We talked with Troy O’Bryan, Chief Response Officer at Response Capture about the challenges in lead generation, outsmarting fraudster and more.
What’s the biggest challenge now facing the lead gen space?
Establishing and maintaining relevance among your target audience. A report published by MarketingSherpa found that online marketers have between 2 to 8 seconds to capture someone’s interest, or roughly 15 words, if you’re writing headlines. Therefore, messages must follow the three B’s: Be brief, Be bold, and Be relevant. Only 20 percent of your visitors will read the body copy.
To be relevant, we must know our targets so well that our messages:
• Succinctly share one of their hot-button keywords in less than 8 seconds.
• Directly inform them of the value that we have to offer once we have their attention.
• Guide them to make an informed buying decision after trust has been established.
What steps does your company take to stay ahead of lead gen fraudsters?
With 1,600+ data vendors, 60,000+ lists available for sale, and the plethora of performance guarantees it is even more imperative to test a new provider before delivering payment—unless the provider is a reputable source referred to you by someone you trust.
When we come across a new data provider or potential partner of a complimentary lead generation service we always:
• Ask them to provide a sample so we can verify the accuracy.
• Search social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to see what people are saying or if they have prior experiences with the company.
• Check the Better Business Bureau or Ripoffreport.com to see if any negative reports have been issued and if so the reason for the report.
• Ask the vendor to perform a pilot program where you can get a feel for what it is like to work with the vendor and the results they will deliver.
• If the vendor does not already have one, ask for a written guarantee.
Practicing what we preach, in the last year we started offering a free pilot of our custom list building service that has resulted in a 30 percent higher conversion rate between inquiries and closed deals. The key learning for us is there must be implied or explicit trust before someone new will become a customer.
Are there niches or verticals that are specifically hot in lead gen right now?
Three niches that are hot right now in the lead generation space are pay for performance, landing page optimization, and mobile.
The pay for performance model that affiliates have built their businesses upon is becoming more prevalent with traditional lead generation providers. Cost per lead, cost per contact, cost per appointment, and cost per clipping programs are offered by telemarketing companies, search engine marketers, and public relationship companies.
From my vantage point, the launch of the Performance Marketing Association was at a perfect time as the lead generation industry is making the shift from a pure pay for services model to include more performance driven relationships.
For online lead generation, conversion rate optimization through landing page testing is currently hot. With introduction of easy to use tools to test variations of your headline, hero shot, and call to action, the optimization of landing pages are proving to be more effective at increasing your lead flow than increasing the number of ads placed or emails sent.
Since smartphone purchases are expected to outpace laptop sales in 2012, lead generation campaigns must consider the mobile experience and look to engage your target audience where they are most frequent. In the next year, I anticipate mobile marketing will become a key aspect of integrated lead generation efforts.
How is the rise of social media impacting the lead gen space?
Social media has provided us with another channel to generate leads and as a result organizations are starting to ad social media to their budgets. eMarketer stated that 11 percent of online ad spending would be spent on social media in 2011, which is 55 percent over 2010. Social media provides us the opportunity to narrowly define our audience, as networks like Facebook and LinkedIn allow advertisers to target individuals from specific companies with a specific title and a specific interest.
To generate leads from social media, marketers can either start a conversation about a topic or join a conversation already in progress. If you have a trusted brand, like @DellOutlet, offering coupons via social media can have a measureable impact on sales. For less known brands, the first step is to establish trust which is usually not done with a “buy now” offer. What works well is to provide a valuable piece of content like an infographic or research study relevant to your target audience to generate an inquiry. Once the inquiry is made, then it’s up to your nurturing efforts to guide the prospect through a buy cycle.
The thing we see missed often with social media is to remember that social posts have a short shelf life, so it is important to share your valuable information multiple times to maximize the impact.
What metrics are important in determining ROI for lead gen?
New revenue! The goal of lead generation is to drive top line revenue and bottom line profits through the acquisition, nurturing, and qualification of new business opportunities that result in revenue.
For organizations that sell a considered purchase product or service where the buying cycle spans many months, they must track and seek to improve their cost per metrics such as:
• Cost per response or inquiry
• Cost per qualified lead
• Cost per sales accepted lead
• Cost per pipelined lead
• Cost per win/loss
To avoid overspending on lead generation campaigns, we recommend organizations start their planning process by forecasting the expected return from a tactic before committing dollars. Based on the forecasted return, choose the tactics that provide a positive ROI and rethink those that do not.