double POSITIVE Marketing Group, Inc.

Post By
Sean Fenlon

Who?

What?

When?

Where?

How?

Sometimes Why.

The questions above are used by journalists to capture all the most significant information about a story.

Why?

Why is on the list too because I wish to emphasize its double-meaning (i.e. “A,E,I,O,U, and sometimes Y”)

Let’s see what Google thinks about these questions vis-a-vis auto-suggest:

 

Who?

What?

When?

Where?

How?

Why?

Post By
Sean Fenlon

Earlier today, during a DoublePositive pizza lunch, I asked my fellow lunch-mates to name their favorite movie.

Wait. “Favorite” or “Best” they asked.

Good question.

Here’s my best/favorite list of all time:

1. The Wizard of Oz
2. West Side Story
3. The Sound of Music
4. Star Wars
5. Empire Strikes Back
6. Amadeus
7. Back to the Future
8. Raiders of the Lost Ark
9. Rocky
10. The Karate Kid
11. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
12. Caddyshack
13. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
14. Jackass 2 The Movie
15. Borat
16. The Holy Grail (Monty Python)
17. Goodfellas
18. Dumb & Dumber
19. Jerry Maguire
20. The Great Escape

Honorable Mentions

1. Pulp Fiction
2. Memento
3. Exorcist (not a “favorite” in the classic sense but always in awe)
4. Exit Through the Gift Shop (still in theaters)
5. Blade Runner
6. Ghostbusters
7. Fight Club
8. Rain Man
9. Raising Arizona
10. V is for Vendetta

I was curious to scrub my subjective picks against a more objective source.  I decided to use the American Film Institute’s Top 100 list as the objective source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI’s_100_Years.100_Movies

But I completely disagree with their Top 5 films of all time.

I just checked my theory with Google Insights.  It appears I’m right. :-)

SPF

Post By
Sean Fenlon

It was a pleasant surprise to come to work today and see a late-night conversation I had at LeadsCon East 2010 with my friend Mike Ferree reflected on his blog.

Mike’s LeadCritic blog has blossomed in parallel with the blossoming of the LeadsCon franchise.  While chatting, we were reminiscing about how far the Lead Generation space has come since the first LeadsCon in 2008. 

But before LeadsCon there was the (now almost forgotten) UN-conference Leads2007.  And before Leads2007 the progressive visionaries at TARGUSinfo had launched their annual Online Lead Quality Summit (now re-named Interactive Insights Summit).

After the 2nd TARGUSinfo Summit in 2007, I remember being amazed by how different people used different basic terms (such as “lead” or “click”) to mean different things.  It prompted me to write a blog post titled “What is a Lead, What is Lead Generation”:

http://blogs.doublepositive.com/2007/09/24/what-is-lead-generation-what-is-a-lead/

I have always been of the mindset that there is no such thing as a “Lead Generation Industry” per se.  I believe that the Lead Generation ecosystem is actually a subset of the ADVERTISING industry, and that buying and selling on a per-lead basis is actually buying and selling performance-based advertising.

I tried to provide a history of the Advertising Industry evolving to Performance-based Delivery Models in a blog post written in June 2007 titled “Online Performance-based Marketing Overview – Part I” (I never did complete Part II but that is a different story ;-)).

Despite my blog-based lecture and the early tradeshows, in 2007 there was still a great deal of confusion around even the most basic terms and concepts such as clicks, leads, and lead generation.  Here’s a quote from my experience at the TARGUSinfo Summit in 2007:

A conversation I had with the CEO of a major shopping engine was referring to an Internet user “clicking” on a link to visit a the site of an e-commerce retailer as a “lead.”  I found that rather strange use of a the lexicon – we have always referred to such a phenomenon as a “click” and pricing models are this type of user action are typically Cost-per-Click (CPC).

My confusion was compounded when I witnessed a panel-discussion about “lead quality,” but the advertiser on the panel only paid out when a sale occured:

Later in the day, ValueClick and Scholastic, Inc. gave a case study of how offers made for Dr. Seuss books in a co-registration environment resulted in completed “sales.”  However, in the PowerPoint presentation, they referred to the completed sales as “leads.”  We have always referred to transactions that are fully-completed online as “sales” and this type of user action are typically priced as Cost-per-Sale (CPS).  Another way to support this position is to think of yourself as an advertiser that ONLY pays the advertising cost when a sale is completed – I don’t think you’re too concerned with “lead quality” since the quality is essentially perfect every time you are asked to pay.

I summed up my frustration by defining the absolute differences between a click, a lead, and a sale:

A lead is NOT a click.  A lead is NOT a completed transaction.

A lead IS a consumer’s “Expression of Interest” in a product or service offer.  Using this definition, an “Expression of Interest” is typically represented by an action or form-fill process (anywhere to 1 field of contact information such as an email address to dozen of fields of information).

Of course, if there is confusion amongst simple terms/concepts such as clicks, leads, and sales, you can imagine my frustration over the past 6 years with a market that tended to conceptualize a LIVE Hot Transfers as nothing more than a very expensive lead.  We even designed a special diagram to illustrate the distinct difference of each method of buying and selling.  Many of you may have seen this slide before because we use it every chance we get:

In my conversation with Mike at LeadsCon, we both agreed that while the space has matured (and the tradeshows have grown), there is still a great deal of uncertainty and confusion in the meaning of words we use everyday in performance-based marketing.  As a strong industry advocate, Mike decided to use the voice of his blog to try galvanize a lexicon and thus improve communications across the industry.  I admire him for that and I hope that I can aid the effort.

It’s a simple concept but one worth pounding on over and over.  I like to work backwards from the demand-side of the equation with the concept that ALL leads cost money but only some will actually make money. 

At the end of the day, a consumer buys a product or service or they don’t. It’s absolute.

However, there are other absolute milestones along the way… was a consumer presented with an offer or weren’t they (CPM)? Did they click on the ad/offer or didn’t they (CPC)? Did they express interest by taking an action or didn’t they (CPA/CPL)? And my personal favorite… did they agree to be transferred and speak to a sales rep or didn’t they (CPT)?

Of course there are countless dependencies and nuanced correlations in the shades of gray in between those milestones that can be analyzed and optimized, but I feel as though identifying the absolute milestones in the wireframe of a sales funnel is Step 1 and Position A.

EPILOGUE:

In Mike’s post, he playfully refers to me as “Maestro,” presumably referring to my academic music background.  While I’m dubious the new nickname will stick, I had to share the irony that I just recently completed a BUSINESS book titled “Maestro.”

This short book by conductor Roger Nierenberg uses a symphony orchestra as a metaphor for any dynamic organization (business or otherwise).  He describes “The Music Paradigm” for developing organizations.  I found this book to be 100% consistent with my experience in symphony orchestras and dynamic business organizations – I highly recommend it.

If, however, you are more of a viewer and less
of a reader, this TED presentation by a different Maestro Itay Talgam touches upon many of the same concepts and tenets.  It’s an excellent video presentation with a wonderful final example of world-class leadership by Leonard Bernstein beginning at about 19:00.

If you love something, give it away.

Cheers.

SPF