Leadpile’s Blog

As we are all now figuring out is that if we visit a website or fill out anything online, a million other people are going to have this information about us. Being in the online lead generation business I know that if you fill out something online you will be someone that most likely will develop a lot of new “friends” that email you. However, visiting certain websites and that being tracked, is something totally different. Should companies be able to track your information online so they can better understand your online behavioral trends? Should this be something that the Federal Trade Commission regulates?
No matter what you think is right or wrong, the FTC is now looking at regulating those that are tracking our online behavioral information. Being in lead generation, we all know that the benefits of lead generation are not the initial requests the consumers are filling out, yet it is the additional remarketing that is the attractive part of capturing the lead information. However, should companies have the right to capture all your internet activity to potentially use to remarket you? Many think the answer is no, therefore this is what is promoting the FTC to look into enacting a new law.
Agree or disagree?

Consumer’s fear of sharing personal information is on the rise. Sites selling consumer’s data to irrelevant advertisers who in turn spam or misuse the data often fuel this fear. The TRUSTs seal has become a well-known symbol of verification over the past decade.

Dealix, an auto lead generation site conducted a 90 day test using the seal and saw a 7 percent increase in conversions. Placing the seal at the front end of your funnel helps ensure consumers their data is being protected, especially when a credit card or social security number is required.

TRUSTe requires sites that utilize the seal to have links to their privacy policy and seed TRUSTe to ensure the consumers data is not being mistreated.

It will be interesting to see if the TRUSTe seal is the next trend in the online lead generation space.

We have all spent a nice amount of time on YouTube enjoying some videos made by people like you and I. Somehow some of these videos make it into the spotlight and get national attention. The good news for these sorts of filmmakers is that they might be eligible to receive cash from the famous video site. News reports are stating there might be some monetary motivation to create some great videos for YouTube. It seems that if your video is “likable”, then the peeps over at YouTube could reach out to you to discuss being paid for your video. This is in an effort to help motivate video makers to create a better quality video for their website. Good move or something that will just create some craziness amongst video makers?

We know YouTube is a great place to market yourself, your company, or simply have fun. Enjoy Leadpile’s YouTube videos!

Yahoo and Zillow are combining forces to make Zillow the exclusive sales partner to existing home sales advertisers on Yahoo. This partnership will form the largest real estate ad network for existing home advertisers. According to ClickZ,  Zillow which currently offers enhanced listings and profile pages for agents, will also be included on Yahoo Real Estate placements. Zillow’s for-sale listings, showcase ads, and featured listings will also be fed to Yahoo’s site. Yahoo Real Estate and Zillow currently rank second and third among top real estate sites, Realtor.com tops the rankings.

The two companies have worked together since 2006, and partnered separately with a large percentage of the same newspaper site publishers.. Bringing their resources together to become one bigger better force will logically be a positive move.

Twitter has made the decision to ban third-party advertisements on its site in an effort to keep control on the integrity and monetization of the site. According to PCWorld, Twitter is building a firewall that will block out the advertisments that tarnish the coherent “timeline”. As this change may help with the amount of “spam” you receive in your timeline, it also appears that Twitter would prefer to make money with its “Promoted Tweets platform” this change will restrict just anyone from posting their own advertisements.

Twitter has listed these 3 reasons as being behind this decision:

• Preserve Twitter’s unique user experience
• Focus on long-term monetization, rather than the short-term goals of third parties
• Ditch covering all costs of maintaining its network — third parties apparently shoulder little responsibility

Those who will be/will not be affected by this new change:

• Services that do not generate revenue, or do so without advertising (such as subscriptions), will not be affected.
• To pay, groups can establish a revenue split with Twitter or agree to license their data stream. Using Promoted Tweets is encouraged.

The fine details — such as minimum fees and revenue splits — have not been established and Twitter is likely to implement fees on a case-by-case basis.

LeadPile team members all have Twitter pages that can give you information regarding new or exciting offers before anyone else!

To follow us on Twitter:

LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/Leadpile

Mari Holt LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/mari_leadpile
Eugen Ilie LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/Eugen_LeadPile
Natasha Aronov LeadPile Twitter Page: http://twitter.com/N_LeadPile

You better stay on your toes when it comes to keeping up with social media and it’s newest players.
This could be great for restaurants, stores, local hangouts and bars if this sort of next generation social media emerges successfully. Businessweek.com broke it down on what this new social media “service” is all about. “Foursquare, a 20-person company that operates out of a crowded loft in New York’s East Village, adds a game-like twist. Its 1 million-plus users earn badges by “checking in” at certain bars, restaurants, and other venues by pressing a button on the app upon arrival. A user can earn a “mayor” icon from a bar if he or she has checked in more than anyone else during the previous 60 days. The business model is simple: Generate as big a user base as possible and sell national brands and local merchants on the possibilities of marketing to people as they congregate—ready to eat, shop, or spend.”
The next thing we know we will have sales people cold calling to these establishments trying to get as many businesses on their “route” for people to go to. This is a great idea and I don’t think I have heard of anything else like it. Negatives to it? If you are someone that does not like people to track your every move…. IE things such as Twitter (as some call legalized stalking), this might not be the thing for you.
Pat on the back to those over at Foursquare for coming up with something truly innovative, and we will see what the next BIG THING will be in this wonderful internet world!

We are always keeping up on the social media industry, but the one thing that has stood out is how can you really make money with it? Interesting study out by social media management company Virtue, each Facebook fan is valued at $3.60. Those that are looking at utilizing social media need to be conscious of what the true value is of having these fans, and is it really worth the marketing effort to build your fans?

Here’s some interesting Facebook math:

So what this means is that the value of Facebook to companies can be enormous if built up correctly. Instead of thinking how many fans can I have on Facebook as just a competition thing, now maybe companies should start looking at the number of fans they have really equals revenue in their pockets.

Twitter has exploded over the past few years, empowering news to travel at nearly lightening speed.  Over 50 million people post on Twitter per day right now!  But this big question has always been, what are their plans for a business model?  Well, the latest news is that companies will now be able to advertise on Twitter.  This plan for advertising will start with 10 companies including Starbucks, Virgin America and Best Buy.

The advertising program will be called Promoted Tweets.  The ad-matching and pricing formula for this advertising has not been announced yet, but preliminary discussions indicate a CPM pricing model.  As they continue, Twitter will likely seek other alternative ways to charge advertisers.

In the new Promoted Tweets program, when a company pays for a tweet, the promoted message will appear at the top of the results, regardless of the time it was written.  Promoted Tweets will also appear in the organic Twitter stream rather than on the side like other social networks promote.  Additionally, they will also be highlighted so that companies have the capability to respond if conversations turn negative.  It is still unclear how these promoted posts should appear, but it may be based on topics, geographic locations or shared interests.

Much more to come on the Twitter Promoted Tweets program, but affiliate marketers all over are likely “tweeting” about how to capture this audience even more with this new program!

Working in lead generation it is really important to know who your client is and who you are are trying to target. Unfortunately, what happens with many networks/agencies is that they are wrapped up in generating as many leads as they can, they are not focusing on who they are targeting. Knowing the consumer that you are targeting, does it really matter that you don’t know the ins and outs of what the consumer is you are marketing to? Many would say it is not totally important, but I feel knowing as much as you can about your target market/consumer can make or break the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.
APNews seems to agree. “The independent Marketing Tracking & Maximisation Specialist also found that Marketers around the world classify ad agencies into three groups: (1) the Result-Drivers who truly believe that the primary purpose of a campaign is to deliver the bottom line results of their clients, and do whatever they can for that (35%); (2) the Result-Pretenders who claim they believe in making campaigns that deliver results, but are internally not prepared to put in place the relevant systems and processes to do so (43%); and (3) the Dreamers who still live in old “Adland” (22%).” There were also 3 weaknesses identified in those that are not truly focusing on the actual result of their consumers:
1. The customer insight is not deep enough
2. Too award driven and not enough customer focused
3. Not effectively tracking to know what is working with each media campaign

Bottom line: know your customer and what advertising is working effectively. This applies to lead generation or any other marketing techniques where you are trying to target consumers.

In previous years, marketing strategies involved companies utilizing direct mail as a source to reach consumers. However, it seems to be going extinct because of it’s lack of effectiveness and cost. Today, companies are using email marketing and other direct marketing sources as a way to reach new consumers. Many however are still planning on utilizing direct mail as a source to get new clients, however the other source to generate consumer is growing at a much faster pace. The bottom line is, the economy seems to be heading in the right direction, which means marketing budgets can start coming back to now generate more customers. Any other marketing methods that are seeing a downward trend from the economy? Mail can’t be the only marketing method being affected by the nation’s struggling economy? Leadpile is certainly seeing the affects of the economy and it’s traffic coming in, so maybe this is affecting all sources of marketing.

Those five words seem to be to most said that day after the Super Bowl. It seems as if people are more interested in watching the new television ads rather than the actual Superbowl (unless your team is playing or you have money riding on it, of course!). This year does not seem as if it is going to be any different. According to a Nielsen survey, 51 percent of viewers are more interested in watching the Super Bowl for its ads, rather than the actual game. The survey also shows that viewers are more likely to remember the ads that are shown in the first quarter rather then the second, third, and fourth (the fourth having the least recall, only at 25 percent). Most of the ads that show in the fourth quarter tend to have similar ratings to a regular television commercial.
So how much cash is being shelled out this year? For a thirty second spot, it will cost an advertiser three million dollars. When spending that type of money for such a short period of time, advertisers are trying harder than ever to make sure that their commercials are remembered. Companies such has Papa Johns got creative by taking this years Super Bowls roman numeral and turning it in to a new pizza offer. Super Bowl XLIV will now be a Papa Johns Xtra Large four(IV) topping pizza. Boost Mobile is giving consumers a sneak peak of their ad on YouTube, for hopes that it will create excitement and buzz before it is aired during the game. Brands are also trying to use social media more for their Super Bowl advertising. Marketers are realizing that social networks is a great way to have people buzz about a product and get the word around.
It is interesting how on a daily basis so many of us will skip through the commercials, but for the Super Bowl we sit down to watch them. Some of the big players that you will see this year will be Frito-Lay, Boost Mobile, Diamond Foods, and many more. It is very important that brands are taking the time to make sure that they are remembered and are coming up with new and creative way to advertise. LeadPile has also been working hard to create new successful offers, however unfortunately we will be sitting this one out with advertising during the Super Bowl. Wishful thinking uh?
Now the only real question is, are you going to be watching it for the game, or the commercials?

In recent news, Leadpile is getting some great recognition from Revenue Performance Magazine. Here is a recent press release from December 11th:
Revenue Performance Magazine today ranked LeadPile as a Top Ten Performance Marketing Network in the United States in the Advertising and Marketing Category with 10 or fewer employees. LeadPile ranks the #1 Ad Exchange in the prestigious Revenue Performance Blue Book Top 20 rankings. The list is designed to provide some answers, by aggregating expert views, traffic data, and measures of industry influence.

LeadPile joins MediaTrust, ShareASale, Commission Junction and NeverBlue in the top ten list. LeadPile is the premier Lead Exchange, providing a central marketplace for the buying and selling of targeted consumers or “leads”. According to Revenue Performance Magazine, LeadPIle was selected to the celebrated Top Ten List because of its size, growth, and simplicity it offers both buyers and sellers of leads.

Eugen Ilie, LeadPile’s Marketing Director, says, “We are honored to be included in such an important publication as Revenue Performance Magazine. It is a testament to our team that we have been evaluated on our overall influence and reputation, and have earned the spot decided on by so many industry experts. It is our goal to continue to live up to such an honor, and our entire organization is committed to continuing to leverage our position in multiple verticals within the industry.”
LeadPile is the premier Lead Exchange, providing a central marketplace for the buying and selling of targeted consumers or “leads”. The Company, also ranked by Inc. Magazine as the Number 3 Company in the United States in the Advertising and Marketing Category with 10 or fewer employees, is the world’s largest exclusive online lead marketplace. LeadPile offers the lead-gen space the first ever, secure, online centralized location for buyers and sellers of exclusive leads to engage in an efficient, exclusive, lead exchange.