Nowadays, many folks count impressions, or clickthroughs, and they do have their place in the marketing mix. However, somewhere in the food chain of marketing, an ad, sales letter, commercial, brochure, catalog, self-mailer or what have you ultimately needs to make the reader pull the trigger and buy something.

As Publisher of Web Digest For Marketers (WDFM), I get to see which ads increase sales and which ones don't. The sales may not happen right away. In fact, it's more than likely they won't. After all, B2B sales typically take a few weeks or months. It isn't often that someone says "Hey, I feel like buying a $125,000 ad campaign in the next ten minutes." :)

The ads that work best in WDFM are those that open up a relationship and lead to a sale down the road. Direct marketers call this a two-step or multi-step process, which may involve three, four or more steps on the way to that prospect buying something from you.

What works best in WDFM are what I call "info loss leaders." Free white papers and Webinars are very attractive to readers since they're already in an information-gathering mode. I help some advertisers fashion their white papers and Webinars so they draw qualified leads. No one wants to spin their wheels filtering through a bunch of college kids who just want a crack at winning the latest PDA when you're selling CRM solutions for a quarter of a million dollars.

Less is More

You actually want fewer qualified leads rather than more unqualified leads, unless you have unlimited salespeople who can follow up on leads that go nowhere.

So, how is an ad like a trade show booth? When the show finishes, count the number of business cards you gathered. Then, total the amounts you spent on the booth, travel, food, exec time and so forth. Divide the total number of business cards into the grand total you spent to be at that trade show. That final number is your cost per lead. It's usually pretty expensive.

When you advertise in WDFM, or anywhere else for that matter, you do a similar thing. You count up the leads and divide by the cost of the ad.

CPL versus CPM versus Clickthrough

Advertisers pay me on a CPM basis. However, the calculation they use for internal purposes is based on CPL (cost per lead) that roughly ranges between $6.50 and $25.00. This is quite good, especially if you're selling products and services in the thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. In fact, it's often unbeatable.

I lost an advertiser last year because he was looking for the wrong numbers. He wanted 2% of my list to respond to his ad. He got a fraction of that, which gave him a cost per lead of $6.27. I asked him what an acceptable CPL was and he said he didn't have one. Rather, he was only focused on getting 800 people (at the time) to click through to his site. Oh well.

CPQL (Cost Per Qualified Lead)

The readers of WDFM are a pretty lofty bunch who tend to spend money on marketing products and services. The readers are sophisticated as are the advertisers.

Some of my advertisers use sophisticated software that calculates just how qualified a lead is. Not all leads are created equal. When I'm convincing a prospect to buy ads in WDFM, I focus them on the quality of the leads. Finding those qualified needles in the haystack for the least amount of money is what it's all about.

Time and time again, I see WDFM subscribers spend money when they see solid value, and not before then. It's for this reason I try to get all advertisers to include obvious value in their ads by way of that info loss leader, Webinar, or some juicy databit baked right into the copy.

Readers of Web Digest For Marketers are very much like the advertisers themselves. I'm tough on my advertisers. If they want me to, I'll offer my input, which typically is: "Would you yourself stop to read that ad? No? Then don't expect anyone else to because they're pretty much like you."

Pricing Ads

I'm a bottoms-up guy. I price the ads so that it pays advertisers to come back to me and advertise again. I want them to make lots of money advertising in Web Digest For Marketers. Why? It's enlightened self-interest.

If the pricing and the leads that come from advertising to WDFMers are so attractive, those advertisers will keep coming back to me. This means I don't have to spend all my time looking for new advertisers. But don't take my word for it. See what WDFM advertisers themselves say by going to http://wdfm.com/sponsor.html#test

BTW, if you're interested in advertising in WDFM, email PublishersRate@wdfm.com and I'll send you the rate card. In fact, since you've read all the way down to this point, you're obviously intrigued. If you've got a product or service aimed at marketers who have power of the purse, call me at (212) 619-4780. We can run the numbers together to see if it makes sense for you to advertise in Web Digest For Marketers. :) LC


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