Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

I’ve been designing a lot of lead generation offers for various types of businesses lately. Designing a lead gen offer isn’t as easy as it sounds. A lot of the time it’s the OFFER part which get’s complicated. I do a lot of lead generation for complex sales. By complex sales I mean expensive items like cars, homes, medical procedures etc.. Sales that don’t take place over the internet with a credit card or with an instant decision. The problem that comes with creating an offer is HOW are we going to convert a potential prospect into a lead?

Let’s take for example an expensive motorcycle. Let’s name this motorcycle the “Hustler 1.” The Hustler 1 costs $22,432. Its an awesome bike. It’s not unique though, all of the motorsports shops sell the Hustler 1 for just about the same price. If there is a price difference your talking about $100 difference, nothing major. So how do we generate a lead on an expensive ass item with no real unique properties. Not only is the bike not unique, neither are the businesses selling them. They all have the same value propositions.

The reality here is that you have 2 major strategies to sell this sucker:

1) The Straight Up Info Sell: You design a landing page that has all of the information about the bike including the price and really anything that the prospect would want to know about buying it. You include a contact form and phone number and hope the price is competitive enough to generate a lead.  If you actually DO have a killer price compared to the competition, this tends to do well.

2) Withhold Information Sell: You design a landing page that withholds information that the potential buyer really wants to know. For instance a statement like “Ride the Hustler 1 For As Low As $149/month.” Although the bike is still $22,432 maybe a prospect will look at the $149/month and say, “Hey I can afford that, whats the details about this deal?” – Once they are thinking about affordable payments they aren’t worrying as much about the actual price.  Then maybe they fill out the form or make a phone call inquiring about this deal.

Both ways are perfectly legitimate ways of generating a lead or making a complex sale. They are just totally different strategies.

Here’s where the conflict of interest comes in:

• You as the lead seller or internet marketer usually want to get paid for your services (a lead) – The more leads you generate the more monies you make.

• The seller of the item wants to sell their items – The more items they sell the more they can spend on coke & prostitutes.

• You have a vested interest in seeing the seller succeed because the more items they sell the more leads they buy (sometimes, not always).

• The seller of the items has no vested interest in seeing you succeed because quite frankly they don’t really care about you.

So which style of landing page is better?

With the direct “Straight Up Info Sell” often times you WILL sell product.  Since the page is kind of a salesman in itself, it relies very little on the business selling the products to “make the sale.”  A lot of the time once someone turns into a lead off of this style of landing page, the sale is already made because the person has all of the information (or most of it) to make a decision.  This is good for the business, not so good for you as the lead generator.  The reason it’s not as good for you is that there are a lot less leads generated but the quality tends to be a lot higher.  Less tire kickers, more buyers.

With the “Withhold Information Sell” you can generate a lot more leads.  You’ve peaked people’s interest and now they become a lead. to get more information  Personally if it were my product being sold, i’d probably want a landing page that was more this style.  Although the quality of the leads will be a little lower at least you get the OPPORTUNITY to work these leads into a sale instead of never making any contact at all.  The unfortunate thing is most businesses (especially on a local level) have a hard time selling.

As the lead seller you can make money either way.  You can charge less per lead for a higher quantity of leads or more per lead for a lower quantity of leads.

I hope this opened some peoples eyes about how to generate leads for a complex sale.  Any questions?

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Affiliate Summit East 2011 is quickly approaching.  As always I am doing my best to get a party list together so you can stay entertained on your trip to New York.  I have a feeling that the party scene is going to be a little more subdued.  From what I know, networks are hurting and probably not going to be throwing down a lot of cash on open invite parties.  That means less parties and the ones that are happening will be more exclusive. If you’re a network having a party, hit me up to be included in the list.

On my trip to Vegas I attended Affiliate Ball.  It was unlike any “affiliate party” i’d seen.  It was more of a concert and a much different experience then any other affiliate event i’d been to.  They had big name acts playing like Three 6 Mafia.  They also had Too Short & Digital Underground for their Ad Tech San Francisco party.  The point of this story is that they are doing Affiliate Ball again in New York.  It’s a party to actually get excited about since there is gonna be some awesome artists not just scantily clad girls (who you’re never gonna get) walking around serving shots.  The venue is locked down (although undisclosed for now) and the artists are booked (your gonna love the lineup).  AdHustler.com will have passes and VIP tickets as the event draws closer so stay tuned.

Affiliate Ball is also still accepting sponsors for this party and judging the turnout at the Vegas party, this is probably the event you want to throw some money at if your looking for a sponsorship opportunity (Packages range from $250-$20k so there is something for every size company).  Email info[{at}]affiliateball.com or call 818-825-3972 and ask for Darren if you’re interested.

Here’s a video of Three 6 Mafia at Affiliate Ball Vegas:

Disclosure: No financial compensation was received for this post. Affiliate Ball may however be providing tickets & some VIP spots/exposure for AdHustler.com. Ad Hustler was NOT asked to write about this event but rather offered because of the quality of the party and value to the community.

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