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Written By
Susan Anderson
Performance Marketing / January 17, 2019

Performance Marketing Beats Spaghetti-Throwing, Hands Down

Written By
Susan Anderson
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Performance Marketing Beats Spaghetti-Throwing, Hands Down

 


Performance Marketing Cuts Risk, Amplifies Opportunity

Depositphotos_42235837_m-2015Scaling your business without a performance marketing partner typically involves a whole lot of hoping and praying. You pour money into advertising, then hope and pray the right people see it at the right time and that they’ll take the right next step toward a buying decision. Some call this the “throw some spaghetti against the wall and see what sticks” marketing method. 

If you get good results, great, but you never really know what worked, specifically. Without that information, replicating your results is nearly impossible. Essentially, that means starting from scratch every time - always wondering whether the next campaign will take off or tank.  

In-House Lead Generation Is Risky Because of Testing

It’s not impossible for a company to generate a sufficiently steady stream of leads in-house. But it’s a lot more complicated and expensive than it sounds at first blush. Every step of the sales funnel must be tested to ensure CPA doesn’t skyrocket out of control.

  • Does the audience you have in mind want what you’re offering?

  • Which medium should you use to reach them?

  • When is the optimum time - funnel-wise and calendar-wise to do so?

  • What call to action should you use to get only qualified prospects who are ready to buy to raise their hands?

Testing, by definition, means trying strategies that may or may not work. While nobody wants to watch their marketing and advertising dollars go to waste, it’s guaranteed that some portion will fail to deliver profitable results. Furthermore, it can be difficult to determine how long to let a test run before either pulling the plug or declaring the test a success. 

It’s not unheard of for companies to sink a substantial investment into testing, leaving them far in the red before they close a single sale. But as costly and frustrating as testing is, it’s the only way to get reliable CPA numbers. Without a predictable CPA, your lead generation efforts never evolve past guessing and gambling. 

Performance MarketingFraudulent Leads Leave a Bad Taste in Your Mouth (and Worse)

Just like busy families getting takeout so they can skip time-consuming meal preparation, it’s no mystery why companies go looking for outsourced lead generation solutions when it’s time to scale. The prospect of bypassing the expense of testing and going directly to the part where they talk with prospects is appealing.

In theory, this seems like an ideal way to mitigate marketing risks. In practice, just as you’d feel queasy contemplating ordering out from any place where you’ve gotten food poisoning, a smart choice boils down to trust. It’s crucial that you be able to trust your performance marketing partner - especially in light of the strict regulations governing lead generation and telemarketing.

Unfortunately, not every leads source is ethical. Lead generation can be rather lucrative, and unscrupulous providers believe they can beat the system. They are ever on the lookout for cheap ways to generate leads, legal or otherwise. While they certainly understand that delivering fraudulent and non-compliant calls endangers them and their clients, they are willing to take that risk. By the time they are found out and shut down, they’ve already been paid. The ill-gotten gain in hand, they lay low for a while, then reopen under a new business name.

Word to the Wise: Find a Trustworthy Source of Leads

Bill Cox, VP Performance Marketing for HolaDoctor, said it well: 

There is a lot you can learn from someone's approach and the way they conduct themselves even on test calls. I like to think the people I work with are respectable people but I think at the same time in this wild west, it's easy to get burned from time to time.

Are these fraudsters short-sighted? Of course. Most criminal schemes are. These people could just as easily apply their cunning to doing business above-board, building long-term client relationships that benefit everyone involved. But instead, they are in it for the quick buck, caring nothing about the ripple effect of their greed. 

Performance MarketingWith Performance Marketing, It’s Like Getting to Sniff the Cork First

You could gamble on whether your campaign will yield quality leads - or you could shift that gamble onto the plate of your performance marketing partner and only pay for leads you like. The arrangement is simple. You bypass the risks involved in testing. You know in advance precisely what you’ll pay for every qualified lead.

Then, like smelling the cork before committing to a bottle of wine, every time the phone rings, you typically have a 1-2 minute duration period in which to make the final determination on whether it’s up to snuff. End the call before that duration period ends, and you don’t pay. No longer are you reaching into a grab bag, blindfolded; you’re now only spending call center resources on the leads that are ripe and ready.

Companies that work with true performance-based lead generation experts recognize the practically miraculous nature of what this arrangement yields.

  • They skip past the expensive process of testing and lead generation, jumping right to the point where their agents are on the phone with ready buyers.

  • They don’t pay for unqualified calls, thus driving their CPA down.

  • As they work with their performance marketing partner long-term, they gather more reliable benchmark data, making accurate forecasting easier.

Performance Marketing for a Mutually Beneficial Relationship

Digital Market Media takes a long-term approach to serving our clients. We know that our clients engage us, in part, to protect themselves from the fraudsters prevalent in the lead generation industry.

Our clients know they can get the benefits of scalability without the steep downside inherent in testing. But they also recognize that low CPA means nothing in light of the penalties that accompany non-compliance with DNC, TCPA, and the upcoming GDPR law expansion.

Our long track record also allows us to bring both experience and intel to the table. There are lots of affiliates out there who produce low-quality, non-compliant, fraudulent calls. We know them. We watch them. We participate in an alliance of performance marketing networks. There, we help one another by sharing this sort of information - information our clients don’t have access to on their own.

In fact, we can perform checks in a few seconds where it might be impossible for an advertiser to ever get to that level of intel. Put into dollars and cents, our longevity in the industry delivers considerable savings to our clients.

By placing such high value on long-term relationships with our clients, we’re also able to grow with them. Like becoming a ‘regular’ at your favorite restaurant, the fit gets even better over time as we learn more about our clients’ preferences, CPAs, and results. We understand fully that it’s in our mutual best interest to send only top-quality, fully-compliant calls their way. It’s this commitment to protecting and providing for our clients - even to our own detriment, at times - that drives us.

Performance MarketingDigital Market Media Serves Top-Quality, Compliant Leads on a Silver Platter

With broad experience in 25 different verticals, we know what’s working in lead generation. We can cross-reference our data to make sound recommendations about which medium is most apt to work for any specific market.

By working with a pay per performance partner like Digital Market Media, there’s no need to invest in the team, technology, or testing required to bring lead generation in-house. You simply request the pay per call volume you want to start with and increase it once you’re delighted with the results.

But our dedication to your complete satisfaction doesn’t end when the phone rings. The generous call durations we offer are much like the experience of dining in a fine restaurant. We’re so sure you’ll find the leads we bring you to your liking that you can essentially eat half the dish before deciding whether you like it. We’re confident you will, and that you’ll soon ask for seconds

If you’re eager to make the most of your marketing budget by plugging the profit-leaking holes inherent in team-building, technology, and testing in-house campaigns, we’d like to speak with you. Just click to connect with us, and we’ll help you determine the path forward that makes the most sense for your organization.

 

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