Leadpile’s Blog

Effective June 3rd, Microsoft’s Live Search will be replaced by Bing.

Microsoft describes Bing as the new “decision engine”. Being that Google dominates about 3/4 of the search engine world, Microsoft is hoping to get a bigger piece of the pie with Bing. Bing will emphasize categorization and depth in search results in an attempt to compete with Google for market share in addition to ad dollars. Looking at Bing it looks a lot like Google, but when searching it tends to bring up a little more in depth information. Will the Leadpile publishers and affiliate marketers utilize this new search engine to generate traffic/leads?

In recent news, Google announced some changes with it’s Adwords trademark policy. The new policy will now allow advertisers to utilize trademarked names in their text ads, even if the trademark does belong to someone else. Previously, advertisers could only use generic terms, however with this change advertisers can utilize brand names. There seems to still be some restrictions that Google outlines in their trademark policy. With these changes, Google is now in line with Yahoo and Microsoft, who had already made these changes. This loosened trademark policy is now more in line with standard practices in the offline world.
These new changes to Adwords certainly is something our Leadpile publishers will want to pay attention to.

In a previous post, I pointed out the importance of the Long Tail concept. This concept was coined by Chris Anderson and it states niche products and services in low demand could be the big revenue generators.  Chris Anderson is also promoting businesses to embrace the “freemium” concept.

He believes that anything on the internet will be FREE, and companies will be competing with this idea unless they choose to offer FREE.  According to InternetNews.com, “There are a lot of ways to make money,” he said.  Give a basic version of a service or application away for free, but also offer more full-featured versions.” With a “freemium” type model, a product or service is offered free to a large number of customers hoping a minority will pay for a premium or added-value service.

How could this maybe relate to lead generation or the Leadpile Marketplace?
How about the idea of giving away leads for FREE knowing that down the road this is going to result in a long term satisfied client? How about offering potential great partners FREE web design assistance or custom banners and forms? People get to use the service and understand it’s value, then they want to commit based on their experience with already using the company.” This concept is really not anything new, but maybe in the lead generation business it is time networks look at not just each individual client as a way to make the most money, but look at offering something to clients for free, knowing that the long term benefit to their company is much greater.

Sounds like the idea …give a little, get a lot!

The idea of a “lead exchange” or “lead generation” was not something everyone knew about in the internet world years ago. However, with consumers being online more AND advertisers wanting to get more qualified consumers, lead generation has become a very popular space to be in. The space has been getting more and more competition, and Leadpile is happy to say there have been record numbers that have joined our marketplace and helped to make this marketplace a HUGE success. One major factor in this success is knowing how to effectively match up the consumers with advertisers. According to a recent Leadpile Press Release, “Astoundingly, LeadPile’s MicroClick™ form had 2,628,345 impressions in the first quarter of 2009, or loaded approximately once every three seconds on the Internet.” Leadpile seemed to have found that way to be effective with both the publishers and advertisers, so the consumer wins in the end!
This is great news for our marketplace…
We look forward to the rest of 2009, and look for any feedback to help achieve GREAT success!

GREAT WORK TEAM!

Craigslist took over the top spot for the most searched term that Internet users clicked through to in the United States, during the week ending March 14. Myspace had held the top spot as the most popular term since March 2006.    According to Hitwise, “U.S. searches on the term “craigslist” have increased 105 percent for the week ending March 14, 2009, compared with the same week last year.”  Why is this?  Could this increase in searching “craigslist” be a result of the economic position many consumers are in?  Either way, this is positive for Craigslist!  

So, who will be the next king of the hill?

Publishers in The Leadpile Lead Exchange certainly look at Craigslist as a place to promote their websites and the Leadpile offers. Those that are not, should maybe look into this site as a potential source of traffic.

The economy is bad, and consumers are needing help with their mortgages and debt. Leadpile realizes this, and so does our advertisers/lead buyers. There are loan modification and debt companies out there looking to help more consumers. Leadpile is looking for those people to be matched up with our advertisers to provide these services.

Leadpile Lead Exchange makes it quick and easy for lead publishers.  Here are the offers you can get up and going in minutes.  This is a great way for these consumers to fill out the required information, and be matched up with those that can provide the service to them!

Being that this is a blog and we have an interest in other bloggers, I thought I would point out Time.com’s 2nd annual top 25 blogs for 2009.  Unfortunately, Leadpile missed the list this year, however this list is a very interesting list I thought I would share.

Many Leadpile Lead Exchange publishers are looking at monetizing a blog/website, or are looking for some new content for their sites.  These blogs might be a great place to take a look at for some ideas.

1.  Talkingpointsmemo.com- great source for news
2. The Huffington Post- political blog
3. Lifehacker.com- place to look for tips on making life easier
4. Metafilter.com- blog about anything readers deem important to share with others
5. The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan- very opinionated political blog
6. Freakonomics.com- economic theory and how it really relates to real life
7. Boingboing.com- geeks writing about wonderful things and presenting can’t believe it photos
8. Got2begreen.com- everything green blog
9. Zenhabits.net- blog about ways you can become more productive
10. The Conscious of a Liberal-economist with a lot of great views to share

and more………

Blogs, like all of these, are a great source for information and keeping up to date on current events.  Take a look, you might learn something new!

                  AND                    

It’s that time again….. Leadpile Lead Exchange will be attending and exhibiting at the Affiliate Summit Vegas (January 11-13th). We are looking forward to seeing some new faces and catching up with some old friends. We will be exhibiting at the Affiliate Summit Meet Market on the 11th. Please feel free to stop by and say hi!  We are looking for new partnerships with publishers and advertisers with the 37 or so lead types we are currently working with.  

   Well it is that time again, Ad-tech New York is happening in a little over a week, and it will be represented by all the top advertisers in the country. This conference has been around for more than 10 years bringing together media, marketing and technical professions. According to ad-tech.com, “As the digitization of media continually redefines the business of marketing, it is ad:tech’s mission to provide brand advertisers, agencies, portals, online publishers and technology providers an unparalleled forum – one that supports the exchange of ideas, experiences, new practices, emerging models and expert opinion.”

Leadpile Lead Exchange will be attending the conference. This conference allows businesses to meet current partners and also look at setting up new partnerships. We look forward to seeing old faces and new faces. If you are planning on being there, we would love to see you! Let us know!
Leadpile would also like to say thanks to all the affiliates we are currently working with, and those that come on board with this Brilliant Lead Exchange!

The PPC gurus love the MicroClick ads and especially the MicroClick Form. Why? Because no PPC expert would want their traffic wasted, especially on broken links, or crowded pages with banners and text links. 

We all know that the CVR is extremely important when we pay for clicks. If we pay $3.00 or more on a click, we want to make sure that the consumer is going to click on an add, and go all the way to a conversion – a lead. That is going to determine the profit we make out the money spent on Adwords or any other PPC search engine. 

Our affiliates love the MicroClick Form because it’s co-branded and not only that, it’s compact. Being compact and easy to integrate in a website will maximize their CVR. The “call to action” is there, and it can be added on every single page of your site. That’s important, because you will have the consumer focused on the Form no matter what they read or on what page they are. 

In addition to the Form, we have added the MicroClick Ads. That helps the publishers that have blogs, or any other sites with a lot of content (and the SEO experts know what I am talking about). 

The PPC gurus know how to generate leads, drive traffic and optimize their campaigns. Not all are good designers, or some they are, but don’t have the time to waste time designing new sites. That’s where Leadpile can help again – we design the sites for them, host the site for them, or zip it and send it to them. All the ads and forms are integrated in their site, with no cookie tracking needed – that’s what we call an Affiliate Marketing Revolution. 

Leadpile can give you the real deal, exquisite treatment, no matter how small you are. 

In today’s world there are many things that have changed in a advertising sense. One of the largest changes that has happened is in the way in which advertisers advertise towards women. There are more women in the career role, running a business and buying high priced items for their home. I found this article on Phoenix Business Journal very interesting. For instance, they stated:

*Women business owners spend $1.5 trillion on business purchases.
*In today’s world, age is less important than life stage, e.g., 60-year-old women are dating, 50-year-olds are starting new careers and 40-year-olds are having children.
*Women purchase (or influence the purchase of) 85 percent of all consumer goods including automobiles, investments and computers, which were traditionally viewed as male-domain items.
*Advertising that makes a woman feel uncomfortable about her looks or health will have a hard time reaching an audience willing to purchase its product.

More businesses are realizing these facts and starting to adjust how they market their products online, through television, and print media. In previous years, selling your product or service was something you had to appeal to a man, however as we can see things are changing.
With the Leadpile Lead Exchange we deal with all sorts of lead types and all sorts of demographics of consumers and advertisers. The key for our marketplace to be effective is not only diversify what lead types we are working with, but also understand that publishers doing effective marketing to generate the leads is really important. To do effective lead generation, you must know details about the product and service you are generating leads for, AND you must understand who are the potential people you need to attract in this market.

Ever wonder what search engine terms are used the most? I know I do, and search terms also tell a little bit about what is going on in the world around us. According to dmconfidential, eBay gets the award for the top terms (eBay and eBay.com)in the month of August. People trying to find bargains, or sell items they have I would say is partially responsible for this. Home depot was the next highest term used, followed by mapquest. The shopping/office supplies category received 43.15% of all paid search traffic. The fortunate thing is that this is an 8% increase from July’s 39.81%. Maybe people are staying home and doing more of their shopping online to try and get the best deal, without driving store to store. Business telecommunications and pharmaceutical & medical traffic was slightly up. However, travel and business/legal traffic was down for the month of August.
Another interesting fact, yet not surprising, is that Google accounted for 71% of all US searches in the month of August. In a distant second place was Yahoo with 18.26% followed by MSN (5.32%) and Ask (3.45%).
To truly be effective with lead generation, knowing this kind of information and detailed information about the verticals you are promoting is key to being successful. For instance, someone who is doing PPC for payday loan will loose a lot of money if they are not first aware of everything there is to know about payday loans, and also if they do not understand search engines.
Here at Leadpile, I am going to do everything I can to help publishers know what buyers are maybe looking for in a particular lead type. This helps with how the traffic is driven to the website and ultimately helps with conversions and payouts. Communication with your affiliate manager or account manger is key to running a successful lead generation campaign.