What might sound good to advertisers doesn’t excite media outlets.

By Peter Feinstein

I was deep in conversation with a prospective client when he asked me a question only two other prospects/clients had asked me in the past decade: "Would media outlets prefer to receive a higher bounty for a sale or a lower payout on a lead?"

The answer: Media outlets always prefer to be paid on leads, or better yet, on calls. They don’t like being held responsible for a call center or Web page's ability to close a sale. While they're fine with being held accountable for the number of calls or leads, they despise advertisers who want to pay them per sale.

When we approach our media partners with a per-call/lead/sale deal, they know that they are going to be paid a specified amount per whatever it is we've told them – either per call, per lead or per sale. So, whatever that "per" is, the outlet’s only concern is how many it is going to generate. While clients think it's the coolest thing since sliced bread to pay a media outlet $100 per sale, the media are thinking, "I'm probably not going to see much out of this, so I'm not going to give them very many runs."

When the sales report on the following Monday shows only two sales, and we, in turn, report that to our media partners, they tell us outright: "Yeah, that offer was lame. We're not going to run it any more." Now multiply that scenario times 100 media outlets and you can see how quickly a per-sale program can fail.

 Here's the big picture so you can see the dynamic in full flow:

1.      We give the per-sale offer to 100 media outlets, paying $100 per sale.

2.      They run the offer sparingly, because they don't think the call center can close many sales.

3.      We get the sales report on Monday, and it shows that there were only five sales – one each from five different media outlets.

4.      We now have five media outlets that managed to eek out some revenue, while 95 get NOTHING..

5.      As soon as we report those results, 80 of the outlets cancel the client's runs, leaving us with 20.

6.      The next week the same thing happens; only this time, there are only three sales.

7.      When we report the results, 17 of the remaining outlets cancel, leaving us with only three. So we cancel.

8.      We give the client back his or her unused deposit, and everyone walks away a loser: The client spent a bucket-load of money on its sales systems, call-center scripting and dubs for the media; we expended time and effort trying to get the media to do something they weren't that thrilled with from the start; and the media participated only half-heartedly. It’s not a happy day.

A Winning Scenario.

By contrast, when we do a per-call or per-lead program, the dynamic is nearly 180 degrees different.

 1.      We give 100 media outlets a program that pays them $15 per call.

2.      The media decide to give it a lot of runs figuring it'll be easy to make the phone ring and get paid.

3.      We get our call report the following Monday morning and see that we generated 600 calls.

4.      Of the 100 media outlets, 92 made money – and they're excited about running the ad even more the next week. We can tell the eight that didn't get any calls that if they give the commercial a few more runs, they'll make money too. They say they will.

5.      We have 100 percent participation for a second week, and this time we generate more than 1,100 calls and make money for every single media outlet.

6.      Here's the kicker: Since the client's call center answered so many calls, the operators got a ton of on-the-job training and close more sales; their conversion ratio went up by 2 percent, which made the client more sales than expected.

7.      Since the client made more money, it gave us another $1 per call to pay to the media – which allowed us to pay more to our current outlets and attract new, bigger outlets.

8.      You guessed it, the following week we nearly doubled our numbers and the campaign goes on for more than seven years like that. Everyone, and I mean everyone, makes a lot of money!

Sound far-fetched? This is an actual scenario – the kind of thing my agency uses to build business and, more importantly, our clients' and media partners' businesses.

If your business is looking to do a performance-based program, don't be so quick to fall into the per-sale trap. Talk with someone who knows what they're doing and can guide you through the benefits and pitfalls – so you don't end up making a business-ending series of mistakes.

Peter Feinstein is president and chief executive officer of Phoenix-based Higher Power Marketing. Reach him with questions or comments at 1-888-501-5544 or pf@hpowermarketing.com.

By David Gervase

In today’s slower economy, businesses are often looking for ways to squeeze a few extra pennies out of their direct response campaigns. Unfortunately, this often involves the marketer cutting back on their ad spending, lowering their operational overhead, or possibly decreasing the quality of their product. The good news is that there are more effective and profitable solutions to this widespread problem.

Lackluster online campaigns can be easily tweaked to become profitable by looking at three specific areas; landing page optimization, traffic sources, and post-transactional upsells. Optimizing just one of these items can easily boost the ROI by 15-20% or more.

To start the landing page process, try to identify one traffic source initially to optimize. Start off with 4 to 5 different layouts and styles for the website. Evenly split test the traffic between those various versions to ensure that each version receives the exact same type and quality traffic. After a certain amount of time or visits, the best design will become apparent. At this point you can take it a step further utilizing multi-variate testing where you’ll be able to test a number of on variations of the same page at once.

By utilizing geo-targeting and A / B testing on your traffic sources,  you’ll be able to determine which online channels are generating the most profitable traffic for your campaigns. With proper testing you’ll be able to analyze the difference between Facebook ads running in the evening to customers living in NY and your banner media buys on CNN.com. Tracking your results and testing a wide variety of sources will ensure that you maximize the potential of the campaign.

Take the time to look into improving your campaign before you start cutting back, and you can easily improve its ROI and increase its lifespan.

Revenue Surge has perfected an extremely effective turn-key process that generates incremental revenue on web site and call center sales transactions with 3^rd party upsell offers. Not only will this benefit your company with incremental profit, but your customers enjoy added value from their shopping experience. The Revenue Surge platform is simple for you to implement – we do it all!  Our high click-thru and conversion rates can dramatically increase income from your current sales.  Because there are no start-up costs, maintenance fees or long-term contracts, this is a risk-free way to maximize profits.

For more information, contact David Gervase at 919-418-0908 or dave@revenuesurge.com or visit us at www.RevenueSurge.com

Forecasting Call Volume-One Call Center Stands Out!

Direct Response clients are looking for a call center to forecast calls accurately…that call center is Great Falls Marketing. 

By Steve Mondor

The Direct Response industry relies on phone calls.  The more the phone rings into a call center the more sales that can be made and greater revenue can be achieved.  All is well and everyone is happy, right?  What many call centers fail to do is forecast the incoming calls with the various type of media accurately.  It is hard to find a “canned” solution that works effectively.  This is where Great Falls Marketing comes in.

GFM has developed a home grown proprietary call forecasting/agent scheduling system that accurately forecasts call volume for all media types.  Great Falls Marketing CEO, Scott MacCheyne says, “Our home grown system is not a spreadsheet rather an online application that is unique to the DR Industry.  The biggest expense for a call center is labor and the biggest expense for our clients is media.  Our system is designed to ensure these two components work together to reach our goal each and every day by delivering “best in class” service on the sales and operational side of our company.” 

Great Falls prides themselves in their top notch, state of the art reporting and forecasting systems that allow more calls to be answered and less calls abandoned.  MacCheyne adds, “It’s simple, proper scheduling results in greater calls answered; lower call abandonment and increased client revenues.  GFM is a “pay for performance” company; which means if we don’t make a sale for our clients, they don’t pay and we don’t get paid.  We strive to maximize profits one call at a time.”

The call forecasting/agent scheduling system developed by GFM was developed to address the complexity of the different call delivery patterns of various media types and takes a scientific and systematic approach to call forecasting.  Great Falls CFO, Mike Frautten adds, “Every call matters to us.  We understand that abandonment is part of the business, but our job is to make sure we are on top it every minute of the day and our clients reach their revenue goals."