Every business running paid search or display advertising assumes a certain amount of waste is normal. Some clicks will not convert. That is the nature of advertising. But there is a category of waste that most businesses underestimate badly, because it is specifically designed to look like legitimate traffic. Click fraud and invalid traffic are...Read More

Choosing a performance marketing partner is, in many ways, similar to hiring a key employee. The relationship is going to significantly influence your growth, your compliance exposure, and your reputation with consumers. And yet most businesses spend far less time vetting a marketing partner than they would vetting a senior hire. Here are the questions...Read More

Every business, at some point, finds a marketing channel that works. It generates results, the cost per outcome feels reasonable, and it becomes the primary — sometimes the only — engine of growth. That feels like success. It is also, quietly, a significant business risk. Recent research on customer acquisition cost across channels shows just...Read More

In performance marketing, the words “lead,” “qualified lead,” and “appointment” get used loosely, sometimes interchangeably. That looseness causes real problems, because these terms describe fundamentally different levels of value, and pricing or evaluating a marketing partnership without understanding the distinction can lead to significant misalignment between expectations and results. A lead, in its most basic...Read More

A common assumption among businesses evaluating a marketing or contact center partner is that strong general marketing capability translates across industries. If a partner can generate results for one type of business, the thinking goes, they can generate similar results for another. That assumption breaks down quickly once you look at how differently regulated, how...Read More

Every seasonal business knows the pattern. Demand is manageable for most of the year, and then, predictably, it spikes — open enrollment for schools and insurers, storm season for home-services companies, tax season for financial professionals, the holidays for retail. And every year, the same problem resurfaces: the team that comfortably handles year-round call volume...Read More

Not every lead is a real opportunity, and pretending otherwise is one of the most quietly expensive mistakes a business can make in its marketing budget. There are several categories of what the industry generally refers to as “bad leads,” and each one drains budget in a slightly different way. Duplicate leads occur when the...Read More

Automated phone systems have a real and valid place in customer service. For simple, routine tasks — checking a balance, confirming a store’s hours, routing a call to the right department — an IVR system can be efficient, cost-effective, and entirely adequate for what the caller needs. But there is a specific moment where IVR...Read More

Every business that outsources call handling eventually faces the same decision: onshore or offshore. And the honest answer is that neither option is universally right — the correct choice depends heavily on what kind of conversations your business actually needs to have. The cost differential between the two models is significant and well documented. Offshore...Read More

If you ask most business owners what they want from their marketing, the answer is usually “more leads.” It is an understandable instinct. More leads feels like more opportunity. But volume without qualification is one of the most expensive mistakes a business can make, and the data on lead-to-close performance makes the case clearly. Across...Read More