I sat down with Robert Alvin, CEO and Founder of NetLine Corporation (where I work), to better understand all sides of the lead generation market. Robert has more than 20 years of experience supporting the needs of B2B marketers globally and commonly describes the vendors vying for marketing budgets as the good, the bad, and the ugly:

“I often tell our Marketing Team that the only thing that matters is ROI. Find the best method to generate the best ROI with scale—scaling being the killer—and we’ve got a winning strategy.” – Robert Alvin.

But, of course, that’s easier said than done. To gain a better perspective on the marketer vs. publisher side of lead generation, Robert and I started at the top:

Amanda: This year, 42% of marketers reported obtaining enough quality leads as their biggest challenge. Starting first with volume, as lead generation vendors are typically selected for their reach, what concerns does volume present for publishers?

Robert: Typical web publishers, and even print publishers, have an audience that is traditionally semi-static. That’s not to say that they can’t grow or attract new users, but driving traffic to a website is based on having content, and the awareness that there is available content, and paying for it…In today’s competitive, high cost-per-click world, it can be tough for a web publisher to justify paying for search and display to drive traffic to their website.

Amanda: In regard to the “quality” factor of that statistic, how does lead quality impact a publisher’s reach?

Robert: When it comes time for [marketers] to buy leads from a web publisher, [marketers] want the best lead [they] can get. Therefore, [marketers] specify targets that systematically pair down the publisher’s audience with their lead requirements. Geography, Industry, Company Size, and Job Function are standard profile sets, but sometimes getting so specific can cause the publisher to only be able to deliver a handful of relevant names.

If [marketers] choose an ABM-based campaign, then they don’t need to specify the industry and company size because they will only provide a finite list of acceptable company names. But, if the [marketer] can’t come up with a list of tens of thousands of companies, then there is a good chance that they have limited the publisher’s relevant audience to less than 5% of their total audience.

…But this may work well for you if you only want to run a few small lead generation campaigns. The bottom line is that the publisher can only do a finite number of emails, if they can target at the required level, and limit display placements to generate enough of the right leads for [marketers] before exhausting their entire audience.

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Amanda: Outside of setting audience filters, what other measures are taken to ensure lead quality?

Robert: These days many of NetLine’s clients want us to filter out duplicates as part of their campaign requirements, which means we won’t send them a lead we have already sent in the past. So, if a publisher’s audience is only growing or changing by a few percentage points over the course of a live campaign, then they can’t provide the clients with a significant amount of new leads since their audience will quickly become exhausted.

Plus, if [marketers] are paying a cost per lead (CPL), then this is definitely a diminishing return for the publisher and eventually [marketer].

Amanda: So, your observation of B2B marketers is that they want a continuous flow of new, high volume, quality leads that meet their demographic target attributes. But, from the publisher’s perspective, how can they possibly deliver on all of those requirements?

Robert: [Publishers] can rent an email list or buy the names. But publishers that do this are just acting as lead brokers who end up selling these leads with very thin margins. This approach almost always blows up in their face. They could be just buying some names for ten to fifty cents each and selling them to you at $25 or more per lead.

Amanda: The use of call centers is a hot topic today—what’s your opinion of using this tactic for increasing lead generation scale?

Robert: The real savior for publishers today is the use of 3rd party offshore call centers in a foreign country that have access to huge databases with very inexpensive labor for calling as many names as needed to deliver the leads you want. In general, there is nothing wrong with using a call center, and there are pluses and minuses to employing these offshore teams. But don’t [marketers] want to be told about it?

Amanda: So, while you’re in favor of the call center—you’re concerned that marketers are not being made aware of this channel of lead generation for their campaigns?

Robert: Today many publishers are telling their clients that they generate all their leads from their website, mailing list, newsletter, etc. But are they really? If you want to know the truth about where your leads come from you could ask, but I have heard that not all vendors are being honest and upfront with their clients.

Amanda: How can marketers ask the right questions when it comes to selecting lead generation vendors?

Robert: Start with these basic due diligence questions:

• Where and how are you generating my leads?
• Are you going to sell me purchased lists for my campaign?
• Are you going to use rented lists to generate the leads for my campaign?
• Are you going to use a call center to generate the leads for my campaign?
• What technology differentiates you from your competitors?

Amanda: As you mentioned before, what if the publisher is not being honest — then what?

Robert: Anyone with a website and who sends emails has access to every audience interaction including their IP address, the type of device used for browsing, and a host of other audience-specific information.

If you can’t get this information, then you need to question the tactics for generating your leads. If you can get this information, you still need to beware that they could be appending vs. collecting the data, unfortunately.

Amanda: Thank you, Robert. These are really important aspects for B2B marketers to consider. Any closing words?

Robert: As someone who believes that unethical behavior typically comes back to bite you in the butt, I would hope all lead vendors would be honest if not transparent about how they’re getting you the leads they’re selling you. Knowing the truth and getting the required results is a win-win for all.

In Summary:

Partnering with digital publishers to amplify the reach of lead generation campaigns is a proven form of audience extension for marketers. However, just like any other company, marketers need to know that publishers also struggle with scale and are solving for this challenge in different ways.

In order to achieve scale and net new lead generation while meeting your set of target criteria, publishers may choose to:

• Rent Email Lists or Buy Prospect Lists: There are obvious concerns of quality and intent of these leads, but also why waste your time with a middleman in this scenario when you could perform these tactics yourself without using a publisher?
• Enlist Call Centers: Many marketers cringe over this idea; however, working with call centers has several benefits, including access to huge databases, low costs, and quality lead generation.

At the end of the day, there is always the possibility that marketers don’t care where their leads are coming from. If the Sales Team is getting the leads they need and the ROI is decent, then why do you, the marketer, need to dig any deeper? It all comes down to your company’s goals, requirements, and ROI.

If you care about capturing true intent-based leads and maintaining a certain brand image, then understanding where your leads are coming from should be very high on the priority list. Marketers need to educate themselves on the good, bad and the ugly of lead generation. Whether you are looking for a new lead generation vendor or unclear on your current vendor’s practices, you need to ask the right questions.

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The post The Marketer Vs. Publisher Side of Lead Generation: Know Where Your Leads are From appeared first on Relevance.

While more business is always a good thing, these pressures have translated into real challenges for many who struggle to understand how to accurately package and present their audience demographics outside of general website traffic metrics. This is, of course, necessary to attract and land deals with major advertisers in today’s competitive content marketing landscape.

To win accounts and beat the competition, publishers must follow a three-part strategy: get the data, analyze the data and present the data. In other words, the major challenge for today’s publisher is data.

What Data?

Never before has data been so important.

Digital publishers need to start taking targeting seriously. The age of mass blast, one-size-fits-all traditional advertising and editorial is over. Top B2B advertisers need to know what publishers can offer other than the basic traffic statistics. CPMs are taking a back seat to audience demographics.

Starting with the basics, you must have traffic trends (sessions, time on site, new versus repeat, etc.). Next, to attract high-paying B2B advertisers, the professional attributes of your audience play a major role.

In a B2B marketing predictions article, Abby Perkins predicted growth in micro-targeting for 2015. She posited that “Micro-targeting uses data to help companies better understand – and market to – groups of specifically targeted audiences [which] allows businesses to modify content and messaging more accurately to customers’ actual preferences and needs.”

Industry, job area, job level, company size and geographic location are the new norm for audience demographics. A media kit is wasted without the inclusion of these professional profiles of your audience.

Get the Data

Developing data-driven professional profiles of your audience is critical. Publishers that choose to assume the demographic makeup of their audience, rather than using real first party data, will quickly realize what happens when you make assumptions.

To acquire data, you first need to capture it. If you’re just getting started, you could survey your audience. Survey Monkey provides excellent free and paid tools to solicit feedback directly from your readers. Beware that this can be costly and time-consuming.

A second way to capture demographic data is to ask for it via a form in exchange for premium content. This format requires a more advanced platform to capture, store, and analyze the data than simple surveys, but is well worth the investment if you’re in it for the long haul.

Google Analytics is an excellent tool for standard traffic trends and basic demographic information. Bonus: Their new “Interests” statistics report affinity categories and in-market segment data.

Analyze and Report the Data:

Depending upon your data acquisition tool, gathering and analyzing the data may or may not be challenging.

To effectively report audience profiles, publishers need to surface the key insights from the acquired data sets. For example, audience insights might look like this:

• 40 percent are engineering professionals
• 25 percent are in IT
• 5 percent are C-level executives (decision makers)
• 10 percent work for large businesses with +10,000 employees

This quick hitting data set provides direct insight into your audience for B2B advertisers.

Presenting the data is the final step in landing a big ad campaign. An official media kit is the best method for delivering your insights. Publishers can choose to publically display a media kit on an “Advertise” page or more privately on a per request basis delivered as a PDF.

Search Engine Journal is an excellent example of a well-designed, all-encompassing media kit. The Advertise page is effectively designed to segment the wide attributes of their audience, calling specific attention to the largest categories.

Audience Intelligence Reports Break the Mold

Just this month, the B2B Publisher Network RevResponse released a new audience analytics tool for all publishers. Available directly in the publisher’s dashboard, Audience Intelligence Reports provide an on-demand profile of their audience with data points such as industry, job area, job level, company size and geographic location—never before seen in the space and typically only available through a paid third-party service. Audience Intelligence Reports are designed and optimized for direct inclusion in media kits for publishers.

“Audience analytics and visualizations based on first party-sourced data will provide our publishers with a solution that keeps them informed of their user’s attributes, interests, and needs at any given time,” said Vice President of Audience Development for NetLine, David Fortino. “Audience loyalty and engagement is difficult, at best, these days. Offering our publishers direct access to the composite profile of who their audience really is will be invaluable to them.”

We’re not done with 2015 yet; don’t let the pressure crush you. Instead, arm yourself with data-driven audience insights to crush the competition.

The post Content Marketing Obsession Puts the Pressure on Publishers appeared first on Relevance.

Audience Assumptions

You may think you know your audience. Maybe you even developed personas based upon specific ideal target markets. But today we are focusing on the real data.

Micro-targeting is expected to be a top trend for B2B Marketers this year – and guess what you can’t do without actual audience data? Micro-target.

In a B2B marketing predictions article, Abby Perkins predicted growth in micro-targeting for 2015. She posited that “Micro-targeting uses data to help companies better understand – and market to – groups of specifically targeted audiences [which] allows businesses to modify content and messaging more accurately to customers’ actual preferences and needs.”

Do you know the demographic profile of your audience – their occupation, job level, industry? The answer for many digital publishers would probably be, “No, but I’m sure they look like X.”

But we all know what happens when you assume, right? Aside from the over-played ass jokes, making assumptions about your audience (rather than using real data and analytics) leaves money on the table – a lot of money. Let’s stop making an ass out of ourselves and start making more money with audience demographics.

General Audience Demographics

Demographics begin with a broad scope of basic population stats including gender, age, household income and education. Moving a level deeper, demographic data can also tap into professional profiles. In the B2B marketing arena these rich, professional level attributes are extremely valuable for data-driven, high-quality lead generation.

Forbes found that advertisers who adopt data-driven marketing are nearly three times more likely to see increased revenues as a direct result. Seventy-four percent of leaders in this area also felt that data-driven strategies lent them a competitive edge in customer engagement and loyalty.

As a digital publisher, your ability to capture and report deep levels of demographic insights on your audience will directly translate to greater opportunities to attract top B2B advertisers. Not only is this level of data applicable to your advertisers, it should also be very meaningful to you as the publisher; utilizing this data can have a huge impact on your audience and your wallet.

Taking it Further: Professional Level Demographics

There are many free and paid tools today that provide the basic level of demographic data needed to analyze your audience. In B2B marketing, though, professional level demographic data is essential for micro-targeting (e.g. occupation, job level, industry and company size).

But professional demographics are on high demand for B2B advertisers and hard to come by, which correlates to higher payouts for publishers when available. Publishers that can present professional level data to advertisers (e.g. via a media kit) will have a significant competitive advantage and the highest earning potential.

Which tool(s) will provide the best source of accurate and up-to-date demographic data? Narrow your search by setting the following criteria: specific demographic data points, levels of reporting and access and – most importantly – your budget. Browse this list of tools to begin your search:

Free Demographic Data Tools

• Google Analytics has always been an essential tool used to understand onsite behavior. Now, with the release of “Demographics and Interests,” Google has a stronger set of audience insights. Currently, the demographic stats include age, gender and interests, combined with the existing geographic, browser and device data.
• Quantcast provides basic demographic information such as age, gender and household income breakdowns, along with audience interests.
• Publisher networks that run content syndication and lead generation campaigns are highly focused on collecting rich data attributes for clients. If you are looking to join a new network, do your due diligence; dashboard reporting, analytics and audience demographics are major features you should look for. RevResponse, a B2B publisher network, is just one example of a network that provides all partners with free audience intelligence reports and detailed professional level data insights such as occupation, job level, company size, industry and country.
• Survey Monkey is a great tool to use if you want to solicit information directly from your audience. Survey Monkey allows for custom survey creation along with access to their expert-certified profiling templates. Both free and paid services are available.

Paid Demographic Data Tools

ComScore is the gold standard in web demographic data. A ComScore subscription will allow you to accumulate very detailed data in a number of categories. Unfortunately, this data is very expensive to acquire; an annual membership can cost +$25,000.

Make It Count

This year, digital publishers have a critical role in delivering targeted audiences to advertisers on top of their primary goal to fulfill the world’s hunger for informative and entertaining content. This responsibility involves great opportunity, high earning potential and endless competition. Therefore, now more than ever, the focus is on data, personalization and micro-targeting.

As a digital publisher, your competitive advantage relies on presenting the audience profiles that advertisers are looking for. Take the time to develop a data-driven profile of your audience today to truly understand your own business and how to best monetize it.

This article originally appeared on Business 2 Community.

The post Dear Publishers: Stop Making Assumptions About Your Audience appeared first on Relevance.