We’ve reached the halfway point of the shameless plugs. This week mark’s the three-and-a-half week countdown towards the March 1st and 2nd event. Haven’t booked your ticket yet? That’s ok. The percentage of procrastinators would make those who procrastinate proud but those who try to guess how much food and drinks to order want to pull out their hair. It turns out that 34% of attendees to last year’s Vegas show booked within the last three weeks of the event. The only real problem with that strategy is that a large number of people paid more than they needed to pay. The discount links, the best available being at the bottom of this near-advertorial, expire in just over a week.
The very first shameless plug talked about one of the oldest issues within lead generation, whether leads should be sold to more than one buyer and if so, what was the appropriate balance between monetization and user experience. Week two’s plug took a new approach; the concept of quality, the notion that quality is not binary. The performance of a lead is shaped by a number of factors with each hop taken capable of influencing the outcome of the lead. Sellers, technology solutions, and the buyers all impact the overall quality of a lead. Week 3 is all about brand.
Whose Brand Is It Anyway
Brand and lead generation do not always go hand in hand. The concept of brand and much of direct response marketing, for that matter, has not gone hand in hand. We think of the late night infomercials, products sold on QVC, or the generic lead gen television ads that run on the radio and throughout the day on tv. Would you consider the Debt Lawyer or OK Cable brands? If anything, they are the opposite of brands, easy to forget names but easy to understand services. They seem to exist only to usher you into the hands of another without allowing the user to think about anything else along the way.
There are some direct response brands. Match.com is a direct to customer acquisition play, but it’s arguably a brand as well. LendingTree is one of the best examples. They went from just a brand to a category descriptor. When people start to think of companies to start, you will often hear them saying, I want to be the LendingTree for x. The question is where do those with a brand but without the brand power or television budget of a Match.com fit. An easy example is a mid-tier school, bank, or insurance provider. They care about their brands, but they aren’t strong enough to market without the help of others. This leaves them both flexible but vulnerable.
Mid-tier partners who need the help of marketing services firms will often let those firms have more control over the message. They allow the partners to create landing pages, ads, and host the forms. In the case of insurance, mortgage, home services, and other verticals, the buyer’s brand is often not a part of the lead collection process. In other cases, the brand is shown only after the user has already started the funnel. We see this quite frequently in auto insurance. Two things make this a frequent occurrence. The first is the presence of companies like SureHits – a vertically focused ad platform. The second are high click prices. As a SureHits affiliate, you can obtain everything you need in one place – lots of ads that pay out very well. This leads to all sorts of bad behavior from the slightly innocuous “1 trick” to fake news sites with doctored photos. Geico doesn’t want any other company bidding on its marks. Do you think they want to be involved in those user flows?
Arbitragers and some aggregators will defend their methods as necessary strategies to make money. Media is expensive. Getting people’s attention for something as generally mundane as auto insurance takes some creativity. Isn’t that what the big brands do when they have funny spokespeople or offbeat commercials? They will say no. They want their commercials to entertain and users to remember them, but they don’t, in their opinion, mislead. That’s arguably the biggest issue they have with performance marketers. They take liberties that put the companies on the hook. This is absolutely the issue in education. The schools buy the leads, but they don’t get to see the messages that attract the users to the forms. Under the new laws, though, they are liable for misrepresentations along the way. This is the challenge that is being faced all across different lead generation verticals – how much control should each party have in the message. If a buyer buys should they get a say; or if it’s an aggregator who must take the media risk can they do what they please? Where is the profitable in-between?
And now, once again for the forewarned shameless plug, come hear this topic debated live at LeadsCon, March 1st and 2nd (the big party is on the night of the 2nd) in Las Vegas. Use the link here, and you will save $200 off the current price and $400 off the regular price. Pass includes access to all sessions, the expo hall, real food, and open bar receptions. Register today . There is no lower discount. If, however, you want to pay more, let us know, and we’ll send you the full-price link.
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