I read a very interesting blog this morning over at the XBroker. Jeff over at the XBroker talks about some radical changes needed in this market to run a shop, keep your head above water, and most importantly gain consumers trust. No doubt, he will take flak from people who are stuck in the past, but still worth the read.
So internet spending is still going gangbusters, including 26% rise in spending year to date…
NEW YORK (Reuters) – U.S. Internet advertising revenue rose 25 percent in the third quarter to about $5.2 billion, a new record, according to data released on Monday.
The report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP showed online advertising revenue has hit new highs in each of the first three quarters of 2007.
Revenue for the first nine months of 2007 totaled $15.2 billion, up nearly 26 percent from the $12.1 billion recorded during the first nine months of 2006, the report said.
“The continued robust growth of the industry indicates that marketers increasingly understand and appreciate the benefits of interactive advertising,” IAB Chief Executive Randall Rothenberg said in a statement. “Marketers large and small have come to accept digital media as the fulcrum of any marketing strategy.” Click here to read the article.
This article caught our attention as internet advertising is how a lot of our partners do their marketing. As ad spending on the internet rises, the costs of internet advertising real estate will also rise, although not necessarily in proportion. As spending and competition for spots on wide-net popular internet sites increases, the cost of doing business for internet lead generation companies is increasing steadily, or at least for those who are dependent on banner ad and CPC expenditure.
Companies that NEED to do internet advertising are running into an ugly predicament: more and more big companies, with large ad budgets, increasingly WANT to do more advertising. While the internet maintains some advantages for smaller companies (hyper-targeted ads, low minimum expenditure), the prime mainstream ad spots will be increasingly eaten up by the big boys of the ad world; Toyota, GM, Ford, Nike, Honda, Apple, Microsoft, Fox, and so on. This movement will push lead generation companies to be increasingly niche or increasingly large, or both. Either way, it will challenge and push the industry to innovate, or else.
Our own Lead Guru has written a great post about the hidden opportunity in bad leads, over at Lead Critic.
Purchased internet leads have a bad phone number percentage that ranges from 8% to 22%. Do you just return these leads without trying to salvage a deal? NO, NO, NO. Email that borrower assuming they entered in the phone number incorrectly intentionally.
Read the whole post here.
We devote a lot of our time and resources to helping our customers get to leads faster and more efficiently than their competition. In other words, day in and day out, we help our customers do the same thing that everyone else is doing, but we help them do it faster, better, and smarter. Lead Guru brings up a good point. There is often an equal or greater opportunity in knowing what your competition is NOT doing. Leads with bad phone numbers are likely to be ignored or given lower priority than those with valid phone numbers. Thus, for any lead that is sold to multiple brokers, a lead with a bad phone number may result in a higher chance of closing a deal. As Americans increasingly spend more time online, B2C sales must adjust their workflow to reach their customers in the way that they would like to be reached.
We like our brands like we like our friends; with a personality.
Andy Sernovitz (word of mouth marketing expert) wrote a quick note about Zappos which has been successful, in large part, because of the personality which it has created for itself.
Here is the juicy part:
Call their customer service number: 800-927-7671
Every day a different employee hosts the phone calls. Today (Halloween) you get singing:
“Trick or treat, smell my feet, Zappos Customer Service can’t be beat. Hi, my name is Amber, and my name is Kimberly, from our product information support team, and we’ll be hosting today’s daily greeting on this spooky October 31st.”
Plus, every call ends with “Press 4 to hear Zappos Joke of the Day.” Two more employees tell you a joke.
Zappos is not afraid to say that they have a personality, and that’s just the kind of company that people want to deal with.
Zappos is a company that is an inspiration for us at Leads360, because it is built on customer service. When Zappos was just starting up they knew that an incredibly high level of customer service would be required to let people buy shoes, without trying them on. They developed a class-leading organization which revolves around making it as painless as possible to buy AND return shoes.
“We’re a service company that just happens to sell shoes.” Read the whole interview at Inc.