B2B companies crave leads. Good leads. Quality leads.

At the right price.

Both Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and Buyer Hubs/Lead Generation sites offer opportunities to cap the Cost Per Lead and gain some control (which is not as easy in other media, save Direct Response.)

In this case, when I am referring to “Buyer Hubs”, I am not talking about B2B Directory listings (even enhanced listings), but rather sites where buyers go to submit a Request for Quote from multiple vendors. I acknowledge that some sites have a hybrid model of RFQ forms and enhanced directory listings. This is about the leads paid for in the RFQ model.

Examples of Buyer Hubs are BuyerZone and VendorSeek. Examples of hybrid Directories and multiple-vendor lead generation sites are MacRAE’S Blue Book and Bitpipe (Bitpipe is not technically an RFQ site, but leads can be fed to multiple vendors when non-vendor-specific content is requested such as a white paper or guide.) A B2B Directory website example is ThomasNet.

I have seen many situations where the Cost Per Lead produced via a Buyer Hub is significantly less than leads generated via PPC. I’ve seen a few situations in the reverse as well.

But, are all leads created equal?

Consider the following Pros & Cons of each (in relation to generating high-quality leads):

Pros

PPC:

One of the primary benefits of PPC is control, with all of the following advantages:

Buyer Hubs:

• Cheaper – Often hubs can provide a cheaper Cost/Lead than other marketing channels.
• Outsourced Marketing – Hubs exist only if they attract website traffic, and they spend time and resources on their SEO, PPC, and Social Media efforts. You may find that you can allocate your own resources in areas that your hub partners do not dominate.
• Pre-Screened & Pre-Qualified – Depending on the hub, a visitor may have been forced to go through a series of screens where they provided detailed information about their needs. Some hubs may also offer call screening as part of their process, where someone calls and verifies that there is a real company, a real person, and a real need.
• Returns – Hubs will often allow you the opportunity to “return” a lead that you feel was not qualified enough and did not meet your needs as specified in your selection of their categories and qualifying criteria. If successful, you will get the money credited back to your account. There is no ability to do that with PPC!

Cons

PPC:

• Cost – Obviously this will depend on the keyword space, bidding strategies, your offers, landing page optimization, etc., but often leads generated via PPC have a higher Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) than leads provided through RFQ hubs.
• Frequent Management – To achieve great results, PPC requires time and creativity.

Buyer Hubs:

• Your Competitors & Conversion to Sale – When leads are cheaper via a hub than via PPC, it is most likely because the leads are being sold to multiple parties. You may pay only $20 per lead, but your competitors may be paying the same amount, for the same leads. Now you are in a definite bidding for the leads coming through this channel.
• Targeted Messaging Control – The hub may provide some very detailed screening questions that users have to fill out before being allowed to submit their request, but those questions may not be your questions. Without control over your messaging (on the hub and by bringing them to your Landing Pages), the quality of the leads may be less.

The real test

In the end, you should not benchmark your leads by Cost Per Lead. This is a mistake I see all too often, and colleague after colleague confirms that they see the same thing with their clients. You have to take the time to analyze the quality of the leads and determine your Cost Per Sale.

If you don’t take this time, then you may be making the wrong decisions about where to invest your lead generation budget.

If you visit Google.com today you may see a Google Doodle (logo) for St. Patrick’s Day. Here is a picture of the special St. Patrick’s Day Doodle for this year:

Google is not the only search engine with a special logo. Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com all have logos.

I have some additional logos from others in the industry at the Search Engine Roundtable. Also, if you want to see the St. Patrick’s Day logos from the past 6 years or so, you can see them at 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004 archives.

Ute Schaedler

So Many Affiliate Programs! Which One Do I Choose?

Ask questions first before you join an affiliate program.

Do a little research about the choices of program that you intend to join into. Get some answers because they will be the deciding point of what you will be achieving later on.

Will it cost you anything to join?

Most affiliate programs being offered today are absolutely free of charge. So why settle for those that charge you some dollars before joining.

When do they issue the commission checks?

Every program is different. Some issue their checks once a month, every quarter, etc. Select the one that is suited to your payment time choice. Many affiliate programs are setting a minimum earned commission amount that an affiliate must meet or exceed in order for their checks to be issued.

What is the hit per sale ratio?

This is the average number of hits to a banner or text link it takes to generate a sale based on all affiliate statistics. This factor is extremely important because this will tell you how much traffic you must generate before you can earn a commission from the sale.

How are referrals from an affiliate’s site tracked and for how long do they remain in the system?

You need to be confident on the program enough to track those people you refer from your site. This is the only way that you can credit for a sale. The period of time that those people stay in the system is also important. This is because some visitors do not buy initially but may want to return later to make the purchase. Know if you will still get credit for the sale if it is done some months from a certain day.

What are the kinds of affiliate stats available?

Your choice of affiliate program should be capable of offering detailed stats. They should be available online anytime you decide to check them out. Constantly checking your individual stats is important to know how many impressions, hits and sales are already generated from your site. Impressions are the number of times the banner or text link was viewed by a visitor of your site. A hit is the one clicking on the banner or text links.

Does the affiliate program also pay for the hits and impressions besides the commissions on sales?

It is important that impressions and hits are also paid, as this will add to the earnings you get from the sales commission. This is especially important if the program you are in offers low sales to be able to hit ratio.

Who is the online retailer?

Find out whom you are doing business with to know if it is really a solid company. Know the products they are selling and the average amount they are achieving. The more you know about the retailer offering you the affiliate program, the easier it will be for you to know if that program is really for you and your site.

Is the affiliate a one tier or two tier program?

A single tier program pays you only for the business you yourself have generated. A two tier program pays you for the business, plus it also pays you a commission on the on the sales generated by any affiliate you sponsor in your program. Some two-tier programs are even paying small fees on each new affiliate you sponsor. More like a recruitment fee.

Lastly, what is the amount of commission paid?

5% – 20% is the commission paid by most programs. .01% – .05% is the amount paid for each hit. If you find a program that also pays for impressions, the amount paid is not much at all. As you can see from the figures, you will now understand why the average sales amount and hit to sale ratio is important.

These are just some of the questions that needed answering first before you enter into an affiliate program. You should be familiar with the many important aspects that your chosen program should have before incorporating them into your website. Try to ask your affiliate program choices these questions. These can help you select the right program for you site from among the many available.

Read More

• Affiliate Marketing Rules
• Affiliate Marketing and Pay Per Click
• Affiliate Marketing And Home Business
• Affiliate Marketing Tips
• The Life Of An Affiliate Marketer

Continuing to improve and emphasize its search capabilities, Facebook today announced the inclusion of an auto-suggest feature to its search box.

Just as it does in other settings, the auto-suggest appears as you type a query. But, with some Facebook content and connections behind a wall, the question is, Where will auto-suggest look for suggestions? Here’s Facebook’s explanation:

Now as you’re typing in a query in the search bar, you will instantaneously see results not only of the people, events, groups and Pages you’re connected with but also the connections of your friends and globally relevant results.

So, from my profile page, I get these results as I start to type the word “search.”

Facebook says auto-suggest is rolling out to all users over the next few days.

Last summer, Facebook began to emphasize search more broadly across its site, and its redesign last month put search front and center on the user interface.

Instantly see how well your website’s pages are optimized. The free Yield SEO Analyzer is a great place to start. It thoroughly evaluates your pages and provides easy-to-understand advice about what you can do to rank higher in search results pages. It’s a great first step toward a better optimized website. Get started today!