There is a persistent myth in sales and marketing that a strong lead should convert quickly, on the first or second contact, and that anything requiring more effort than that is a sign of a weak lead or an ineffective sales process. The data tells a very different story. Research consistently shows that only about...Read More

If your business outsources any part of its customer engagement or sales calls to a contact center partner, there is an operational metric that directly affects the quality of every conversation your prospects have — and it has nothing to do with the script, the technology, or the pricing model. It is agent turnover. Call...Read More

For home-service businesses — contractors, HVAC companies, plumbers, electricians — the choice between Google’s traditional pay-per-click search ads and its Local Services Ads program has real financial consequences, and the cost difference between the two is larger than many business owners realize. Google’s Local Services Ads, commonly known as LSAs, operate on a pay-per-lead model...Read More

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