In tough economic times, marketers are under increased pressure to generate increased returns on online marketing. Cost-per-lead (CPL) lead-generation advertising allows online marketers to pay only for leads—not for clicks and impressions that might never convert.
It's no surprise, then, that online lead generation is the fastest-growing segment in online advertising.
Until 2007, the online lead-generation market was focused on marketers' search for sales leads—generic leads generated on the basis of demographic criteria and resold to multiple advertisers.
But what of brand marketers who need unique marketing leads for their newsletter lists, community sites, loyalty programs, and member-acquisition efforts? They have been hampered by a lack of transparency in online lead generation.
Many third-party brokers and agencies block visibility into campaign placements and deploy advertiser offers in less-than-optimal environments, as a result not only lowering lead quality but also compromising brand integrity.
Starved of options in online lead generation, advertisers relied mostly on banner and search campaigns to generate brand-specific marketing leads.
However, average click-through rates for online banners have fallen from 0.50% to 0.10% in the last three years. Search keywords have become increasingly more expensive—a 2007 DoubleClick Performics Search Trends Report shows that the cost per keyword increased 33% from the prior year and the cost per click rose by as much as 55%.
But, recently, transparency has become a reality in the online lead-generation market, offering advertisers a new and real alternative.
Online marketers can deploy effective CPL campaigns by following these four steps:
1. Insist on transparency in the planning process
Planning a CPL campaign is no different from planning a TV, print, or online banner campaign. Demand complete insight into the venues where your ads will run.
- Select publisher venues based on your campaign goals. Some publishers will do a better job at generating leads for direct mail lists, while others will have a high composition of people who participate actively on community sites.
- Ask for screenshots. These will help you determine the contextual relevance of the publisher with your brand.
- Obtain relevant metrics for each venue. Media planning is a data-driven job. This is especially true for online lead generation. Ask for monthly impressions, average CPL, average lead volume/day and other figures to help you plan and allocate your budget.
2. Centralize campaign set-up management
It can be incredibly time-consuming to set up and manage multiple campaigns with multiple publishers and networks. Follow-ups involving multiple emails, phone calls, and faxes are not an ideal use of your time, and keep you away from the all-important task of engaging interested consumers with your brand and growing business.
If transparency is one cornerstone of a successful of a successful lead generation campaign, openness is another. Open lead generation vendors work with any and all qualified lead-generation publishers. Working with an open lead-generation vendor allows you to connect to and manage campaigns with all of your lead-generation publishers through a single point of connection.
3. Integrate your campaign frontend and backend
As soon as you have the leads, act on them in real time. Ask your lead vendor to integrate their API with that of your Web-traffic monitoring software or email services provider. This will allow you to understand which publishers are delivering the best leads—the ones that are opening your newsletter and taking action, or participating actively on your community site.
4. Optimize campaigns in real-time
- Ask for real-time reporting that allows you to map lead performance to lead source. You can evaluate publisher performance on the basis of a number of different criteria such as lead volume, cost per lead, and conversion rate.
- Ensure that you have the ability to turn individual campaigns on and off with a single click. This will enable you to allocate increased budgets toward better-performing venues and maximize campaign ROI.
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By following those simple steps, brand marketers can get the best of both worlds: the transparency of CPM/CPC campaigns and the cost-effectiveness of CPL campaigns.
They can also get qualified leads to build effective newsletters, loyalty programs, and community sites to explain their brand value proposition and engage interested consumers.
