Ask up-front, accept with grace

Marketers are under significant pressure to generate trackable ROI on online ad campaigns. This isn't easy when most online media charge for impressions or clicks, which may never convert to leads.

Cost-per-lead (CPL) campaigns enable marketers to pay solely for leads. And while online lead-gen is stigmatized – mostly for lack of transparency among customers and marketers – the industry is growing twice as fast as the overall market, projected to surpass $2 billion in 2008.

Lead-gen campaigns are typically deployed through a third party. Many such brokers deprive you of insight into campaign placement and performance, which is what damages brand integrity and erodes ROI.

Here are tips for launching and managing effective online lead-gen campaigns. Following them will yield the best of both worlds: the transparency of CPM/CPC advertising and the cost effectiveness of CPL.

1. Demand complete insight into campaign reach.

Broad reach is the logic behind why TV and radio planners emphasize ratings, why print publications detail circulations, and why sites provide impression data. It’s no different for CPL campaigns.

Before deploying an online lead generation campaign, make your vendor provide:

• Detailed, individual listings of the publishers and networks most appropriate for your campaign.
• Relevant metrics for each venue: Monthly impressions, average CPL, average lead volume/day and other figures to help you better allocate your budget as you go.
• Screenshots of media venues. This ensures your ads are contextually relevant to the environment. Appearing in an inappropriate space can hurt brand integrity. Notably, last month Adrants reported the appearance of Disney ads on adult webcam sites.

2. Take control over optimization.

Like any other form of online advertising, the ability to optimize campaigns is crucial to success. Make it clear to your vendor that you need:

• Access to real-time reporting that outlines spend by publisher.
• Real-time visibility into campaign lead volume and CPL.
• The ability to turn campaigns on and off with a single click, at any time.

3. Make sure your leads are valid!

The US Census bureau estimates 44 million US residents move each year. Phone numbers get recycled in as little as 30 days. And many people deliberately submit the wrong contact information online.

Your lead-gen vendor should validate every lead for an accurate name, email address, domain and phone number. Try to avoid using a purchased, pre-compiled contact list — likely loaded with well-spammed people — or elicit information from people in a deceptive way. This is part of what makes customers lie about emails and phone numbers.

People should know what they are signing up for. Knowing they'll get a newsletter, and not a free iPod, helps earn their trust.

4. Centralize set-up.

Nobody has time to set up and manage multiple campaigns with different vendors. Centralizing saves time.

Insist on transparency. Your connection for lead generation campaign set-up and management should allow you to personally view and optimize individual publishers from a single dashboard. Pontiflex has this kind of technology for CPL; Yahoo is building a similar platform for search, display and mobile advertising.

Properly set-up CPL campaigns enable more flexible customization and testing than a CPM banner effort would. Centralized reporting lets you view publisher performance at a glance.

5. Follow up expediently.

• A follow-up call or email within 24 hours is the best practice in the industry.
• Integrate your lead management system with a Sales Force automation tool, email database or CRM solution API for real-time transfer of lead data. Vtrenz, Eloqua and VanillaSoft can also help convert leads.

Online lead generation is bound to grow more rapidly as fists tighten amid financial concerns. With these guidelines, marketers can generate ROI while conducting campaigns in a simple, ethical and effective way.

Arun Krishnan is the VP of Marketing for Pontiflex, a lead generation marketplace that emphasizes transparency.

Next week, MarketingVOX How-To will detail Firefox extensions that help with SEO, analytics and other ways to keep tabs on an internet campaign.