an industry dominated by third party brokers and agencies, advertisers cannot gain insight into campaign placement and performance.
However, as industry experts explain in this white paper , enabling transparency is not as difficult as inventing a new rocket fuel. Because although CPL campaigns might represent a new pricing paradigm in online marketing, the marketing fundamentals that drive their success are the same as for other media.
Be it on TV, radio, magazines or the Internet, marketers want to know where their campaigns are running. They then want to understand which placements are performing better. Lastly, (and this is especially true for larger brands), marketers want to ensure that leads being generated from campaigns are relevant to their brand.
These advertiser demands are not new. Marketers deploying integrated campaigns need to enable each of the following criteria:
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Reach: Gain insight into publishers and networks on the media plan.
Offline marketers can access databases developed by Nielsen, SRDS, MRI and SIMMONS among others to learn about available media venues and their capabilities in terms of delivering duplicated and unduplicated audiences. Similarly, CPM media planners can turn to tools like Nielsen and Comscore. For online lead generation marketers, there are no venues that list the available publisher universe.
Think about it. Knowing exactly where your dollars are going to be spent is really, really important. Would you buy a really expensive car without having an idea of what your choices in the market were? Exactly.
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Optimization: Map leads to their respective sources and increase spending against the best performing media venues.
Any online planner worth his or her salt knows that media plans are constantly changing. ROI marketers devote a large amount of time to evaluating the performance of each media venue on a marketing plan. By deleting poorly performing venues from the plan they are able to make their dollars work harder.
However, many lead generation marketers don’t even know where their offers are running, leave alone having insight into the performance of each venue. Enabling optimization is critical to the success of an online lead generation campaign.
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Relevancy: Generate leads that are relevant to the advertiser brand.
The biggest stumbling block to many large advertisers entering the lead generation arena is the lack of ability to generate brand specific leads.
I spoke to a Media Director at one of the world’s largest interactive agencies about deploying online lead generation campaigns. She told me why she has remained resistant to the concept.
“For the more established companies, it’s extremely important that people signing on for an offer are doing so because they are interested in a particular brand,” she said. “Most CPL brokers offer generic sales leads. That’s simply not good enough for many…no make that any of my clients”
To generate leads, many marketers run traditional online banner campaigns that direct visitors to a landing or microsite with a sign up form. Given that click-through rates typically range from 0.05% to 0.15% and even the better performing campaigns deliver conversion rates of 10%, there are huge drop-offs associated with this process. Online lead generation marketers need a more cost-efficient way to generate brand specific leads.
It’s no wonder that industry associations like the IAB and OLGA devote so much attention to this issue. It also explains why so many networks are revealing some of their member sites, and why companies like Pontiflex have introduced innovative tools like the Pontiflex GENList publisher directory.
Download this white paper and see how easy it is to enable reach, optimization and relevancy. I look forward to hearing from you about how we can help online lead generation marketing to achieve its potential
I lend you my ears.
The white paper “3 Ways to Maximize Online CPL Advertising ROI” can be downloaded here.
Jon Beardsley is Vice President, Sales at Pontiflex, Inc the industry's only open and transparent lead generation marketplace.
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