Waxing Philosophically…aka Just Rambling
Perhaps it’s the politics; the anticipation that comes with a potential changing of the guard. maybe it’s the lack of new offers or the fact that the hottest offers out there aren’t ours. They look and smell like ours – run of network, customer acquisition oriented, direct response metrics, conversion focused, but they don’t leverage the performance marketing channel. They have their own search, their own display. They even have venture money and have made the mainstream press coverage. Whatever the exact reason or combination of reasons, it’s made the performance marketing universe more reflective.
What separates the present from some other periods is both the lack of a standout winner from the offer perspective and the consolidation that exists for the handful of offers still doing well. Take mobile for instance. There is some pretty impressive money being made in mobile, but it’s heavily concentrated. Contrast that with a year ago when fake blogs were universally successful. Every network was doing well, not just a few. If anything, what seems to be working well, using well loosely, are some lead generation offers.
A few weeks ago we looked at one of the more basic, yet important, questions in lead gen. We tried not just to answer but to provide a framework for the proverbial question, "What is a good lead?" It is a question that sounds simple but the answer to which proved less so. We ended up focusing on two characteristics, how qualified a person is and how interested they are. It’s great if you get leads for new car quotes, but if the leads are for higher end cars and the people filling out the form are not higher income earners then it’s not a qualified lead. Compliment that with their interest level. If you get someone to fill out a form who fits the demographic but isn’t actually ready or completed it because they felt they had to, then they too are not good leads.
In the past, it had been free trial offers and other subscription services that had the attention share of the affiliate world. Credit card based offers also need quality. It’s not exclusive to the lead world. If someone pulls out their credit card for a free trial, that’s a great start toward an advertiser earning money back; but, in order for the advertiser to make back their money, the person has to stay signed up to the program. Netflix deals with this all the time. If you generate free trials for them, but the people signing-up don’t stay, you won’t be getting paid for Netflix signups anymore.
We wouldn’t go so far as to say there is a shift towards lead gen offers happening. Our performance marketing ecosystem is offer agnostic. It doesn’t matter what the offer is, it just has to work. It can be a download. It can be a sale. It can be a free trial, or it can be a lead. The performance marketing ecosystem doesn’t really discriminate except when it comes to yields. If leads are what people are running, it’s only because the yields are better. But it’s a very different mindset than trials. Free trials tend to have more flexibility in how the marketer can promote. They tend to have more aggressive end buyers (think mobile, acai, not Netflix). They will do what it takes to make money off the user. That’s not the case in lead gen. In lead gen, especially in today’s verticals – edu, debt, and insurance – they are all regulated and becoming more so. The end buyers can’t be as aggressive.
In lead gen, there is a bigger burden on the publisher to be compliant. That’s a new wrinkle, because compliance also means a level of competency. There is a huge traffic component to success, but it can be negated if there is no subject matter understanding. To run a diabetes campaigns is not the same as running a for-profit education campaign. Up until now, it’s been the choice of the affiliate / arbitrager. That will probably evolve. There will most likely come a time in the near future where advertisers will want to know that those running the offer know more than just what they can and can’t say. It’s a little extreme, but instead of just applying for an offer, the advertiser might want a person to take a test of sorts.
The idea of an affiliate driver’s license or certification will probably not catch fire any time soon, but it’s not a terrible idea. Marketing certain offers is a great responsibility. There are some powerful actions that take place down the line. Making sure those doing the marketing know what they are actually marketing makes sense. It has the added benefit of yielding more money to the marketer. If you know a space, you can market it better. That people don’t study up on a space is more a function of the materials not being available than any aversion. Like so many things, it’s just been a function of need. People haven’t needed, but the lead world especially is getting only more complex. We would much rather motivate people to spend a little time studying than see more and more verticals being run outside the purview of the performance marketing channel. As marketers, we’re pretty good at killing the golden goose. We want to see more geese and to have that confidence and optimism restored to the space.
