Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

I get the unfortunate opportunity of speaking with a lot of medium sized businesses that have search engine marketing companies handling their paid search campaigns.  Within the last month or so the lies i’ve heard being told to these businesses have been getting more and more outrageous.  I figured i’d share some memorable ones (oh and by the way these lies come from huge companies not just some kid out of his basement selling search engine marketing):

• Everyone showing up on the page pays the same amount per click
• Ads in position 5 get 60% of the clicks
• We are best to manage your campaign because the search engines charge us less per click because we do volume
• We can sell you position 1 for “keyword” for $250/month
• We can host your landing page on our “trusted” domain and that will get you much cheaper clicks
• Most people searching for your keyword will use a geotagged keyword along with what they are looking for ie. “exterminator in San Diego, CA” (Totally not true)
• The more paid search you do the better your website will rank organically
• By having logos on your website like “featured in such and such news source” you will get more & cheaper clicks
• Your cost per click will always be the same
• We manage all of your competitors campaigns so we are obviously the best company to go with

Just a few i’ve heard lately.  Do you have any you’ve heard and would like to share?

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The time has come.  I will be speaking today at Affiliate Summit.  The details:

Local Lead Generation – Heaven & Hell
Session 4a
Location: Margaux 1
Time: 3:30pm-4:30pm

Learn about how local lead generation works as well as the positives & negatives to this often discussed “next generation” of affiliate marketing.

Experience level: Beginner, Intermediate
Target audience: Affiliates/Publishers, Merchants/Advertisers, Networks, Other
Niche/vertical: Local

• Ad Hustler, Chief Hustler, Ad Hustler, LLC (Twitter @adhustler)
• Amanda Orson, Managing Partner, Lacuna Group LLC (Twitter @phillian)

I hope some of my readers will come and check out the session.  It’s always more comfortable having familiar faces in the audience.

Hope to see you there and please spread the word.

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Local lead generation is interesting because of the sheer variety of businesses it can apply to.   Every business has different pricing structures, sales funnels & regulation.  For these reasons you often see very generic landing pages when it comes to any type of “local” lead.  Let’s take a look at a “run of the mill” local lead gen offer that you can find on some affiliate networks:

It’s really not a bad looking landing page.  It’s professional, offers consumer benefits and makes it easy to get an estimate.  However, it’s generic.  This landing page probably sells leads to local contractors so it HAS to be generic so that the lead can apply to many businesses.

I’ve ran landing pages with a generic “Get a Quote” call to action and they typically do generate a good deal of leads.  The problem sometimes become quality.  Unfortunately, just because someone is interested enough to fill out the form does not mean they are a quality lead.  Some people are just surfing around dreaming of remodeling their basement and think they can get it done for $500.  Yea, it’s an unrealistic expectation but MANY consumers have unrealistic expectations about what things should cost.  When running a generic offer you typically get a mix of high quality buyer leads and low quality tire kicker leads.  That’s all part of doing a lead generation campaign.

Adding pricing to a landing page can sometimes heavily BOOST the amount of high quality leads coming through the landing page.  The downside is that it will REDUCE the overall amount of leads you generate.  Let’s use the example landing page above.  The current call to action is “Get Multiple Basement Remodeling Estimates From Local Contractors!”  If I were running this lead gen campaign (and it were possible to do so) I would try adding pricing.  Let’s say that 75% of  basement remodeling projects costs $10,000.  I would try a call to action like “Complete Basement Remodeling Package:  From Only $9999″ and then list what that includes and disclaim openly what the $9999 price gets you and applies to.  What this would accomplish is scaring off the tire kickers and delivering leads to the lead buyer which are MUCH MORE LIKELY TO BUY THEIR SERVICE.

The obvious problem with this is that if you generate less leads you could be getting paid less.  Remember that these leads are much more likely to buy so you may be able to negotiate a significantly higher price per lead or even a percentage of the total sale once the lead buyer realizes that these aren’t crappy leads that your selling.

Have you tried adding pricing to lead gen landing pages?  How did it go for you?

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I’ve been a long time Affiliate Summit attendee.  When Shawn mentioned that I should speak at the last Affiliate Summit I kind of thought he was kidding.  To be honest, before he said that I never really thought about speaking at a conference.  Well, the time has come and I will be speaking alongside the lovely & intelligent Amanda Orson.  The name of the session is “Local Lead Gen: Heaven & Hell” and will be on Sunday of Affiliate Summit West 2010.  I’ve been writing about local online advertising for quite some time now so if you have any questions about my local online advertising series, bring them and i’ll do my best to answer any of your questions.  I hope to see some of this blogs long time followers there.

In anticipation of this speaking gig I will be doing some more local online advertising/lead gen posts leading up to the event.

For those of you who have made it this far, Affiliate Summit has provided some passes for AdHustler.com to give away.  I will give away 1 gold pass this week.  To enter simply leave a comment on this post.  Friday 12/10/2010 I will put the names of everyone who left a comment in a bowl and draw a random winner of the pass.

Good Luck and start commenting.

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Google is one of the most popular and successful online advertising systems on earth.  In the past they only offered traditional pricing models for ads (cost per click & cost per thousand impressions).  In a first move towards un-traditional Google pricing they are offering a product called Google Tags.  What these tags appear to be are upgrades to Google Places accounts.  Traditionally all Google Places listings look pretty much the same.  They show up in traditional search as well as on Google Maps searches.  Google Tags seem to offer higher visibility to the Google Places listings.  I would compare this best to old phone book listings.  In the phone book if you want your listing in bold or in a square or whatever you pay a premium to do so.  Google Places listings themselves are free but by adding a tag you can highlight important information you want a consumer to see about your business.  The cost is a flat rate of $25 per month.

I personally think it’s an interesting product to offer.  I don’t see it as super useful to most people but to businesses who depend on Google Places listings for their traffic it could very well be worth the investment.  I know some affiliates use Google Places so this product might be an interesting one to know about.  The big downside I see is that all the snakeoil local search & SEO salesman are going to come out and attack local businesses saying they can get them on Google for $100 per month FLAT RATE.  They’ll just sell them a Tag and technically they won’t be lying.  This should further confuse local mom and pop shops.

Have you tried Tags?

More info about Google Tags

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