Lead Generation in the UK

Online Marketing Techniques (Part 1)

The online marketing partners that LeadPoint work with (our Sellers), generate their traffic through a variety of techniques detailed below. All LeadPoint Sellers are monitored and managed by the LeadPoint Business Development Team to ensure marketing compliance. That team also ensures that seller websites make consumers aware that after they have submitted their details, they will be contacted. In the case of mortgages, the consumer will be contacted by an FSA authorized adviser.

 

This post will cover two of the main marketing methods that our Sellers use:

 

Pay Per Click(PPC) marketing –  Sellers buy ‘key words’ that are associated with the lead product they are trying to sell. Marketers choose a series of words or phrases that are linked to the search term that a consumer is searching e.g. , “remortgage”. A Seller who has bought the keyword ‘Remortgage’ would appear in the sponsored links at the top and on the side of the search results page each time a consumer types this word into a particular search engine. Sellers are charged every time a consumer clicks on their keyword advert which then takes a consumer to the Sellers webpage. This is an extremely effective but expensive way of generating leads. To attach a sponsored link to the word ‘remortgage’ will cost a Seller £10 every time a consumer clicks on their advert. If you consider that not every consumer is going to fill out a form after they’ve clicked on a sponsored link a badly converting form can cost a Seller thousands of pounds. For this type of marketing our Sellers rely heavily on a stable price point.

Organic Search - A website can rise to the top of the Google natural listings (i.e. without having to pay for a PPC advert) by attracting significant traffic to their site from a variety of other sources. Sellers do this by writing relevant articles and blog posts, and by having a number of different websites linked to their own. This type of marketing requires a dedicated team of copy writers who produce content that is picked up by the search engines – this pushes a Seller’s particular site higher up the natural listings. Organic search is a profitable way of marketing online but only the very best Sellers can do this properly because of the time commitment required which is balanced against their cost per lead income.

 

Next time we will look at email marketing and display marketing.

It’s all in the reporting

In the world of lead generation, to determine the success or failure of your lead buying campaigns you need access to as much information as possible and it needs to be presented in a way that is useful. This can only be done through good reporting which will alowl you to turn information into action so you can improve and optimise. LeadPoint UK’s own Samina Haffejee gives us an insight into some of the reports available at LeadPoint and what they are for.

“The goal is to transform data into information, and information into insight”

Over the next two weeks I will be taking you through the different buyer reports. The intelligent reporting suite can be utilised to understand your lead activity better. It’s all part of the service!

As a lead buyer you have access to 6 core reports:

 

1.       Account Summary- Filter by product and date to view number of leads bought, returns processed and cost.

2.       Payment Summary - Shows all payments within a specified time period.

3.       Order Performance Report- Track your cost per application and cost per closed application.

4.       Feedback/Return Review- Check the eligibility of returns, monitor your feedback and returns.

5.       Lead Data Export- Contains all lead attribute data, by individual lead id, for all text leads which you have purchased. Valid for most recent 21 days of activity.

6.       UK Mortgage Marketplace Bids Report- Allows you to select a mortgage product and view the available lead volume and average cost by market segment.

The Account Summary Report

For example, today I received a request from a buyer who would like the following information daily:

 

·         Number of Leads bought month to date

·         Number of Leads refunded

·         Net spend month to date

In this instance you would want the Account Summary report.

 

LOGIN TO YOUR ACCOUNT->CLICK ON ‘REPORTS’-> SELECT ‘ACCOUNT SUMMARY’-> SELECT THE APPROPRIATE FILTERING INCLUDING DATE RANGE

 

The data can help you track how much you are spending and which orders are working the best for you. Other reports such as the Lead Data Export can be easily pivoted to give you a detailed understanding of the types of leads that you are working. For example, you can find out the average LTV being worked by region.  (No need to be scared by pivots or spreadsheets! If you have Excel 2007 it’s a breeze!)

 

Tomorrow’s topic..

 

One of the most important reports is the Feedback/Return Review, for this report to provide value and insight you need to provide feedback on your leads. Both positive and negative feedback enable Leadpoint and our affiliates to know what is and what isn’t working for your orders. We have tried to make the feedback process as painless as possible. Tomorrow I shall cover how to get started on the feedback and explain how to benefit from the report. Ultimately we just want to help you get the best ROI!

 

If you have any questions regarding the reporting shoot them across!

Lead Generation and Facebook

There are millions of people who use Facebook every single day of their lives. And for some reason many of them spend hours and hours playing scrabulous,"poking" each other and enjoying all sorts of online activities many of which you wouldn't believe unless you had seen for yourself! While for some, Facebook might seem like a strange place to want to spend your time, for manyit is seen as the golden egg in online advertising.

Marketers all over the world are probably salivating right now at the prospect of being the first one to crack making money from Facebook and other online social media sites. Brand conversations, reputation management etc. are all very important but hard currency is king. So perhaps lead generation will put the golden egg within reach?

As regular visitors to this blog will have read before, there is "lead generation" and there is "lead generation". In the end the two key elements are 1) does the consumer have a good experience and 2) does the marketer/advertiser make a decent ROI? 

TechCrunch examines some of the companies who claim to have cracked the social networks and the kinds of things that they are up to.

ad:tech London 2008

Regular readers of our blog and Twitter feed will know that we're pretty excited about our debut at ad:tech London.

Not only are we speaking and sharing our knowledge at our very own Speaking session

We are also exhibiting at stand 146

LP Marketing have been busy designing us leaflets, drop down banners and posters - download the link below to see more.

So, if you are planning to visit ad:tech London, please do email us to let us know you're coming and then drop in and say hi.

Download AdTech_London_Ad.pdf

Alain - alain.desmier@leadpoint.com

Opt-In....Opt-Out

Capturing basic non-specific consumer data is not challenging - Win an iPod! Win a car! Win! Win! Win! Now, the more discerning web-users amongst us will realise that what they are actually saying is “Masses and Masses of Untargeted Emails – Right to your Inbox!” - Yes, that’s right, for your details and the permission to sell and resell to over a million partners, we will give you a one in 32 billion chance of winning a Kit-Kat*.

Sounds great, everyone’s happy. True, but only for the 5 seconds before the spam begins to flow.

When consumers realise they haven’t won the new Apple iPose (chortle chortle) and find their inbox has five thousand new messages, they are suddenly quite keen to have their details removed from the system. When I say keen, some are insistent and some genuinely aggressive (I have a sneaking suspicion that the risk-takers out there don’t even read the T&C’s...). So, the first problem is the number of consumers opting-in and immediately opting-out.

Secondly, in the increasingly savvy web-user world we live in, no amount of email subject title angling can hide obvious spam:

“RE: That conversation we were having”

“Hi Jon, it’s me....Your Friend”

“Jon - Your Requested Quote For That Thing You Wanted”

Of course, the other issue is the fact that this is untargeted. The data held is the bare minimum for data owners to send off as many “special promotions” as they can, before the consumer invests in a magnifying glass and finds the opt-out instructions in size 0.002 font at the bottom of the initial email. This lack of customer information and circumstance simply results in massively misdirected offers:

“Jon, get the curves you want... today!”

“Jon, are you tired of your current speedboat?”   

With such a low percentage of conversions through co-reg, it’s clear that when capturing databases via this method it is essential to build a genuine profile of each customer. Every piece of information gathered significantly improves the odds of targeting the correct demographic.

So, ask the right questions, message sparingly and be rewarded˚

*If not available a store brand alternative will be supplied

˚ You may not be rewarded

If you do not wish to be contacted by email simply give up all hope – we have you now.

Jon – Jonathan.thomson@leadpoint.com

How to manage the August slow down?

How to manage the August slow down?

Silly season is the name Journalists and PRs give to August each year and refers to the number of ‘silly’ stories that get covered in the media due to the fact that there is no real news about.

August commuters in London breathe a sigh of relief as chewing gum ridden school children are banished to their Suburban holding pens for the balmy summer afternoons and otherwise crushed tube passengers lounge about on two seats whilst office workers head for Portuguese beaches and Irish Bars.

However, all this sunshine, ice cream and sun tan lotion is bad for Lead Generation, on both the buyer and seller side.

Sellers see their conversions drop and buyers field requests from their staff for holidays which hurts their ability to take lead volumes.

We spent much of the first part of summer setting out our expected lead volumes with our buyers for August and September so that we could provide our sellers with accurate marketing demand levels. Both sides of our business understand the need to manage the summer period and understand the pressure on Sellers and Buyers:

-Sellers have media placements / PPC campaigns to hold onto that they have spent weeks, sometimes months acquiring.

-Buyers use August to recruit and train staff, ready for the run up to Christmas and in general need a lower volume than the rest of the year.

Efficient August management is coupled with planning for September – December, which we expect to be the busiest time of year for our products.

They key to all of this and the answer set out at the start of this post is simple : honesty.

We provide an honest average payout prediction for our sellers and an honest volume and price guide for our buyers.

August might be quieter than the rest of the year, but September is going to be massive!

 

Alain – alain.desmier@leadpoint.com