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Robin Stanton is owner of WebServices4All.com Ad Agency and sits as VP of Sales and New Business for Synervation.net affiliate network and Media company. Robin has been in the online industry since 1998 working with advertisers, agencies and small businesses, and is always on the lookout for the next big thing in Online Advertising.

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A History of Lead Generation

Written on
January 25th 2006
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by Robin Stanton  |
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It used to be that a publisher would not touch a lead generation campaign with a ten-foot pole. They felt they were giving away free advertising and there was money to be made only with CPM (cost-per-impression) and CPC (cost-per-click) campaigns. Then something happened, a few publishers realized they could make easy, good money with a lead generating campaign and word spread quickly. Now there are very few publishers that won’t accept lead campaigns on their site(s).

CPL (cost-per-lead), CPS (cost-per-sale) and CPA (cost-per-acquisition) all basically mean the same thing: the publisher does not get paid until a lead, sale or an acquisition occurs. It just depends on which format you choose to use these days. It used to be that there was only one format, the form, which allowed you to give your life information away in one swift click of a submit button. But now there are several different ways to capture the user. It went from the trusted form capture fields to pay-per-call and the latest instant messaging call center; mind you, none of the “old ways” have gone away. Depending on what you the advertiser wants to accomplish, a combination of these will works wonders.

Form Capture: Ask a few simple questions such as name, phone, email, or extensive questions such as income, age, gender to submit to a call center to change the lead into a customer. People are very used to this and welcome the easy way to receive information. This style has had success in all channels, education, mortgage, credit, personal products and the list goes on, because the form can be changed, shortened or lengthened to fit the need of the advertiser and appeals to all age ranges. The advertiser pays for every completed form that is submitted to their call center, and the creative is versatile enough to be used within banners, pointroll, and email.

Pay Per Call: While this is still new, it is showing signs of success, especially among small businesses and education publishers if you can get the 800 number situation worked out. People do a search say for “green cat collars” and an ad shows up saying, “We’ve got your lime green kitty collars right here! Call now” and it displays an 800 number; the user calls the number and instantly connects to the “green collar” store and places an order. The business owner then pays for every call they receive. This is a scenario I have only seen on search engines and it has plenty of room to evolve.

Live Help: Live help, which has been around for a bit and can be found on a variety of sites for various publishers, is just starting to make its way onto education, mortgage and sites like AT&T for assistance. Lead generation is starting to make its way through this format but most people still feel it is for help finding things on the site or for technical help. But it’ll make its way soon enough. Live help is usually found in a form of a button on a website.



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