Josh Kerbel

It’s easy to go out and say, “Hey, I need to generate a lot of leads” and you know what, it’s not that not hard to go out and find a lot of people to talk to, who on the face of it, might seem like they are worth talking to you – they work in your target industry, they read your promotional material, they cruise your website – But you still don’t know that the answer to the two most important question that operates a bona fide lead from a tire-kicking pretender. The two most important questions you need to answer are:

1. Can a prospect afford to buy
2. Does a prospect have the authority to purchase

Up next – Sales Lead Generation 102 – How to answer those two important questions……

How many times have you heard the term “viral video” in the last 2, 3,4 or 5 years…………… in fact try a Google search for the term “Viral Video“and see what you get.  Yet, for some reason, some people think that these can actually be manufactured.    The reality is that you can’t.  No one knows what theme or idea is going to click with the general public….  You just can’t say “I’m making a viral video” and ipso facto it becomes a viral video.

That’s like me looking in the mirror every morning thinking I’m supermodel hot and presto chango, I’m strutting down the runways of Milan.

So what’s the point………..focus on your marketing system and stop trying to entertain people, you will probably fail

Next up in the suck hole of real estate advertising – Zoocasa.com (Names people……….talk about trying to be too clever on the names!)

So Zoocasa’s agent offering has “exclusivity” as well – they only allow 4 agents per neighborhood, but truth be told their sale pitch to real estate agents is pretty crappy.  Just as crappy as Zillow and that Trulia site, maybe even crappier as they don’t give you any sort of sales demo and then require you to prove that you are a real estate agent even before buying their service.

We did two searches on Zoocasa to see what exactly they offer to real estate agents.  Take a look at the two screen captures for Deer Park and the Danforth – two Toronto neighborhoods. ( The “exclusive” ads are up at the top – I circled the ones I looked at in red.

and the second.

The ads are less than compelling.  No better than little billboards that show a total lack of understanding the online lead generation process (Here’s a hint – try to capture my attention……..and don’t do it by flashing me some skin, well OK, that might work with me).   And now their respective landing pages.

So what do we see, a few agents who have shelled out some cash to get some clicks and then they don’t do anything with the clicks.  And I bet they wonder why they aren’t pulling more business from the Internet…..

The question to ask is are these agents seeing a real return on their Internet marketing or are they fooled into thinking they are just investing in their brand?

What do you do with your clicks?

Now don’t be sad
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad
Now don’t be sad (Cause)
‘Cause two out of three ain’t bad

-Meatloaf – Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad

Two out of Three Ain’t So Bad, but how about Two out of Eight?   That is pretty bad, but that is just how many online marketing agencies attempting to serve the Toronto market actually demonstrate their own competencies in PPC marketing strategies with their own PPC ad campaign……..

Shall we waste some more time on this subject?  Well, obviously you think so, because you are reading this post……..

The best way to tell if your online marketing agency is worth the money is to examine how you found them in the first place or if they were a word of mouth referral, you should take a look at how they use the Internet to find themselves  new clients.

Let’s do a specific search for something like…………….online marketing agency toronto

This brings up something that looks like this:

Let’s dissect some of the PPC ads……start by thinking, if I am looking to for an online marketing agency, I’m looking for a solution to a marketing problem I am having.  So what I want to see is an ad that is written so it speaks to my problem – personally, I have become really attached to the whole Problem – Benefits – Features type of ad.  Let’s get a little deeper and look to see if any of the ads do this

And now the ones on the side:

Its pretty safe to say that most of these ads don’t really follow the whole problem-benefit-solution model.  But what is more important here is how they handle the post click process.  They have my attention, now lets see what they do with it.  And behind link #1…..

Crappy PPC ad not withstanding, this page isn’t too bad. I would make sure the information capture fields were a little higher.  Now on to link #2 from Mindshape.  Well they have the info capture set up, but  they seem to want to do a few things with this page.  At least its not bowing down at the alter of blatant self indulgence.  They are set up to pull in leads with this page, just like the guys behind link #1………these guys have a clue.

I threw the rest of the ads in to a little poster.  Most of them are fails.   The one I am most surprised about here is PAGE ZERO…….considering they claim to have written the book on paid search, you would think they would know not to just throw PPC traffic a their home page.  Andrew, the owner of the company, has been around the net for ages.  Someone may want to give him a spanking for this poor set up.

So, 8 ads and 2 passes………from people who are supposed to be experts on this area. Um, ouch?

and an exercise in crappy landing page design for you

So I decided to move to Tampa  (Go Devil Rays!!!)……..OK I didn’t, but if I was, here is how I would go about it.

I head over to the wonderful Google machine and search for  – buy a newly built house in Tampa.  The screen shot below shows the results.  We are going to focus our attention on the sponsored ads.

The first step in the analysis – do any of these ads pull me in?  Not really.  No one is really hitting the whole problem-solution-benefits very well.  Assuming that buying a house is a substantial investment, there are usually questions that need answering, lots of unknown variables and plenty of concerns bouncing around in a prospect’s head.  These questions could be:

Where in Tampa do I want to live?  A guidebook to Tampa’s neighborhoods may help.

What do I look for in a newly built house?  A handy checklist would really aid in my search

Do you see anything remotely approaching these in any of these PPC ads?  No?  Me neither.

There is a simple formula here.  Your prospect has a problem.  You need to offer them a solution.

On to the next part of the journey to Tampa….Landing Pages

I’m going to throw up five of the seven pages here, most of which come from experienced companies.  You know how many are well designed?  Take a look at the five and tell me.

So which one works?  Well, not withstanding Lennar’s crappy PPC writing, whoever is running their campaign seems to know what they are doing.  The PPC ad is positioned low down on the first page, so it doesn’t get random clicks and the landing page seems to understand that people buying a newly built house could be first time home buyers and MIGHT HAVE SOME QUESTIONS about the process.

So Lennar makes a swap…………..give me your contact information and I’ll help you buy a house…………hopefully one of our houses

We are now going to walk you through the sign up process for the site, you might call it a slow long screw………

So our everyman Robert finally decides to sign up for an adult orientated dating site.   Let’s look at the process from start to finish, every step of which has been split tested against thousands and thousands of visitors.

I have captured a few screen shots along the sign up process.  While this sign-up process could be done much faster, I suspect that this long registration, much like a long form sales letter, really helps focus the prospect acquisition process.  If someone is going to jump through all these hoops, they must really want the product.

Watch as the questions get more and more personal……asking if I am circumsized…….talk about really building up my hopes that some woman is going to care what my penis looks like!!!  15 or so steps and I finally get my free password.

I get an email to confirm my account and then I am taken to a landing page that tells me adding a photo to my account will get me more attention.  Let’s test this out.  Remember that picture of we said wasn’t Robert, well I lied……….we are going to upload the pic of the  fat guy in a wife beater up to the site.  Before we leave this page, do you see that small ad over on your left……saying the get 20,000 new members a day.  I wonder why its there.  20,000 new members every day?  How can a guy not get lucky in this place?

I’m going to leave the account for now and see what happens next………besides getting hit with pop under ads for hardcore porn.

Actually wait a second, let’s try and contact a lovely lady who goes by the name of FallenAngle88 (I wonder if she gets turned on by geometry.  So I try to email our math major and I get hit with my first conversion attempt……..and it comes complete with guarantee (Are any of you paying attention to how good these guys are at using the whole Problem – Solution – USP model here)

So we saw how these guys tried to convert me into a paying user………look familiar?  Looks like the same old direct marketing strategy that has been used since the invention of the postage stamp.

Now let’s look at how these sites use email to push their USP and drive conversions.  WE GUARANTEE YOU WILL HAVE SEX!

All of a sudden I start getting emails from attractive younger women that want to sleep with our Robert.  Here are two.  Notice that one of them is in Cleveland and I am in Toronto.  Each time you attempt to contact them back……….BAM!!!!

….Right into the pay wall.

Is it just me, or is it getting a little hot in here?

By this point, most users are so hot and bothered they dont care. Their emotion hot buttons have been hit so many times that they don’t even bother looking at the terms of service for the site, which usually includes something like:

XXXX may, at its discretion, cause or allow you to be contacted by one or more an emissaries. This may be a real person, such as another xxxx Member, a digital actor, an avatar or  a computer generated person. They may be employed by xxxxx or a third party to enhance your online experience.

Now how is that for a tight conversion process (and a cold shower to know that your paramour is possibly a computer program  or a guy who looks like Robert!!!

Regardless,  Is your company that efficient with its conversion process?

Next up Part III -  It gets even better when you look at the numbers.

So you’ve  taken the jump and hired someone to handle the marketing of the lil’ ole website.

Mazel Tov, you’ll go far…………………into debt unless you know how to keep a reign on your spending.

When it comes to online marketing, everything comes down to testing (and if you come across anyone who says it isn’t, kick their sorry asses out of your office).

And testing means one thing…………SPENDING MONEY.  So you need to know if what you are spending money on is worth continuing to spend money on.  And the only way to do this is with metrics, but not just any old metric with do.  They need to be linked with your business objectives and desired outcomes.

Conversion Rate

This is what it all comes down to.  How often do you site visitors do what you are hoping for them to do.  Do you know what you want people to do on your site?  What is your industry’s average conversion?  What is your average conversion?  Did you know what a conversion was before you read this?

Average Order Value

Pretty self explanatory.  If you sell something, on average, how much of “it” do you sell to your customers

Time to Purchase – In terms of Days & Visits

How much time someone spends on your site or how many pages they look at are irrelevant if you don’t relate it to some business objective, like, well, sales…..If you have a long sales cycle, it is important to know exactly how long it is….you may have to augment this with offline data as well

Visitor Loyalty & Visitor Recency

Basically you want to find out how much love you get from your customers.  How often do they come back and when was the last time they did so.  If you don’t actually sell anything on your website other than thoughts, these are how you are going to tell if readers are buyin’ what youse be a sellin’.

So what happens if you don’t use these metrics to develop your KPIs……

You never know if your marketing spend is effective………..and I think you can figure out the rest of the story from there

AKA You need to know how much a customer is worth in order to determine how much to spend to acquire them……

As mentioned by both Jim Novo and Seth Godin in there posts regarding the lifetime value of a customer, you need to know how much cash the average customer generates for your business over a set duration of time.

SG then goes on to suggest that:

Instead of comparing what you invest to the benefit you receive from the first bill, the first visit, the first transaction, it’s important to not only recognize but embrace the true lifetime value of one more customer.

Write it down. Post it on the wall. What would happen if you spent 100% of that amount on each of your next ten new customers? That’s more money than you have to spend right now, I know that, but what would happen? Imagine how fast you would grow, how quickly the word would spread.

The problem with Seth’s approach is that it ignores some fundamental basics like “That’s more money than you have to spend right now, I know that, but what would happen?” What would happen is that most companies would probably go broke because they haven’t figured out their marketing formula first.

Even ignoring the fact that most companies/businesses don’t have the resources for that sort of upfront spending (Ignoring that fact is kinda like saying, Let’s pretend gravity doesn’t exist when I jump of this cliff – regardless of whether or not you think gravity exists, it seems to be a pretty real phenomenon) or the consequences of spending huge amounts to acquire some customers vs others (Don’t you get annoyed when your bank offers free computers or ipods to people who open a new account when you have been with the bank for 20 years), most companies and by most, I don’t mean Fortune 500 companies, I mean Fortune 500,000 companies (you might even be a Fortune 2,000,000  company)…..don’t know their customer acquisition costs or have a systematic marketing plan, so suggesting that you just go out and spend the LTV of a customer on the next 10 prospects that walk in your door is a little Utopian.

So what’s the moral of the story here……..

Before you go out and spend big bucks to acquire a customer, you should actually have an idea of what sort of bucks you should be spending in the first place

Jim does a much better job of operationalizing this concept into a usable form for business………..3 cheers for Jim!!!!

If you live in the Canadian province of Ontario (or British Columbia for that matter), you have no doubt heard of the rollout of the Harmonized Sales Tax on July 1.  And most of what you heard is probably bad.

But guess what, it was a tremendous marketing opportunity for anyone involved in the financial services sector in these two provinces.  You know why?

Because it created a lot of problems that needed solving.  How do you account for HST in your business?  Will HST affect my mortgage?  How about HST on new home sales?  Do I need to charge HST?  I could probably go on and on…but you get the drift, these are all questions that are being asked by people.  Questions mean problems and problems need solutions.

Well before we get down to some nitty gritty research.  Let’s use Google Trends to question my assumption that people are looking on line for information about HST.    If you take a look at the image below, you can see that there was some solid interest related to HST.  We charted the relative volumes of searches for the terms “harmonized sales tax, HST, HST Ontario” in Ontario for the last 12 months.  You would be blind not to notice the up-trends.

Google Trends: harmonized sales tax, HST, HST Ontario

Clearly there is an opportunity and the reality is that its not going to go away anytime soon.  In fact it will probably intensify as the actual impact of the tax hits home

Let’s see if anyone is capitalizing on this opportunity.   If ever there was one, this is a text book case of  news driven marketing.  Let’s do a few Google searches on HST related terms and see what pops up on the PPC ads.  For the sake of accuracy, all of these searches have been localized to Canada.    In fact, most of these search were done with Google’s auto-complete function which uses data from other people’s search to suggest relevant search terms for me.  This is like spoon-feeding leads to heads up companies.  I wonder who has their heads up on this little situation.

Wait a second,  I can do one better!   In fact, rather than guessing, lets use Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to see how many people might be looking for related terms and how much an advertiser might pay to grab the attention of one of these solution seekers

HST related keywords generated by Google

See all those search terms………look at how many are looking for tax related information and look how much competition there is for these keywords and phrases.  This is like manna from heaven if you know what you are doing.  Remember, this was a quick and dirty example of keyword research, but it should give you an idea of the potential for Ontario businesses to generate revenue from the implementation of the HST.  Our next step is to look at some of the PPC ads that they keywords trigger.

Search for "Harmonized Sales Tax" on Google

"GST HST" - 5,400 local search last month @ $0.33 a click

2900 local searches for "sales tax ontario" last month - @ $0.05 a click

"hst training" - 110 local searches at $0.49 a click

Did you notice the lack of well written PPC ads targeting these keywords (Hello, CA’s, CGA’s, bookeepers, software developers anyone home)?   If this isn’t failing to seize an opportunity, I’m not sure what is.  If you were an accountant or professional service provider or sold a product remotely associated with the HST implementation, you are missing the opportunity to generate qualified leads for less than bus fare……..How much are you paying your marketing manager again?

So the fact that there are two ways for an Internet user to find your website (HEAD vs. TAIL searches) lets you know that there are two different types of prospects out there searching for you and once you know that you can:

• Determine the best way to reach out to them; and,
• Once you reach them, you can devise a strategy to convert them to customers

Most of your visitors will find you using your BRAND keywords. They have a specific problem and know that you or your products can solve that problem for you. These people know what they are looking for, have probably done a good chunk of research already (which, if you know what you are doing, you have helped them with they were searching for CATEGORY keywords) and are now coming to buy. They are looking to find your site in the organic search results. This is the domain of search engine optimization. This is not where you should be sending your PPC search budget. Additionally, once you find these people, or rather they find your website, the focus should be on selling. Talk about prices, product options, payment methods, delivery, etc.

The focus of your PPC search budget should be spent on targeting the CATEGORY keywords that make up your TAIL. These people search using generic key phrases because although they have identified a problem, they don’t know enough about potential solutions. THEY ARE STILL EARLY IN THE PURCHASING CYCLE. THESE ARE THE PEOPLE YOU NEED TO TARGET. While you can optimize your site to show up for these keywords, it is often faster and more cost effective to use PPC ads for these keywords to attract the attention of people looking for a solution to a problem. These are your true PROSPECTS. Once they get to your website, your goal is two fold – educate them in a way that gently pushes them to buying from you and CAPTURE THEIR CONTACT INFORMATION

I’ll go out on a limb here and state the obvious. If you want to grow a business, you need new customer which means you need new prospects, so you obviously need a way of attracting new prospects who are still undecided in their purchase decision.

So what does this mean for you and your ad budget……more on this in PART III