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Today, we are running on Active Rain’s home page to ask Realtors, what they want to see in a lead generation program.  We’ve been providing marketing services to real estate agents since 2001, and feedback from our network of thousands of real estate agents helps guide our product offerings. We offer a variety of marketing programs to meet the marketing needs of individual agents, and you have the opportunity to influence our lead generation products.

If you could control the manner in which you purchase leads, which features would you like to see? What would you change about your current lead generation programs?

1. Lead-Buying Controls
   1. Pricing
   2. Geo-targeting
   3. Budget caps/lead volume controls
   4. Starting/stopping ad campaigns
   5. Cancellation policy
2. Lead Quality Controls
   1. Contents of a lead (name, phone #, etc)
   2. Lead validation
   3. Credit policy
   4. Lead scoring/ratings
3. User Interface Functionality
   1. Viewing & managing leads
   2. Reporting
4. Customer Service & Account Management

We appreciate all feedback, and we look forward to hearing from you.  Click on the links below to learn more about the suite of Reply! lead generation products.

Reply! Real Estate makes lead generation simple to use for even the busiest real estate professionals. Within 5 minutes you can set up your account and begin receiving leads. In 3 easy steps you can pick the areas in which you wish to receive leads, how many prospects you want to receive monthly, and you can even track, manage, and follow-up with all your contacts. You ONLY pay for valid leads, and you will always have 72 hours to return a lead with invalid contact information.

Realty Now is a great solution for part time agents who are new to lead generation. With this program, you can view all the leads in your area FREE of charge. You can pick only the leads you want to purchase. And best of all, you only pay for the leads that you pick!

Reply! Lead Marketplace: The Reply! Lead Marketplace is our newest product, and we place control in the hands of the Realtor. The Reply! Lead Marketplace system uses dynamic, auction-style pricing, which allows real estate professionals to choose the price they’re willing to pay for each type of lead. Learn about the additional controls at www.Reply.com.

You can check out the feedback “live” from real estate agents here.

While there have certainly been rumors flying around our office (and probably yours, too), it became fact yesterday: Chrysler announced that 789 of their 3,188 dealers nationwide will be forced to close.  This is a 25% reduction in their retail network, and I’m guessing it represents close to 40,000 people losing their jobs.  Once the list became public (click here for a PDF copy), I immediately printed it out.  All forty pages, stacked higher than any other stack of papers on my desk, now stares me in the face with a big black binder clip holding it all together…this report is too large for a staple.

It’s been stated that between Chrysler and General Motors, the two automakers will close roughly 3,000 stores nationwide.  I guess that means when I print out the General Motors list, I’ll need to take it to Kinko’s and have it spiral-bound.

This is, without a doubt, a sad day in history.  My heart goes out to all the dealers and their families that have been impacted by this announcement.  As I scrolled through the list, I spotted at least two dealers on each of the forty pages with which I’ve spoken at one point or another over the past five years, and I’m shocked at some of the names on this list.  On an afternoon conference call with a business partner of Reply!, we learned that this company’s largest local advertiser (a Chrysler dealer) was also shut down today.

So what does this mean for us?  In my opinion, it means the auto industry is approaching rock-bottom—and I say that in a positive way.  With all the stores that have closed—and all that will be closing—the domestic dealers left standing should be healthier.  I am also hopeful that the remaining dealers embrace performance-based advertising and invest in media where they can measure the return on their investment.  At the very least, consumers know they can get a good deal on a new car right now and demand for consumer leads should be maintained, as dealers will fill in the gaps to service new consumers.  More consumers buying means more dealers selling, and that’s a step in the right direction.  We look forward to providing dealers with a highly-measurable online marketing platform for the acquisition of locally-targeted Enhanced Clicks™ and leads.

I could continue sharing my opinions, but I’d like to hear yours.  Please share your comments with us.

 According to this Google post, they have improved their GPS-like capabilities to overlay local search results on a map.  Google guesses your location, then provides a set of search results based on your IP address and uses their best guess to return appropriate searches.   The purpose of the feature is to assist with searches like restaurants, dentists, flowers, etc.

I feel the need to rehash some our previous post that laid out issues with Google AdWords and Geo-Targeting.  We all know that Google offers the most widely-used solution for search and cost-per-click advertising (AdWords). But when it comes to local advertising and geo-targeting—especially by the smaller advertisers—Google has huge challenges:

1. Google is far-from-perfect when it comes to geo-targeting. In fact, our data shows that when we geo-target, only about 50% of the traffic comes from the intended geography.  We frequently purchase county, city, zipcode, and zipcode+radius. Google relies on IP filtering, and the problem with IPs is that they are frequently wrong and don’t represent the geography where the user is located.
2. Google is complicated, and it takes experts and an expensive infrastructure to become SEM-ready, especially if you integrate geo-targeting. This may be fine for large advertisers, but not every company can make that investment in technology and personnel.
3. Geo-targeted clicks on Google are practically cost prohibitive. This is especially true for small advertisers with little to no history using AdWords. A national click for Chevrolet or Window Replacement may cost Reply! less than $1.00, but the same click—if geo-targeted for San Diego—may cost us as much as $5.00. On top of that, given the account history with Google, our sophisticated landing pages, and the associated quality scores we enjoy, we receive substantially lower minimum bids than new and smaller advertisers.

The fact is, to date, the online advertising platforms (including ad networks and ad exchanges) have done a less-than-adequate job enticing locally-targeted advertisers to move online. Up to this point, online acquisition processes are simply inefficient and too complicated for non-experts.

So here is the Reply! solution:

1. We offer the consumer the opportunity to better define their search. For example, if the consumer is searching for “Chevrolet” and has come to us from Google, we ask them to tell us the type of car they are interested in and their location. Simple. We need this in order to deliver the consumer to a much more relevant page that has perfect geo-targeting and qualifies the consumer as intentful.
2. Better yet, any business currently acquiring consumers online can take advantage of Reply!’s Click Marketpalce. If a business acquires a consumer outside their serviceable area, they can redirect the click through our platform and recover their advertising investment. To the consumer, the experience is seamless and they can be guaranteed of landing on a website where they have the best ability to receive the product or service in which they are most interested.
3. Using the Reply! Marketplace, advertisers are able to bid for a click or lead. Given that we generate category-specific traffic, the advertiser has no need to manage keywords or complex technology. They simply tell us if they want clicks or leads, specify the geography, and provide their desired bid and budget. This setup takes no more than three minutes, and results in highly-efficient and profitable access to precisely-targeted online consumer traffic.

Reply!’s solution helps the consumer gain access to the most relevant result, and helps the advertiser gain access to category-specific and locally-targeted traffic.  We have spent almost two years developing the platform for clicks and leads, and have filed over seven patents, with full belief that our solution can act as a catalyst to moving significant dollars from offline to online.  With our more-efficient platform we can drive higher profits—while eliminating advertising waste—for all those involved.

In fact, Peter Burris, a Forrester Research analyst of information technology has recently been interviewing Reply!’s customers, and described Reply!’s inventions as “just plain smart.”  Furthermore, Reply! was recently covered by Forrester in their “Hot Companies To Watch: Q4 Update, Profiles Of Emerging Companies And Technology Trends That Tech Vendors Need To Know About,” by Chris Andrews.

Here is the challenge Reply! is solving: make locally-targeted advertising simple and profitable. For example, a Chevrolet dealer may only be interested in consumers in close proximity to their dealership, while a national brand such as Honda may also be interested in locally-targeted traffic so they can generate more consumers in areas where they have significant inventory sitting on the lots.

We all know that Google offers the most widely-used solution for cost-per-click marketing. But when it comes to local advertising—especially by the smaller advertisers—Google’s Adwords has some challenges:

1. Adwords is far-from-perfect when it comes to geo-targeting. In fact, our data shows that when we geo-target on Google, only about 50% of the traffic comes from the intended geography. Google relies on IP filtering, and the problem with IPs is that often they don’t represent the geography where the user is located.
2. Google is complicated, and it takes experts and an expensive infrastructure to become SEM-ready and take advantage of Adwords in a profitable way. This may be fine for large advertisers, but not every company can make that investment.
3. Geo-targeted clicks on Google are practically cost prohibitive. This is especially true for small advertisers with little to no history using Adwords. A national click for Chevrolet may cost Reply! less than $1, but the same click—if geo-targeted for San Diego (mind you, Google will send over 50% of the traffic from outside of the selected area)—may cost us as much as $5.00. On top of that, given the history of our relationship with Google, the sophistication of our landing pages, and the associated quality rankings we enjoy, we receive substantially lower minimum bids than new and smaller advertisers would. A new advertiser would literally pay two to three times the cost-per-click that Reply! or other large and established advertisers would spend.

The fact is, to date, the online advertising platforms have done a less-than-adequate job enticing these locally-targeted advertisers to move online. Up to this point, the online systems built for that purpose are simply inefficient and too complicated for non-experts.

So here is our solution:

1. We offer the consumer the opportunity to better define their search. For example, if the consumer is searching for “Chevrolet,” we ask the consumer on the landing page to define the model and the location. We need this in order to deliver the consumer to a much more relevant page.
2. The same solution is offered to other websites where consumer demand is generated for “Chevrolet + specific location.” So, if the host site doesn’t have a service provider for that make and location combo, the click can be monetized through our platform, and the consumer can seamlessly land on a relevant page vs. being confined to the limited relationships offered by that specific service.
3. Using our platform, advertisers are able to bid for a click or lead. Given that we generate category-specific traffic, the advertiser has no need to manage keywords. They simply tell us if they want clicks or leads, determine the geography that they are interested in, and provide their desired bid and budget. This set-up takes no more than three minutes to complete, and results in highly-efficient and profitable access to precisely-targeted online traffic.
4. We use both click and lead bids in our system to determine the winning bid. In the case of leads, we estimate the yield per click and go through all available bids in a real-time auction. The system automatically delivers the traffic to the highest-yielding and most relevant alternative.

Reply!’s solution helps the consumer gain access to the most relevant result, and helps the advertiser gain access to category-specific and locally-targeted traffic.

• Get clicks through Reply! for a fraction of Google’s cost-per-click
• With Reply!, there’s no need to build expensive infrastructure for SEM
• The Reply! solution delivers precisely-targeted traffic

We have spent almost two years developing the platform for clicks and leads, and have filed multiple patents, with full belief that our solution can act as a catalyst to moving significant dollars from offline to online and from less efficient online alternatives to Reply.com. I’d like to think that our success in this area can be great for online marketing as a whole. With our more efficient platform, we can drive higher profits—while eliminating advertising waste—for all those involved.

As always, I welcome your comments.

  Tuesday December 2nd, at 11am,  Payam Zamani, CEO and  Brian Bowman, CMO, will be interviewed by ActiveRain Community Builder, Brad Andersohn, and Rich Jacobson. For more information check out their blog post.

From their post, “Most real estate professionals here on ActiveRain have fairly strong opinions about lead generation companies, some who have enjoyed good experiences, as well as those who have had not-so-good experiences.

Now is your opportunity to actively engage in conversation with one of the company’s who are aggressively guiding lead generation into the next century!

For further details, check with Rain Radio.”

You can listen to the radio podcast interview below

Below is Reply!’s presentation from Ad:Tech 2008. Additional posts from our time spent at this year’s Ad:Tech can be found here:

• ad:tech “Analyzing the Exchange Marketplace”
• ad:tech “The Great Transfer of Wealth: The Transformation of Local Advertising”
• ad:tech “So Many Ad Networks, So Little Time: Analyzing the Digital Network Landscape”
• ad:tech “Follow the Money – The View from the Buy-side”
• ad:tech Keynote, Shelly Lazarus, CEO Ogilvy & Mather
• Brian Bowman speaking at ad:tech NYC next week

Reply! had a great time at the Digital Dealer Conference & Exposition in Dallas TX, last week.   As you can see from the pictures, the booth was well attended and the Dallas Maverick Dancers brought excitement and energy to the booth.  Congrats to Richard Rikess from Cobalt for winning the official, signed Nowitzki jersey.

Our presentation on “Is Auto Lead Generation Dead?” was well received. With so much advertising waste, few in the audience were surprised that lead generation is rapidly moving towards a lead exchange and marketplace. Clearly, lead generation has evolved and the days of no controls, fixed prices, and locked contracts are quickly fading. Several audience members shared their frustration at having to purchase leads without any understanding of quality, and that led them to frequently switch between lead providers.

Payam was interviewed by Mortgage Online Blog (Owen Raun and Bill Rice) to discuss his professional background, Reply’s business, his perspective on Lead Exchanges and the future of lead generation.  The interview goes into detail on why Reply! launched a lead marketplace, how our system works and why Lead Generation 2.0 will overtake traditional lead gen.

Click here to listen on the WebClick here to subscribe and listen in iTunes

From time-to-time, I check out Dion Hinchcliffe’s blog.  Today, I came across an interesting graphic that lays out his view of the Evolution of Networked Applications and Business.  What does this have to do with performance advertising and lead generation??  Everything!!! Reply! believes the old-school way that small- to medium-size businesses have used to acquire customers online is changing rapidly.  The days are numbered when realtors, car dealers, lawyers, doctors, etc. advertise on Google just to see their name appear in the right column without measuring their performance and understanding the financial return for their media spend.    As anyone who has bought clicks from Google knows, setting up a campaign to buy clicks is easy, but measuring performance and optimizing the advertising spend is extremely difficult. Consider, for a second, the plethora of technologies that are necessary to make CPC advertising work:

• Bid Management:efficient frontier, did IT, iCrossing, Marin, DoubleClick, etc.
• Keyword Expansion: AdGooroo, SpyFu, WordTracker, Google, iSpionage.com, etc.
• Landing Page Optimization with Multivariate Testing: Google, WideMile, Offermatica, etc.
• Quality Filtering: Targus info, eBureau
• Click Fraud: Click Forensics
• Analytics: Optimost, Omniture, Coremetrics, Web Trends, etc.
• Web Design, Information Architecture, Engineering, Hosting, and Maintenance: GoDaddy, NetworkSolutions, etc.

Reply! understands there is a multi-billion-dollar opportunity to expand online advertising by providing easy access to businesses who need to speak with online consumers to close a deal. It is clear that clicks don’t walk into a store or call on the phone. It is time that businesses move away from CPM and CPC marketing towards more efficient Cost-Per-Lead marketing that we call Lead Generation 2.0. Lead Generation 2.0 will be transacted in an exchange, where market-driven pricing and dynamic distribution of leads are possible. The result is a powerful ecosystem for service-based businesses to easily access multiple sources of targeted consumer leads, purchase only the leads they want with easy-to-use filters, purchase the right quality, and set the price they will pay per lead. On the seller side, the lead generators and publishers increase the size of the network they access, tap into a highly liquid marketplace that maximizes yield-per-lead, and more efficiently liquidate undersold and unsold inventory of leads.A lead marketplace provides local businesses with an easy-to-use, geo-targeted, performance-based marketing solution. As these businesses shift their offline advertising budgets to capture online consumers, marketplaces are strategically positioned to capture a significant share of these advertising budgets. If you are ready to “Go Beyond the Click™,” try Reply!’s marketplace for efficient acquisition of consumer leads.

Lead Generation 1.0: Challenges with Lead Generation Today

The lead generation industry has been significantly impacted by legislation, a downturn in the economy, and tightening of consumer credit. In 2007 and 2008, several large lead generation companies went out of business or stopped generating leads (RealEstate.com, House.com, Loanweb, Loanpage). FTC investigations into lead generation incentive tactics cast a shadow over the industry, and ValueClick’s settlement marked the dawn of a new day where companies are forced to revamp acquisition methods to give consideration to the end-user experience. The result of this shake-up has been a focus on quality and control—not just raw volume.

Today, the lead generation market is highly fragmented into numerous vertical categories and companies. This fragmentation makes it expensive and complicated to profitably transact leads. Pricing is generally static and does not respond to changing market conditions in an efficient manner, and quality is not communicated effectively, delivered consistently, or reflected in the price paid for leads. Most importantly, unlike solutions provided in the CPC market by Google and Yahoo, the lead generation offerings lack controls over volume, price, quality, and ROI. This lack of ability to segment lead buys negatively impacts the size of the budgets businesses are willing to commit to lead generation opportunities

For most companies, a majority of leads are either purchased through lead providers or generated internally. However, both methods provide limited controls and cause companies to engage in tactics that are not beneficial to the entire lead generation value chain. Internal lead generation requires a significant investment in the right talent and infrastructure. Companies often find it difficult to optimize their advertising spend to acquire the right mix of quality, amount, price, and ROI of leads. The results are often a large number of unmonetized and under-monetized leads, requiring a network of retail and wholesale buyers to help offset acquisition costs.

Companies that purchase leads through lead providers often find it difficult to get to their desired ROI, and frequently switch between providers in search of that ever-elusive “profitable cost per sale.” Additionally, quality is not communicated effectively, delivered consistently, or reflected in price paid for leads, and there is limited incentive to improve quality. Stated differently, controls over volume, price, and quality are missing.

Lead Generation 2.0: The Opportunity to Leverage a Lead Marketplace

At any given moment, there are millions of consumers using the Internet to research real estate-related products and services, and there are countless businesses trying to reach those consumers. There is a multi-billion dollar opportunity to expand online advertising to provide access to businesses who need to speak with online consumers to close a deal. It is clear that clicks don’t walk into a real estate agency or call on the phone, particularly for important transactions such as the purchase of a home or an apartment. It is time that businesses move away from CPM and CPC marketing towards a more efficient CPL (Cost-Per-Lead) method.

Lead Generation 2.0 will be transacted in an exchange/marketplace, where market-driven pricing and dynamic distribution of leads are possible. The result is a powerful ecosystem that challenges the reigning cost-per-click Internet marketing model—dominated by Google and Yahoo!—with a cost-per-lead system that is targeted, efficient, and more manageable for businesses.

Using a lead exchange/marketplace, service-based businesses like mortgage brokers and real estate agents can easily access multiple sources of targeted consumer leads, purchase only the leads they want with easy-to-use filters, purchase the right quality, and set the price they will pay per lead. On the seller side, the lead generators and publishers increase the size of the network they access, tap into a highly liquid marketplace that maximizes yield-per-lead, and more efficiently liquidate undersold and unsold inventory of leads.

A lead marketplace provides local real estate businesses with an easy-to-use, geo-targeted, performance-based marketing solution. Marketplaces will greatly benefit from the millions of local businesses that, to-date, have not had a viable option for online marketing. As these local businesses shift their offline advertising budgets to capture online consumers, marketplaces are strategically positioned to capture a significant share of these advertising budgets.

A marketplace allows lead providers to grow revenue by instantly facilitating real-time trading of leads (arbitrage) among the existing lead generators in every category. This technology will allow companies to check a wide array of potential buyers and sellers simultaneously to obtain the highest value for a lead. Using an exchange, buyers and sellers will find maximum liquidity for every category and will allow those businesses to immediately tap into the broadest set of buyers and sellers.

Publisher networks can now flourish by offering lead generation tools. An approach similar to Google’s AdSense will allow businesses a way to increase their eCPM/revenue per page.

The opportunity for the growth of Lead Generation 2.0 is massive. We believe as lead generation becomes efficient, dollars will shift from CPC and classified advertising to cost-per-lead acquisition. The online advertising market is expected to continue its market share gains at the expense of traditional media—U.S. online advertising market is forecast to grow to $62.4 billion by 2012 (22.6% CAGR). Classified or Local search, print Yellow Pages, and Internet Yellow Pages is estimate to grow from $33.3 billion in 2007 to $41.4 billion globally in 2012 (4.5% CAGR).

As Lead Generation 2.0 continues to evolve, we expect to see a fundamental resurgence and revival of the lead business as more agents and providers tap into the vast benefits of the marketplace model to get the value, quality, and control they deserve and expect.

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