First, I gotta share a new habit I have started. Usually my kids go to bed around 8pm every night and shortly after putting them to bed I break out the laptop and sit myself on the couch for a little surfing of the Internet and blog posting. In some cases that activity is coupled with an ice cold Corona. Well more recently that Corona is been paired up with a bowl of frozen fruit. If you shop at Costco you can buy a big bag of frozen fruit and mmmm, its good. Plus the kids love and think its a desert! You should try it.
Anyway, as good as frozen fruit and cold beer is, it is not what I was planning on writing about. I want to give my thoughts on the future of lead gen and more specifically the typical lead seller model of generating non-branded leads and selling them multiple times. Its my thought that this model, while will always have its place in the space, is not the most optimal source for quality leads. Listen, I am not going to hop on that crazy bandwagon that some people are on that claim you should never buy lead and you should only generate your own, that’s silly. In many, in fact, most cases it is simply more economical, efficient and ROI producing to buy leads from a third party. Leveraging multiple sources typically is the only way to supply enough volume for many companies appetites.
There is an aspect of the EDU space that leverages multiple sources, but allows for only branded leads. Yes, they pay more for these leads, but they are more qualified and covert better then non-branded leads. This is not the case for all EDU leads. Many come from typical lead gen form that matches the consumer with schools after they have filled out the form. Others come from directories where the consumer fills out multiple branded forms and then their are hybrid models that I think are going to catch on in other industries. These forms and campaigns are completely branded to the school and run on an exclusive basis. These campaigns create quality leads and eliminate the risks of buying leads from non-transparent sources. I believe this model will carry over into other verticals.
What do you think about the current lead gen and multiple sale model? Obvioiusly, not going anywhere completely, but is it evolving into something new?
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We’ve started generating a lot more branded leads lately. They do convert better and thus the advertiser is willing to pay more for a quality lead. They cost a lot more to generate a lead like that though.
Cameron,
I agree, the price is definitely higher then the typical shared lead, but the conversions and ease of communication is also much higher. I think that when a campaign can leverage the brand and increase the brand specific conversation within the campaign the lead becomes very qualified and ultimately will outperform any other lead. The challenge is building a way to efficiently and cost effectively run these types of campaigns.
I think the EDU Lead Gen vertical is in a unique in that people actively seek out different school brands, whether online or off, because different schools offer different educational experience, and choosing an educational institution is a very emotional experience for most people. To some extent, the school you choose defines who you are as a person. In other popular lead gen verticals such as mortgage or payday loans, the emotional connection is not necessarily there.
People who make their for their post secondary education choice want to make sure that the school (brand) is a good fit for them, as they’ll be spending tens of thousands of dollars and many years with their brand of choice.
Someone who is interested in refinancing or loan modification, for example, doesn’t care who’s logo is on the envelope that comes in the mail every month – they simply want they best deal.
Derrick,
I think you are right, brands within in the EDU space have different meanings to the consumer and therefore are important to advertise on. I also agree to your point that the finance vertical (the consumer) relys less on brands, and that possibly could be argued, but I think that idea behind branded campaigns for other verticals is not to specifically capitalize on a brand or build the brand, but to simply generate exclusive leads whereby you know their true source and reduce the amount of fraud and poor quality leads. If brand is not relied upon by the consumer as much in these verticals, as you said, then it should be even easier to launch.
Whether or not the campaigns are open to the correct filters, etc would be the main issue. Mortgage companies would need to be willing to take most types of mortgage leads. i.e. purchase, home equity, refi, etc. Granted, the campaigns can be built in such a way to filter out much of the unwanted filters, however not completely.
just a thought.
Interesting thoughts.
I think one possible way to approach this branding/exclusivity would be to take the EDU lead gen approach of letting the user select the lead buyer, and engineer the process so that they choose one and only one.
One approach to this would be the “black box” approach that has been discussed in the past, i.e. the user still goes through a 1-3 page form with their information. From there, rather than sending the information to X buyers automatically, they are presented with a list of qualifying buyers, similar to what happens in EDU.
From here, in order to create the best possible user experience, the lead buyers are much more than a logo and a “submit request” button. Allow the user to read more about the banks, read reviews or user feedback, and what to expect when working with them. This way when the user is ultimately contacted by the buyer, they’ll know which bank is calling them, and they’ll be expecting to hear from only them.
This approach would definitely help build the branding initiatives as well as lead exclusivity.