A Zero Sum Game with Lead generation

Online lead generation is thriving. There are now publicly traded lead gen companies, like Quinstreet (valued at almost $500M) and BankRate (valued at $2.4B); a bi-coastal conference – LeadsCon – that now attracts almost 3000 people per conference and was recently acquired in a ‘huge buyout’; and even a silly LinkedIn group that was founded five years ago now has 39,000 members interested in online lead gen!

In sum, lead gen is no longer the ugly step-sister that no one wants to talk about – it’s an established, multi-billion dollar industry that is an integral part of marketing for many, many businesses. Ironically, however, the success of the industry may not be a good thing for most lead sellers. The maturity of the industry is making it harder and harder for “the little guy” to compete in lead gen.

So is lead gen a ZERO SUM GAME ? (refer to my earlier blog "Few definitions relevant to ZERO-SUM-GAME")

As we see it, lead gen has become a “zero sum” game – as the big players get bigger, they take away opportunities for the small players, until eventually, only the biggest players in each vertical remain. Here are five reasons it’s hard for all but the largest lead sellers to survive today:

1: Lead Quality: Simply selling leads is no longer the end game – the end game is selling “quality” leads, generally described as leads that convert into paying customers. I’ve noted this in the past, but lead gen is really a misnomer to describe this sort of transaction, it’s really just a revenue share. For lead sellers, this means that you have to work a lot harder to get paid, and you are constantly evaluated on your ability to consistently bring in quantity and quality.

2: Economies of Scale: Big lead sellers can negotiate better deals with partners and thus get their leads cheaper. They can also “blend” high quality and low quality leads more seamlessly, which enables them to buy and sell low quality leads that a small player could not.

3: Diminished Arbitrage Opportunities: Five years ago, you could buy “San Mateo bad credit refinance mortgage rates” on Google AdWords and potentially be the only bidder on this keyword. Today, a combination of Ad Words changes that largely eliminate “long tail” keywords and much savvier competition makes it unlikely that you can buy a click for $.05 and make $50. Most online marketing arbitrage opportunities have gone by the wayside.

4: Buyer Knowledge: Most large lead buyers now have sophisticated in-house teams and technology to evaluate their lead sources. In some cases, lead buyers are acquiring their leads directly, through in-house marketing teams. The bottom line is this: five years ago, you could still “fool” some buyers with bad leads, today you can’t.

5: Regulation: Federal and state regulations have made it more expensive to operate a lead selling business. CAN-SPAM is the most widely stated example of regulation that has impacted lead sellers, but there’s also been increased attention by the FTC and proposed regulation in Europe that is taking its toll.

Taking all of these factors together, you need to have a pretty large operation to be a successful lead generator. From lead quality technology, business development teams, smart ad buyers, and talented lawyers. Lead gen just isn’t the domain of ‘mom and pop’ shops out of a garage like it once was.

Damaged Online Reputation Recovery

Now that is not what a real estate marketing company would like to recover being an Ostrich after reputation damage. Trying to stop a competitor from using trade dress similar to there trademarked theme brand these companies have got an up-close and unwelcome look at the dark side of the internet specially for the clients.

Blogger pals of their well-connected adversary, including one at a major industry website, blasts for being a bully and filing a frivolous lawsuit, often misrepresenting the circumstances. Some posts generated hundreds of angry responses, and anonymous callers began phoning office, leaving scathing messages. At the low point, one person even decided to inject some personal terror into their life by claiming their relatives had been in a serious car accident. Now to recover form such issues is a tough nut to crack. So here it goes this way :-

When misinformation and rumors circulate about your business, it can dominate your company's search engine results and potentially damage your business, says Michael Fertik, founder and CEO of Reputation.com, an online reputation management firm in Redwood City, Calif.

Such companies must advice his clients to grab as much of their "Google Real Estate" as possible. That means reserving the .com, .net and .org versions of URLs and claiming identities on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and local review sites including Yelp, Google Places, Citysearch and Yahoo Local. You might also want to reserve URLs that pair the name of your business with pejoratives like "sucks,". Businesses can use such vehicles to distribute positive, search-engine-optimized information about their companies, which can push down negative information in search results. In such cases, Global Computer Technologies  also creates several new websites optimized with various descriptions of the company, with links back to the main site to further drive down negative results.

But some rumors keep bubbling back to the top always. Since 2005, members of the Social Network family have been battling a persistent falsehood of their image so as the companies with web based networking. The stick rule is that "The nature of our background makes it believable, but it never happened," company president Elwood Martin says. Global Computer Technologies always extend their hands to the benefits of their customers in all possible ways.