How Technology is facilitating a New Age of Lead Generation
Technology isn't just for direct advertisers. On the Databowl blog this week we have written about a subject that almost everybody in the performance marketing and lead generation space has thought about, but very few have discussed…
Today we are going to talk about a subject that almost everybody in the performance marketing and lead generation space thinks about, but that nobody bothers to discuss: How technology is changing the performance of the entire industry, while people in agencies and networks still cling on to their 20-30% value proposition.
Brokers Mean Business
Brokers mean business. There’s no doubt about that. And there is a reason they exist – after all, they deliver lots of benefits to those who use them. This is largely because they act as a “connector” – a key component in any successful network. Let’s take a look at connectors for a moment.
Connection is what drives a successful network. A good connector will know which offers work well with which affiliates and suppliers, and they will normally have a solid history that helps them to understand which affiliates are strongest in which verticals. This is a huge benefit for advertisers.
Finding the highest quality affiliates can be time-consuming, but it pays. You can waste a lot of money before you find the right affiliate – especially considering most seem to suffer from “shiny object syndrome”, meaning the slightest change sends them galloping towards the next new thing.
Brokers can indeed connect you with the right affiliates. But brokers are in danger of quickly becoming outpaced by a new kind of component in the lead generation machine: The Facilitator.
The Rise of the Facilitator
Technology has already come so far, and it isn’t slowing down. It grows exponentially, year after year and is helping affiliate marketers to increase their revenues also.
In the lead generation sector, technology allows companies to truly revolutionise the way they generate leads from marketing partners, allowing the seamless transition from media buys to converted customers.
Set up properly, technology can help you scale up your lead generation campaigns to generate the highest quality of leads possible. It ignores the human factor, and crunches numbers and results based on pure, proven patterns of data.
Not only this, but most companies employ a network to protect the downside and to scale up. With the right technology, you can automate all of this and more, for example lead specifications, multi-tier payouts, sub-supplier tracking options, online and offline feedback, and machine learning applications.
It doesn’t stop there, either.
When using the right technology, you save stacks of time (as well as enabling larger profit margins). Technology has become a true facilitator in the lead generation sector, and it is outpacing brokers by far.
The Best of Both Worlds
This article isn’t meant to make you stop working with brokers. There are benefits to using both brokers and in-house technology together, as they both independently remain key ways of generating the traffic you want. The biggest difference is in controlling and paying for the traffic that works, and the key thing to remember is that with the right technology, you can do this in most cases while seeing a higher overall ROI.
This isn’t a one or the other type scenario, actually brokers with the right lead buying technology at their fingertips can actually become key facilitators.
