In my life there have been about six times when a decision left me full of angst and uncertainty. Car buying. House closing. Choosing a health plan. A couple of others. And determining what to invest in, and which advisor to work with.
I am not alone on that last one. You only need read the WSJ for about 20 minutes to realize that there are thousands of options and very little in the way of truly reputable advice on which to base your investment advisor decision.
You uncle tells you about his financial advisor, and you go with her just because. You stick with the guy you’ve got, because, well, you don’t know WHO to switch to.
Oh yes, there are ratings services and all that. But I’ve been in marketing long enough to know that you can cut ANY data in such a way as to have an upward pointing graph. And there’s probably a ratings organization that will give a AAA to anything.
Thanks to financialjoe, a new community for individual investors, you can get a lot of new information on what to do and who to do it with. The idea behind the site is to let a community of involved investors collaborate to find the best investments and advisors for their particular investment style and risk profiles.
Wouldn’t you rather SEE how a particular advisor is doing for people that think like you do? Wouldn’t you rather share thoughts about what you are doing? And in so doing begin, perhaps, to level the playing field versus the major Wall Street institutional investors?
To fully participate in the site, you first take an Online Asset Questionnaire that analyzes your goals and risk profile. This 15 question tool was developed in close aprtnership with a core team of advisors and investors who helped identify the characteristics of their relationships that resulted in long-term satisfaction. Apparently many advisors who use the tool find themselves changing the way they work with investors -- for the better.
financialjoe finds like minded investors for you by comparing your answers to those of other members. From there, you can observe what they have revealed about their investments, share opinions on advisors, and track the specific performance of advisors through information they make available on the site. You can also rate advisors that are not yet participating in the community. financialjoe isn’t in the business of advising you – rather, you and your peers share with one another, and consider the ideas and track records of investment advisors that participate in the community.
The import of this site is that it is a great example of how digital and democratization of information are eliminating the friction in the market in many categories. Why have dissonance and angst when you can participate in a community and get the answers and information you desire?
Years ago when I was in business school, I had a prof that said that the individual investor is probably best off buying S&P 500 index funds until they are 50 or so, because the best you are going to be able to do is to meet the market. Beating the market, in his view, was an unrealistic expectation because of the huge disparity in the information YOU HAVE versus what institutional investors have. Now all this was before the Internet got its start, but I expect that the disparity of available information is even more pronounced today.
financialjoe can’t get you all that information. But what it CAN do is help you make more informed decisions in who you invest with and how you invest. And that, my friends, sounds like progress to me.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Searchandise Commerce Helps Manufacturers Make Their Products More Prominent in eStores
OMG is this clever. So, Ms. Manufacturer, you are buying KWs on Google to sell product. But if your product is sold on retail websites, how do you ensure that it is as prominent as possible?
When someone searches for a 40 inch TV, is yours in the top ten on leading sites? Because if it isn’t chances are, you’re not gonna get much Click. Or much Shopping Cart. Or much Buy.
Searchandise Commerce is a start-up that is changing this dynamic by making it easy to raise your items in retailer site searches. And they sell it on a performance based CPC basis. Instead of appearing 17th in that ranking, now you can pay a little and raise your position into a much better search slot.
Did you know that a big revenue source for brick and mortar are SKU placement merchandising fees? Slotting, Displays, Features, End Caps, Four Ways and other merchandising tools are all highly lucrative for retailers, especially for stores that operate on low margins. Essentially, these tools help brands drive revenue from browsing behaviors. With Searchandise, ecommerce companies can start to reap the benefits of compensated merchandising as well.
Manufacturers participate in the program by:
•Identifying priority SKUs
•Setting their position bids
•Assigning a budget
Retailers begin to monetize the valuable real estate in their search results by:
•Provide an inventory feed to Searchandise
•Upload bid matches into your Search and Inventory system
•Assign a weighting for the PPC bids versus other search priorities
•Deliver a verified click count to Searchandise so they can charge the client and compensate you
Retailers can choose to include the promoted listings in the standard search stream, or create a special promoted searches stream analogous to what Google, Bing, and Yahoo provide.
Check out their video here.
The Searchandise solution has gotten a tremendous amount of press in the commerce and digital trades because it adds such an important new option for manufacturers and retailers alike. As e-commerce flirts with the 10% of total retail sales tipping point, it’s natural that both sides are looking for new ways to drive additional revenue. Relatively unsophisticated merchandising was all well and good when esales were more a hobby than a channel. But as well all know, money brings needed focus and attention.
Further, online retail drives considerably more than 10% of sales in a large number of categories. I just read that 93% of airline tickets are now sold online, and that the figures for PCs and similar technology are around 50%. Having a means by which to raise the retail profile of your products is truly a boon when digital is a critical channel for your business.
In brick and mortar there is a healthy interplay between push marketing like merchandising and pull marketing like driving consumer awareness and purchase interest. Searchandise adds an important tool to help drive a similar sort of interplay online. Check them out, and be sure and download their white paper here.
When someone searches for a 40 inch TV, is yours in the top ten on leading sites? Because if it isn’t chances are, you’re not gonna get much Click. Or much Shopping Cart. Or much Buy.
Searchandise Commerce is a start-up that is changing this dynamic by making it easy to raise your items in retailer site searches. And they sell it on a performance based CPC basis. Instead of appearing 17th in that ranking, now you can pay a little and raise your position into a much better search slot.
Did you know that a big revenue source for brick and mortar are SKU placement merchandising fees? Slotting, Displays, Features, End Caps, Four Ways and other merchandising tools are all highly lucrative for retailers, especially for stores that operate on low margins. Essentially, these tools help brands drive revenue from browsing behaviors. With Searchandise, ecommerce companies can start to reap the benefits of compensated merchandising as well.
Manufacturers participate in the program by:
•Identifying priority SKUs
•Setting their position bids
•Assigning a budget
Retailers begin to monetize the valuable real estate in their search results by:
•Provide an inventory feed to Searchandise
•Upload bid matches into your Search and Inventory system
•Assign a weighting for the PPC bids versus other search priorities
•Deliver a verified click count to Searchandise so they can charge the client and compensate you
Retailers can choose to include the promoted listings in the standard search stream, or create a special promoted searches stream analogous to what Google, Bing, and Yahoo provide.
Check out their video here.
The Searchandise solution has gotten a tremendous amount of press in the commerce and digital trades because it adds such an important new option for manufacturers and retailers alike. As e-commerce flirts with the 10% of total retail sales tipping point, it’s natural that both sides are looking for new ways to drive additional revenue. Relatively unsophisticated merchandising was all well and good when esales were more a hobby than a channel. But as well all know, money brings needed focus and attention.
Further, online retail drives considerably more than 10% of sales in a large number of categories. I just read that 93% of airline tickets are now sold online, and that the figures for PCs and similar technology are around 50%. Having a means by which to raise the retail profile of your products is truly a boon when digital is a critical channel for your business.
In brick and mortar there is a healthy interplay between push marketing like merchandising and pull marketing like driving consumer awareness and purchase interest. Searchandise adds an important tool to help drive a similar sort of interplay online. Check them out, and be sure and download their white paper here.
Start-Up Watch COD: Baynote Adapts Customer Experience Across Multiple Touchpoints
There was a time in marketing when one size had to fit most. Not anymore. It has been proven again and again that when we create experiences geared to the particular interests of individuals, they respond in kind.
BayNote is a San Jose-based concern that helps companies create customized experiences across multiple touchpoints that drive greater sales and customer satisfaction. Using Baynote, companies can serve up:
•Custom Web Site Pages
•Custom Landing Pages
•Dynamically Customized Emails
•Tailored Product Recommendations
They key to Baynote is a combination of microbehavior analysis coupled with measurement of the preferences and actions of people like a particular individual. They do this by analyzing both current and past actions to define a profile, and then serve up refined messages and content based upon that profile.
I want to pause here to make it clear that this isn’t solely driven on what the consumer clicks or buys but rather ALL of the actions a consumer takes on the site. By combining both the text based actions of the consumers with the more traditional measures of consumer interest, the company delivers a better fit and greater results.
How does all this manifest itself to the consumer? Here are just some of the ways:
1.Personalized home pages, landing pages, and other web pages: Baynote can serve up an assortment of items and content geared to the specific needs of a consumer. For example, if you type a search term like “buy sweaters” into Google, Baynote carries that information forward into your web experience, presenting relevant products (sweaters) as part of the web page.
2.Personalized Site Search: People use different terms to find the same items. By understanding your current behaviors and past interactions with the brand, the Baynote suite can serve up tailored search results given to your particular interests and needs. They can combine that info with the actions taken by others who searched for the same things. The company records what you search for so that over time its results can be more and more precisely geared to the individual.
3.Personalized e-Commerce: By understanding what items interested similar people, the company can define and display an assortment of products with a higher degree of likelihood to be compelling to the consumer.
4.Recommendations: In addition to the sorts of item relevance discussed above, users of Baynote can adjust the mix based upon recent brand news or products that are capturing disproportionate interest recently.
5.Adaptive Email: By analyzing past actions of people in your database, Baynote can deliver highly tailored email messages featuring products and content geared to that individual’s interests and actions.
This odd yet entertaining little video may make it all a bit clearer.
Marketers can use their extensive back end reporting and analytics to learn more about their consumers and assortment to improve their product mix, buying experience, and other factors to drive online performance.
I was impressed to see that their client list includes both business giants like General Mills and lots of medium sized businesses as well. It served to indicate that the value of this sort of personalization – and this solution – can be realized by a broad range of companies.
As you consider your personalization options, you may want to avail yourself of some of the resources Baynote has amassed to help demystify the category. They offer several white papers as well as case studies to help define the potential that personalization might drive for your business.
BayNote is a San Jose-based concern that helps companies create customized experiences across multiple touchpoints that drive greater sales and customer satisfaction. Using Baynote, companies can serve up:
•Custom Web Site Pages
•Custom Landing Pages
•Dynamically Customized Emails
•Tailored Product Recommendations
They key to Baynote is a combination of microbehavior analysis coupled with measurement of the preferences and actions of people like a particular individual. They do this by analyzing both current and past actions to define a profile, and then serve up refined messages and content based upon that profile.
I want to pause here to make it clear that this isn’t solely driven on what the consumer clicks or buys but rather ALL of the actions a consumer takes on the site. By combining both the text based actions of the consumers with the more traditional measures of consumer interest, the company delivers a better fit and greater results.
How does all this manifest itself to the consumer? Here are just some of the ways:
1.Personalized home pages, landing pages, and other web pages: Baynote can serve up an assortment of items and content geared to the specific needs of a consumer. For example, if you type a search term like “buy sweaters” into Google, Baynote carries that information forward into your web experience, presenting relevant products (sweaters) as part of the web page.
2.Personalized Site Search: People use different terms to find the same items. By understanding your current behaviors and past interactions with the brand, the Baynote suite can serve up tailored search results given to your particular interests and needs. They can combine that info with the actions taken by others who searched for the same things. The company records what you search for so that over time its results can be more and more precisely geared to the individual.
3.Personalized e-Commerce: By understanding what items interested similar people, the company can define and display an assortment of products with a higher degree of likelihood to be compelling to the consumer.
4.Recommendations: In addition to the sorts of item relevance discussed above, users of Baynote can adjust the mix based upon recent brand news or products that are capturing disproportionate interest recently.
5.Adaptive Email: By analyzing past actions of people in your database, Baynote can deliver highly tailored email messages featuring products and content geared to that individual’s interests and actions.
This odd yet entertaining little video may make it all a bit clearer.
Marketers can use their extensive back end reporting and analytics to learn more about their consumers and assortment to improve their product mix, buying experience, and other factors to drive online performance.
I was impressed to see that their client list includes both business giants like General Mills and lots of medium sized businesses as well. It served to indicate that the value of this sort of personalization – and this solution – can be realized by a broad range of companies.
As you consider your personalization options, you may want to avail yourself of some of the resources Baynote has amassed to help demystify the category. They offer several white papers as well as case studies to help define the potential that personalization might drive for your business.
Start-Up Watch COD: Kudos Makes Employee Recognition Easier and More Powerful
When was the last time you thanked somebody – really thanked ‘em – for going the extra mile? Maybe they worked till Midnight on a plan, or sold in a major deal with an important new client. Or perhaps they were the key organizer of a great company event.Unfortunately, employee recognition programs are usually more honored in the breach than the observance. In Advertising, and especially in Media, this is a very common problem. Often, we feel best about what we are doing when no one says anything because the primary motivator in the digital ad biz is negative rather than positive. When no one says anything, we’ve done good.
That’s not a feedback style that promotes a positive company culture.
Everyone knows that laudatory feedback for a job well done is a great motivator and a key part of an employee retention strategy. It makes people more motivated, drives better teamwork, and gives every person a sense that they are an integral part of what your company does. So it’s not that we don’t want to do a better job in this arena. We just forget in the busyness of a day, or postpone doing it because it requires too much time and then forget to get around to it.
Kudos is a SaaS offering that facilitates peer-to-peer recognition by giving employees a “bank” of Kudos points to award when the people they work with do a great job. For example, everyone in a Kudos program is given an inventory of Kudos points monthly to give away, typically ranging from 100 to 300 depending on their role and responsibilities. Recognition is given in 4 levels from a Thank You for 5 points to recognize a kind gesture or being helpful in any way to an Exceptional for 50 points for significant accomplishments. Employees receive these credits through the Kudos online interface. The sender can also indicate why they gave the kudos by checking off a quality or skill they observed along with a brief message of recognition that can made public to the broader team.
Of course we all know that game psychology makes us all want to have more points. Kudos point system is a great fit for internal reward & bonus programs, where Kudos points can be used to provide threshold rewards for achieving a point level in any given month to helping determining bonus allocations based on total Kudos points and comments. The point system was also devised to allow organizations to easily monetize the points for redemption by assigning a dollar value to the points. Planned additions to Kudos will allow organizations to set up the monetization and redemption program right through Kudos in 2012 where employees can redeem their points for real world goods through the Kudos site. These can be virtually anything, of course, but Kudos say that gift cards, company parking, corporate apparel, and company product are particularly cost effective options.
Kudos has surrounded this core functionality with a variety of additional features to give the program even more value:
•Team Profiles: Which helps foster better communication and encourage individual participation.
•Public Recognition: Employees can receive announcements of Kudos awards as they occur, which helps remind people to be observant for extra effort, and encourages more excitement about the program.
•Corporate Calendar: Organizations can communicate outings, anniversaries, and other information that demonstrates their commitment to people.
•Resources & Library: You can actually put all that HR stuff no one looks at today in a place where they actually will.
•Kudos Reminders: Automatic reminders ensure that the program stays top of mind.
•External Kudos: Kudos allows users to send Kudos outside the company to partners so that extra-organizational teamwork is also strengthened.
•Reporting: Kudos has extensive reporting capabilities to monitor compliance as well as better understand individual performance.
While the service offers many benefits and features, costs are rather reasonable. Five users or less is Free and paid programs will begin at $49 + $1 per user per month. It’s a pay as you go offering, so no contracts.
Throughout my career I have tried to make an extra effort to recognize extraordinary work by sending written thank you notes. Often, however, I fail to do this as much as I wish I had, just as most people wish they did a better job on this front. What excites me about Kudos is how it INSTITUTIONALIZES a culture of appreciation in a cost effective and engaging way. Check out their Web site for more information: www.kudosnow.com
That’s not a feedback style that promotes a positive company culture.
Everyone knows that laudatory feedback for a job well done is a great motivator and a key part of an employee retention strategy. It makes people more motivated, drives better teamwork, and gives every person a sense that they are an integral part of what your company does. So it’s not that we don’t want to do a better job in this arena. We just forget in the busyness of a day, or postpone doing it because it requires too much time and then forget to get around to it.
Kudos is a SaaS offering that facilitates peer-to-peer recognition by giving employees a “bank” of Kudos points to award when the people they work with do a great job. For example, everyone in a Kudos program is given an inventory of Kudos points monthly to give away, typically ranging from 100 to 300 depending on their role and responsibilities. Recognition is given in 4 levels from a Thank You for 5 points to recognize a kind gesture or being helpful in any way to an Exceptional for 50 points for significant accomplishments. Employees receive these credits through the Kudos online interface. The sender can also indicate why they gave the kudos by checking off a quality or skill they observed along with a brief message of recognition that can made public to the broader team.
Of course we all know that game psychology makes us all want to have more points. Kudos point system is a great fit for internal reward & bonus programs, where Kudos points can be used to provide threshold rewards for achieving a point level in any given month to helping determining bonus allocations based on total Kudos points and comments. The point system was also devised to allow organizations to easily monetize the points for redemption by assigning a dollar value to the points. Planned additions to Kudos will allow organizations to set up the monetization and redemption program right through Kudos in 2012 where employees can redeem their points for real world goods through the Kudos site. These can be virtually anything, of course, but Kudos say that gift cards, company parking, corporate apparel, and company product are particularly cost effective options.
Kudos has surrounded this core functionality with a variety of additional features to give the program even more value:
•Team Profiles: Which helps foster better communication and encourage individual participation.
•Public Recognition: Employees can receive announcements of Kudos awards as they occur, which helps remind people to be observant for extra effort, and encourages more excitement about the program.
•Corporate Calendar: Organizations can communicate outings, anniversaries, and other information that demonstrates their commitment to people.
•Resources & Library: You can actually put all that HR stuff no one looks at today in a place where they actually will.
•Kudos Reminders: Automatic reminders ensure that the program stays top of mind.
•External Kudos: Kudos allows users to send Kudos outside the company to partners so that extra-organizational teamwork is also strengthened.
•Reporting: Kudos has extensive reporting capabilities to monitor compliance as well as better understand individual performance.
While the service offers many benefits and features, costs are rather reasonable. Five users or less is Free and paid programs will begin at $49 + $1 per user per month. It’s a pay as you go offering, so no contracts.
Throughout my career I have tried to make an extra effort to recognize extraordinary work by sending written thank you notes. Often, however, I fail to do this as much as I wish I had, just as most people wish they did a better job on this front. What excites me about Kudos is how it INSTITUTIONALIZES a culture of appreciation in a cost effective and engaging way. Check out their Web site for more information: www.kudosnow.com
Start-Up Watch COD: Accordant Media Simplifies RTB For Brands and Agencies
Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen many of the leading players in the digital agency business create trading desks and other exchange-based media solutions to help their clients capitalize on this importance category of digital media. These sorts of programs and efforts require significant resources to create and manage – resources in the forms of people, expertise, and cold hard cash.
Holding companies seemed to lead in this area because the investment costs to create these capabilities can be spread across many agencies brands and client engagements. But how can other agencies deliver RTB media services?
A start-up called Accordant Media was formed to do just that. The idea behind Accordant is to provide a managed trading desk solution for agencies reluctant to create their own home-grown solutions for RTB. Its founders, whom I have known for many years, appear to be on to a successful formula.
Accordant provides a broad range of services from which agencies can choose to capture the benefits of RTB in a manner that works for them.
In my view, the core of their value proposition comes from the very real truth that success in RTB is definitely not a doddle. Lots of businesses have leapt into the space only to find that it takes real focus and great people to realize the potential benefits. Those that have made real commitment have succeeded. Those that haven’t do not get the results they hoped for.
Using Accordant, agencies can leverage the benefits of THEIR team’s deep understanding of the space and what it takes to deliver the best possible results. From strategic services to translate objectives into plans, to precise audience definition and optimization, to management of platforms and reporting, Accordant uses technology, methodology and expertise to deliver better results.
Transparency is central to the appeal of RTB solutions, and Accordant offers to their clients in a variety of ways:
•Costs and fees to purchase media are always transparent
•Clients have access to activity and performance reporting at all times
•Ongoing development of deep audience insights through first and third party data
•Services to help drive better performance from sites/conversion funnels
•Strategies and programs to improve the synergies between Search and Display
Accordant purchases the full range of digital media through RTB, from Display to Search, Video, Social, and Mobile. They can also perform site audits to help maximize conversions once consumers respond to the digital media that have been so efficiently purchased
So what are Accordant’s intentions? For some agencies, the idea of involving another company with their clients is anathema. But stealing your clients isn’t what they are about. They are focused on providing a quantitative buying, reporting, and optimization solution, not becoming a full service agency. And these are good people, people.
You have a number of options when you consider RTB and how your agency or brand should respond to the opportunity. Accordant is growing because the resources and commitment required to drive the best results aren’t in many companies’ sweet spot. For many media teams, the opportunity to focus on their own expertise – in strategic thinking and planning – means that the decision to outsource is a relatively easy one. Indeed, for most agencies, sustainable value doesn’t come from our activity, but rather our thinking. By shifting some of the executional aspects of the business to others, they may find that the unique value that we can offer clients increases.
Holding companies seemed to lead in this area because the investment costs to create these capabilities can be spread across many agencies brands and client engagements. But how can other agencies deliver RTB media services?
A start-up called Accordant Media was formed to do just that. The idea behind Accordant is to provide a managed trading desk solution for agencies reluctant to create their own home-grown solutions for RTB. Its founders, whom I have known for many years, appear to be on to a successful formula.
Accordant provides a broad range of services from which agencies can choose to capture the benefits of RTB in a manner that works for them.
In my view, the core of their value proposition comes from the very real truth that success in RTB is definitely not a doddle. Lots of businesses have leapt into the space only to find that it takes real focus and great people to realize the potential benefits. Those that have made real commitment have succeeded. Those that haven’t do not get the results they hoped for.
Using Accordant, agencies can leverage the benefits of THEIR team’s deep understanding of the space and what it takes to deliver the best possible results. From strategic services to translate objectives into plans, to precise audience definition and optimization, to management of platforms and reporting, Accordant uses technology, methodology and expertise to deliver better results.
Transparency is central to the appeal of RTB solutions, and Accordant offers to their clients in a variety of ways:
•Costs and fees to purchase media are always transparent
•Clients have access to activity and performance reporting at all times
•Ongoing development of deep audience insights through first and third party data
•Services to help drive better performance from sites/conversion funnels
•Strategies and programs to improve the synergies between Search and Display
Accordant purchases the full range of digital media through RTB, from Display to Search, Video, Social, and Mobile. They can also perform site audits to help maximize conversions once consumers respond to the digital media that have been so efficiently purchased
So what are Accordant’s intentions? For some agencies, the idea of involving another company with their clients is anathema. But stealing your clients isn’t what they are about. They are focused on providing a quantitative buying, reporting, and optimization solution, not becoming a full service agency. And these are good people, people.
You have a number of options when you consider RTB and how your agency or brand should respond to the opportunity. Accordant is growing because the resources and commitment required to drive the best results aren’t in many companies’ sweet spot. For many media teams, the opportunity to focus on their own expertise – in strategic thinking and planning – means that the decision to outsource is a relatively easy one. Indeed, for most agencies, sustainable value doesn’t come from our activity, but rather our thinking. By shifting some of the executional aspects of the business to others, they may find that the unique value that we can offer clients increases.
Start-Up Watch COD: Inadco Delivers CPL at CPM Scale
Performance is the name of the game in interactive media – it’s one of the key reasons why digital’s growing faster than any other class of communications. But what we consider performance is evolving. While we used to live and die by the click, more and more companies are recognizing that we need to focus on business-relevant end results – performance that doesn’t always correlate with clicks.
Inadco is a start-up focused on delivering massive scale in business leads by converting standard banner units into lead collection “machines” that improve the number and rate at which real prospects are delivered to businesses. There’s a simple formula to this, but the most powerful ideas are almost always the simplest. Instead of driving people to websites and landing pages to collect contact information, Inadco delivers IAB-sized collection units across the web to environments with a high degree of likelihood to attract your prime customer types.
They assume the “risk” of this distributed lead collection system, by creating the units and paying the pubs that run the collector units. You pay on a cost per lead basis, so the performance risk falls on others.
They are betting – and winning – on the premise that their expertise in driving user response will make the process profitable.
Inadco says that the leads they generate are demonstrated to be high quality, and that this value is enhanced by three core business principles:
1.They are highly adept at identifying the best publishers on which to reach your audience
2.Leads are collected with forms that carry your branding, so respondents know who will be contacting them for follow-up. In other words, no surprises that might reduce closability
3.Their technology filters out respondes that are clearly of no value, so you aren’t purchasing information on people you have no ability to close
For publishers, Inadco promises that its form units drive significantly higher yield than standard ads. Pubs are paid on a bounty per qualified lead basis, and the revenue generated usually exceeds that made possible by CPM or CPC ad pricing.
Because the bounty per qualified lead can be relatively high, pubs are incented to deliver these units in locations and environments with a higher probability to deliver a qualified response. There’s a somewhat higher risk for a pub versus CPM, but as we all know most pubs simply cannot deliver the breadth and depth of content they want to under the existing CPM environment. With increased risk (usually) comes increased return.
As I said earlier, it’s simple, and that’s one of the things that makes it so powerful. The streamlining of the leads process is dramatic. No creative costs for you, no landing page development, no creative testing, no message testing. They manage all that, and can (they hope) do it better than you because they have so much experience in this field.
If leads are your business currency, you should definitely give them the onceover.
Inadco is a start-up focused on delivering massive scale in business leads by converting standard banner units into lead collection “machines” that improve the number and rate at which real prospects are delivered to businesses. There’s a simple formula to this, but the most powerful ideas are almost always the simplest. Instead of driving people to websites and landing pages to collect contact information, Inadco delivers IAB-sized collection units across the web to environments with a high degree of likelihood to attract your prime customer types.
They assume the “risk” of this distributed lead collection system, by creating the units and paying the pubs that run the collector units. You pay on a cost per lead basis, so the performance risk falls on others.
They are betting – and winning – on the premise that their expertise in driving user response will make the process profitable.
Inadco says that the leads they generate are demonstrated to be high quality, and that this value is enhanced by three core business principles:
1.They are highly adept at identifying the best publishers on which to reach your audience
2.Leads are collected with forms that carry your branding, so respondents know who will be contacting them for follow-up. In other words, no surprises that might reduce closability
3.Their technology filters out respondes that are clearly of no value, so you aren’t purchasing information on people you have no ability to close
For publishers, Inadco promises that its form units drive significantly higher yield than standard ads. Pubs are paid on a bounty per qualified lead basis, and the revenue generated usually exceeds that made possible by CPM or CPC ad pricing.
Because the bounty per qualified lead can be relatively high, pubs are incented to deliver these units in locations and environments with a higher probability to deliver a qualified response. There’s a somewhat higher risk for a pub versus CPM, but as we all know most pubs simply cannot deliver the breadth and depth of content they want to under the existing CPM environment. With increased risk (usually) comes increased return.
As I said earlier, it’s simple, and that’s one of the things that makes it so powerful. The streamlining of the leads process is dramatic. No creative costs for you, no landing page development, no creative testing, no message testing. They manage all that, and can (they hope) do it better than you because they have so much experience in this field.
If leads are your business currency, you should definitely give them the onceover.
Start-Up Watch COD: PowerReviews Helps You Make the Most of Customer POVs
Reviews really really really matter. They help people believe in your product or service. They get them over the hurdles to the thank you for buying page. And because the crude simplicity of a “buying funnel” is clearly rather a myth in the social age, they can be helpful on so many consumer touch points as people move from unaware to loyal buyer.
With PowerReviews, companies can leverage consumer-generated content across all relevant consumer contact points, so that conversion rates and revenue are at their maximum levels. Instead of focusing on a single path or consumer interaction type, they view the consumer communication process holistically and strategically deliver valuable customer reviews at every relevant time.
There are multiple products within the PowerReviews suite:
•Improved Reviews: This is definitely not just a solution that inserts a text box in places. Rather, the company has demonstrated that reviews can be made more impactful by letting consumers sort and consume them in specialized ways. These include the ability to see a brief review “snapshot”, to sort reviews by characteristics (like reviews from Moms like you), advice from people who are Verified Buyers, perspective from Staff Experts, sizing insight, and the ability to upload and examine your own photos or videos about an offering. They are able to provide this granularity because they collect structured versus totally open-ended content.
•In-Line SEO: Consumers seeking reviews in search engine queries are directed right to product pages versus landing pages that put an extra step between their searches and your thank you page.
•Facebook Onsite: This integrates social content into your pages so that consumers have ready access to friends’ POVS and the like.
•Mobile Reviews: Offers keyworded access to review summaries that are easily consumed on the “tiny screen.”
•Brand Share: Makes it easy to insert your reviews into the content pages of VARs and other sellers of your products.
•Answer Box: A service that provides answers to questions consumers submit. Verified Users and experts can answer visitor questions, and you get to monitor the results.
There is both automatic profanity monitoring and a second layer of manual content monitoring so you control what appears on your pages.
In addition to these products, the company also offers consultative sources and the opportunity to outsource moderation. They also offer bundles solutions for retailers, brands, small business, and Buzzillions participants.
Here’s a client testimonial to show you what THEIR clients think of the offering:
Major businesses rely on their platform and services, from Borders to Tumi to Dillards to National Geographic. In total, there are hundreds of major brand clients, indicating the depth, breadth, and reliability of their products and services.
I was very impressed by the offerings themselves and the thoroughness of the thinking that went into their development. I am a huge proponent of anything that can help major businesses and brands leverage and learn from social while also making execution turn key.
Part of their offering is to generate reports for different teams in your organization to deliver on the promise of two way communications with consumers. So you benefit from listening to what they have to say in addition to leveraging it to improve response rates.
Check out their website for more info and to avail yourself of some of their excellent research and case studies on the power and value of customer reviews!
With PowerReviews, companies can leverage consumer-generated content across all relevant consumer contact points, so that conversion rates and revenue are at their maximum levels. Instead of focusing on a single path or consumer interaction type, they view the consumer communication process holistically and strategically deliver valuable customer reviews at every relevant time.
There are multiple products within the PowerReviews suite:
•Improved Reviews: This is definitely not just a solution that inserts a text box in places. Rather, the company has demonstrated that reviews can be made more impactful by letting consumers sort and consume them in specialized ways. These include the ability to see a brief review “snapshot”, to sort reviews by characteristics (like reviews from Moms like you), advice from people who are Verified Buyers, perspective from Staff Experts, sizing insight, and the ability to upload and examine your own photos or videos about an offering. They are able to provide this granularity because they collect structured versus totally open-ended content.
•In-Line SEO: Consumers seeking reviews in search engine queries are directed right to product pages versus landing pages that put an extra step between their searches and your thank you page.
•Facebook Onsite: This integrates social content into your pages so that consumers have ready access to friends’ POVS and the like.
•Mobile Reviews: Offers keyworded access to review summaries that are easily consumed on the “tiny screen.”
•Brand Share: Makes it easy to insert your reviews into the content pages of VARs and other sellers of your products.
•Answer Box: A service that provides answers to questions consumers submit. Verified Users and experts can answer visitor questions, and you get to monitor the results.
There is both automatic profanity monitoring and a second layer of manual content monitoring so you control what appears on your pages.
In addition to these products, the company also offers consultative sources and the opportunity to outsource moderation. They also offer bundles solutions for retailers, brands, small business, and Buzzillions participants.
Here’s a client testimonial to show you what THEIR clients think of the offering:
Major businesses rely on their platform and services, from Borders to Tumi to Dillards to National Geographic. In total, there are hundreds of major brand clients, indicating the depth, breadth, and reliability of their products and services.
I was very impressed by the offerings themselves and the thoroughness of the thinking that went into their development. I am a huge proponent of anything that can help major businesses and brands leverage and learn from social while also making execution turn key.
Part of their offering is to generate reports for different teams in your organization to deliver on the promise of two way communications with consumers. So you benefit from listening to what they have to say in addition to leveraging it to improve response rates.
Check out their website for more info and to avail yourself of some of their excellent research and case studies on the power and value of customer reviews!
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