Generation Leads
Special Finance Leads to Improve Sales
Right now, finding customers who are willing to take on a new monthly expenditure is more of a challenge than it has been in years. Financial news tends to indicate a trend toward saving, rather than spending, on the part of consumers and “creature comforts” and luxuries are falling lower and lower among the priorities of consumers with every passing month. Special Finance leads are an opportunity for auto dealerships to network directly with customers who are looking to buy a vehicle as soon as possible and who have already been pre-qualified for the lending that suits their needs.
“Up selling” is a tough order in an economic downturn. Many customers will show up to dealerships with a set figure in mind and will tend to be more amicable toward driving off the lot with less car and, therefore, less financing, than they had initially planned. Dealerships who work with such customers aren’t missing out, especially today, and it’s an excellent way for Sales people to exploit the needs of a market that very much needs to be serviced.
Special Finance leads are oftentimes responsible, reliable buyers who, for one reason or another, have suffered financial difficulties that have made their credit score difficult to maintain. Everyone’s likely been there at one time or another and, like everyone who has, most of these customers are looking to rebuild their credit rating to a level that will enable them to borrow toward the most important things in life in the future. For many of them, a car is both a necessity and an opportunity. Being current on payments for something as large as an auto loan presents these customers with a means to repair their credit. Finding a dealership who is willing to work with them toward this end is certainly going to make that business, and the sales people who helped them, stand out among their competitor’s in that customer’s eyes. One should not underestimate the word-of-mouth advertising that can be potentially generated by fostering such a relationship.
Finding special finance leads can be greatly simplified by making use of Internet resources. Internet lead generation companies have the benefit of being able to update their lists by the minute and some of them work with leads that are pre-qualified for financing up to a certain limit. For the sales people, the lead is a person who is very much in need of having a vehicle as quickly as is reasonably possible and who is simply looking for a dealer that can help them achieve that goal.
Using special finance leads can open up a whole new market in a much more targeted way than does advertising. When most consumers have become rather resistant to the traditional sales pitches, dynamic businesses know that it’s time to move out of the “tried and true” methods that simply don’t work as well anymore and to take advantage of new opportunities offered by technology and the marketplace in general.
Michael Newman
http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/special-finance-leads-to-Improve-sales-743044.html
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Tips for Improving Lead Generation
Lead Generation should be at the heart of every successful direct marketing campaign. Whether through telemarketing, direct mail or email, the overriding goal is to convert as as many broadcasts as possible into leads and ultimately sales. By following a few easy to implement tips you can soon have lead generation success.
Use quality marketing data
Whether you’re targeting the consumer or business market, the first step to optimising lead generation is to make sure you’re using sufficient quality data.
Your own market data should be up to date, compliant and have sufficient information to enable effective segmentation and targeting of prospects. If you are in any doubt as to the quality of your data or if you want to expand your pool of prospects a professional list broker can really help.
Include a strong call to action
Direct and email pieces really must have a strong focus on a ‘call to action’. You need to strongly suggest to the reader that they should take a particular course of action. ‘Buy Now’ is seen everywhere, largely because it works! Including a call to action serves two purposes. It starts the reader moving along the sales cycle through such actions as registering for further information, a product trial or to download vouchers and coupons. In addition, using tracking codes on coupons or website addresses the call to action allows you to monitor responses to your creative piece.
When creating your call to action, consumers respond better to direct and email communications with an emphasis on a clear offer . Your main aim should be to create an offer to attract a purchase as early as possible in the sales cycle. Examples of this sort of offer are percentage discounts or two for one offers.
In B2B marketing things are somewhat different. Although simple offers have a place, thought leadership-based calls to action tend to initiate earlier purchasing decisions. Your calls to action for this group could include invitations to web-based seminars or to download research surveys and the latest white papers.
Offer something of value
When is comes to collecting lead information on-line, be careful about how much information you ask for. People are becoming more aware of the value of their data and are more reticent about handing over their information. Many people will only part with their details if you are offering something they perceive to be of equivalent or greater value in return.
Interrogate your existing consumer/market data for clues as to what your prospects would consider to be of value.
Remember it’s better to collect basic information that people are happy to part with, name and email address, so that you can strike up regular communication. Attempting to capture too much information too early on in the sales cycle can act as a deterrent and valuable leads can easily be lost this way. Keeping data collection forms short and simple with very few fields is key to making sure visitors provide their contact information.
Above all ensure any information collected and permissions given must be treated ethically and in accordance with the latest data regulations.
Simplify your sign ups
Pre-filling forms with information you already hold on a prospect can help take the pain out of doing it themselves and increase overall registration rates. Use this technique when you are asking them to hand over details for downloading information, watching web seminars, signing up for newsletters or requesting a free product trial.
Don’t stop at simplifying the registration process. Think too about how other processes, on-line or otherwise, can be streamlined to make the journey to a sale as smooth and simple as possible for your prospective customers.
Stay strategic
Lead generating campaigns can all to often become overrun by tactical aspects. Make sure you have a clear strategic focus at the start of your campaign and maintain this throughout your campaign.
Use your experience with past campaigns and your accumulated marketing data to inform new campaigns and to build relevancy into your promotions and calls to action. Relevancy is key to converting prospects into leads and ultimately sales.
Have enough offers and options available for both those ready for a purchase and those who are not. Once you have attracted interest from a potential lead you don’t want to lose them. Some people might simply not be ready to buy from you until they have built a more complete mental picture of your organisation. Help these people do that by offering them something for free (a simple instructional video may be all that is required) and in time they may well become purchasers too.
Nicola Brown
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-tips-articles/tips-for-improving-lead-generation-720333.html
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Mortgage Lead Generation Business Model Exposed: How Mortgage Refinancing Portals Work?
During the last weeks, I’ve been interviewing with a company, a new Internet Start-Up in Barcelona based on a Mortgage Lead Generation Business model. In my research, I found some interesting things about this market that I wanted to share in this article.
The mortgage refinancing Business model
First of all, I just want to clarify how this business model works. This model consists mainly on users filling their personal and financial data into a mortgage refinancing portal. Then the portal commits to send the user personalized offers (real offers from brokers or banks) to improve the actual conditions of the user’s mortgage. This service is usually free for the end user and the value created is clear: It basically saves you a lot of time in comparing different offers from different banks that are applicable to your specific financial situation. On the other hand, what these portals get from the end user is valuable information for banks/mortgage brokers: They have a potential customer interested in refinancing its mortgage, all his/her relevant financial data and the permission to send this information to banks/brokers to obtain the best possible conditions. This information is highly valuable for these institutions…. But how valuable?? Lets just make some rough calculations:
Given that the average commission on closing a mortgage deal is around 1-3% on let’s say an average home value of (let’s say) US$ 250.000, It means that what a broker earns on closing a mortgage deal is around US$ 2.500 – 7.500. Of course not all the leads sent to a broker end up in a refinanced mortgage, but let’s just assume that 10% – 20% of qualified leads (meaning people interesting in refinancing its mortgage, that took the time to fill many forms and questionnaires with personal information) end up in signing a new deal. This means that the maximum value of a “lead” for a broker (the same goes for a bank) would be around US$ 250 – 1500 (10% – 20% x US$ 2500 – 7.500). Anything below this, means margin for the broker. Depending on each broker’s ability to close deals, the quality of the leads, competition and other factors, each broker would be willing to pay a % of these maximum values per lead.
Two of the first and most succesful companies within this industry are lendingtree.com and lowermybills.com. For more information about Lowermybills, you can read the LowerMyBills Case Study.
Expensive Keywords
The first thing that caught my attention was that some keywords in this industry, keywords like “Mortgage refinance”, “Credit remortgages” or “Refinancing mortgage” are amongst the highest paying keywords in Google’s Advertising Network. What this suggest is that this market has become so competitive that has drove the price to one of the highest paid keywords in Internet advertising. It also suggests that at this superhigh price (around US$ 40 per click) the companies dedicated to mortgage lead generation still make money. Therefore, either they have an amazing conversion rate or they earn really a lot for each lead they generate, either for a mortgage broker or directly to the banks.
A simple calculation would be:
If the conversion rate of these keywords is, let’s say 10% (assuming a very high rate), it means that any company in this industry should at least make US$ 400 (US$ 40 / 10% = US$ 400) to break even… This figure is consistent with the ones obtained in the firs part of the article, where I got a possible value range per lead that went from US$ 250 – 1.500.
Opportunity for “arbitrage”
Assuming that the U.S. Mortgage refinancing market is already a mature market (and it’s safe to assume that after the mortgage mayhem of the last years), another important point would be that there is an opportunity for arbitrage (and an opportunity to make a lot of money) in any market where the PPC’s of these keywords is still very low. For example, if you get the estimated cost for the keyword “Hipoteca” (Mortgage in Spanish) the CPC is still around 3€ (roughly US$ 5). If we assume that when the market for mortgage lead generation matures the CPC will be close to what it is in the US (around US$40), it means that someone, probably the first ones in the market that make it reasonably well, will make a lot of money. The same goes for any other market where the CPC of the main keywords is still very low.
Maybe Offline advertising is the answer in the long run
As a final thought, with CPC’s at US$ 40, thousands of different sites competing in a market with not much differentiation and a huge market base of potential customers (estimated at around 45 million homes), the key elements are in place to switch at least an important part of the marketing budget to regular offline advertising. When the PPC market gets that competitive, TV or radio campaigns could lead to a much lower cost per conversion.
View the full article at my blog MBA Internet Marketing Manager
Pedro Neira
http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/mortgage-lead-generation-business-model-exposed-how-mortgage-refinancing-portals-Work-678519.html
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How to Leverage the Power of the Internet for Generating Sales Leads
Businesses of all types are cashing in on the Power of the internet to deliver a steady flow of automated Leads. Want to know how you can do the same? Here’s what it boils down to…
Start With An “Ethical Bribe.”
Lead generation starts with some kind of exchange. The best enticement for attracting high-quality leads is to offer relevant and valuable information. The cost is much lower compared to giving away a physical item.” But the perceived value can be quite high, particularly if the information you offer addresses a pressing concern.
Think of what kinds of information your ideal prospects are looking for. What questions do they often ask? What concerns do they have? Assemble your answers into a special report, white paper, or how-to guide in written, audio, or video form.
Create An Enticing “Opt-In Page.”
The next step is to create a dedicated web page where visitors can opt-in to receive your ethical bribe. For best results, it should be a one-page website with the sole option of filling in a name and email address. In other words, you’re presenting a yes or no proposition. Either the visitor signs up, or leaves.
It’s important to “sell” your enticement just as you would a tangible product. People are increasingly reluctant to give up their email address so you must make the information as enticing as possible with a strong headline and powerful bullets that tease their curiosity.
Follow Up With Automated Email.
Once your prospect has signed up and read your information, continue to follow-up via email. Offer more information of value and begin to build a relationship. Manage your follow-up using an email autoresponder software program. There are several good ones available online for a low monthly fee.
Drive Visitors To Your Opt-In Page.
Finally, once your online lead generation system is set up, you’ll want to send prospects to your opt-in page. There are many great ways to do this, both online and offline.
Use local or national advertising, classified ads, or direct mail. Include a link on your main website, your business card, and any promotional material. You can even promote your opt-in page using internet marketing techniques such as pay-per-click advertising or article marketing. The possibilities are endless.
Once your system is set up and receiving traffic, simply sit back and watch the leads roll in. You’ll have a system that generates a steady stream of leads night and day, even while you’re on vacation. It can’t get any better than that!
Joshua Aaron Stanley
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/how-to-leverage-the-Power-of-the-internet-for-generating-sales-leads-719220.html
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The Value of Bad Credit Auto Leads
In the best of times, bad Credit tends to indicate a person who’s simply irresponsible with money. In times that aren’t so good, bad credit really says nothing about a person other than that a bad situation may well have gotten them off-track and they may have endured a period where they had to let some debts go to make sure their most important needs were met. For those in the Auto industry, bad credit auto Leads can be a source of potentially very good clients who are looking to restore their financial reputation.
Auto financing is an excellent way for customers to get their credit score back up to an acceptable level. Many consumers who need a loan with manageable payments that isn’t frivolous credit card debt turn to subprime auto loans as a means for them to meet an essential need and to repair their credit. For auto dealers, these bad credit auto Leads constitute customers who are very motivated to buy, who have a need for a vehicle and, if the leads come from the best kind of company, ones who have already qualified for a certain amount of lending with which the dealer can work to help make their new car a reality instead of a far off dream.
For the customers, purchasing the vehicle becomes a positive experience that carries with it the promise that the purchase is the first step toward a better future. Finding a customer who doesn’t simply regard a vehicle as another monthly expense over which to fret is a difficult task, even for those dealerships who work with the most affluent clientele. In the present market, such a task can seem nearly impossible, even for those dealers with the most developed and savvy advertising programs.
Using an Internet-based lead generation company is an excellent way for a dealership to avail themselves of finding bad credit auto leads. Instead of sitting around the office hoping to help out those who come to browse the lot, the sales people are empowered to make contact with individuals who are actively seeking to purchase a vehicle and, likely, to purchase it in a short amount of time. Such a resource is priceless to auto dealerships in a time when sales are down, consumer enthusiasm for the product is at a low point and traditional methods of advertising seem to be an exercise in spending money and spinning wheels.
Find an Internet lead generation company that offers prequalified buyers who have a set budget for their vehicle. These companies, especially now, represent a much better investment of money than television commercials that fall on deaf ears and newspaper advertisements that go unread. By working with clients who are ready and willing to make the purchase, you’ll not only boost your business, you’ll help network your dealership with others like them who are actively seeking not only a vehicle but a means to restore their borrowing power with lenders.
Michael Newman
http://www.articlesbase.com/automotive-articles/the-value-of-bad-credit-auto-leads-743053.html
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