[MCNetwork]

While I think "buying leads" makes as much sense as showering with a raincoat, this is the only market where Lendio has a shot at turning into long-term customers.

Well there is an acquisition cost for every customer. Buying a lead is no different than spending on SEO, Pay Per Click, mailers, and telemarketing campaigns. For many smaller ISOs, buying a qualified lead is a more cost effective method at getting customers than spending 25K+ a month on various marketing efforts and seeing what sticks. Even the big ISOs and direct funders out there use a multi-pronged marketing approach that almost always includes purchased leads.

[JayBallentine]

Well there is an acquisition cost for every customer. Buying a lead is no different than spending on SEO, Pay Per Click, mailers, and telemarketing campaigns. For many smaller ISOs, buying a qualified lead is a more cost effective method at getting customers than spending 25K+ a month on various marketing efforts and seeing what sticks. Even the big ISOs and direct funders out there use a multi-pronged marketing approach that almost always includes purchased leads.

I totally understand where you are coming from. However, feel free to private message me your e-mail. I'll send you some hard data on Lead Generation. In the mean time, check out this study: published by InsideSales and conducted by MIT: http://www.leadresponsemanagement.or...lrm-survey.pdf. The takeaway is that leads go bad after 30 minutes. The best leads (highest converting) are contacted within 5 minutes.

You make solid points about guys spending gobbs of money on stuff that don't work. You should also note that there IS NOT A SINGLE COMPANY in MCA is executing on ALL of the basics. The basics drive down lead generation costs, enhance quality, and response times. The basics include doing ALL of the following:

1. Separating your web site from your landing page. Your landing page should have very few words. The best landing pages feature a video. Your landing page should be optimized to convert. Here are some examples; http://cash.cashpickle.com and http://www.paramountmerchantfunding....FUQw4AodaVMASQ - Please do not take my word for it. Measure their page performance on Compete.com

2. E-mail / blog marketing. It costs about $50 a month to keep a list of 25,000 e-mail addresses where you can send as many as you'd like. You can even use pre-designed beautiful templates. No need to pay a designer or CSS guy. Sending merchants quality information - which can simply be links to useful content, depending on merchant type is pure ROI. It keeps your brand in front of the merchant, whether they need the money at that moment or not. When they do, they'll CALL YOU!

3. Video - The data is in, video is king, especially on mobile devices as text is increasingly harder to read. RetailCapital.com is the only one to nail this. Now think about having someone on your staff, take their iPhone go into their office and record weekly video casts featuring useful information that your employee found on the internet.

4. Long tail PPC and Long tail SEO - There are a ton of long tail words no one is buying PPC on. Think about what the human is searching for. They are searching for a solution to their problem. So they may not put in "small business loans" or "business loans" all the time. There are a few dozen keywords that have little to no competition, where guys can get top position for less than $2 per day. Not $2 per click. $2 per day.

5. Connect first. Close first. - It takes on average an hour for MCA guys to get back to leads. You buy PPC, and pay $50 for that click to respond an hour later? It's insane. So that's why we make that connection automagically, in 20 seconds.

Lastly, the most effective / cheapest way to qualify a customer is to dominate math. As of Monday, for a big dog in the game, we will be delivering 500,000 voice mails at one penny each to auto repair, plumbing, and similar businesses. Our attention to detail is such that:

1. We target those businesses by those likely to have a simple answering machine.
2. Include in the message a local phone number which forwards to whatever phone number our client has designated.
3. Using voice talent that sounds local. In other words, southern calls will get messages left by professional southern voice actressess, who are leaving what sounds like a local number for the merchant to call back.
4. Messaging is targeted to the three regions where all the search activity for "business loans" and "small business loans" is coming from.

Messages get delivered at 1 penny a pop. A half of one percent response rate is 2,500 in bound calls out of 500,000 messages. This particular client has data that suggests they convert 7% of their inbound calls into closed deals. If that holds true, they have generated 175 deals for an upfront cost of $5,000. This is why I personally feel like buying leads makes as much sense as wiping before you squat. I am completely biased.

I dont think this particular client will ever spend more than $5k per month on marketing again.

[fastcash4u]

I totally understand where you are coming from. However, feel free to private message me your e-mail. I'll send you some hard data on Lead Generation. In the mean time, check out this study: published by InsideSales and conducted by MIT: http://www.leadresponsemanagement.or...lrm-survey.pdf. The takeaway is that leads go bad after 30 minutes. The best leads (highest converting) are contacted within 5 minutes.

You make solid points about guys spending gobbs of money on stuff that don't work. You should also note that there IS NOT A SINGLE COMPANY in MCA is executing on ALL of the basics. The basics drive down lead generation costs, enhance quality, and response times. The basics include doing ALL of the following:

1. Separating your web site from your landing page. Your landing page should have very few words. The best landing pages feature a video. Your landing page should be optimized to convert. Here are some examples; http://cash.cashpickle.com and http://www.paramountmerchantfunding....FUQw4AodaVMASQ - Please do not take my word for it. Measure their page performance on Compete.com

2. E-mail / blog marketing. It costs about $50 a month to keep a list of 25,000 e-mail addresses where you can send as many as you'd like. You can even use pre-designed beautiful templates. No need to pay a designer or CSS guy. Sending merchants quality information - which can simply be links to useful content, depending on merchant type is pure ROI. It keeps your brand in front of the merchant, whether they need the money at that moment or not. When they do, they'll CALL YOU!

3. Video - The data is in, video is king, especially on mobile devices as text is increasingly harder to read. RetailCapital.com is the only one to nail this. Now think about having someone on your staff, take their iPhone go into their office and record weekly video casts featuring useful information that your employee found on the internet.

4. Long tail PPC and Long tail SEO - There are a ton of long tail words no one is buying PPC on. Think about what the human is searching for. They are searching for a solution to their problem. So they may not put in "small business loans" or "business loans" all the time. There are a few dozen keywords that have little to no competition, where guys can get top position for less than $2 per day. Not $2 per click. $2 per day.

5. Connect first. Close first. - It takes on average an hour for MCA guys to get back to leads. You buy PPC, and pay $50 for that click to respond an hour later? It's insane. So that's why we make that connection automagically, in 20 seconds.

Lastly, the most effective / cheapest way to qualify a customer is to dominate math. As of Monday, for a big dog in the game, we will be delivering 500,000 voice mails at one penny each to auto repair, plumbing, and similar businesses. Our attention to detail is such that:

1. We target those businesses by those likely to have a simple answering machine.
2. Include in the message a local phone number which forwards to whatever phone number our client has designated.
3. Using voice talent that sounds local. In other words, southern calls will get messages left by professional southern voice actressess, who are leaving what sounds like a local number for the merchant to call back.
4. Messaging is targeted to the three regions where all the search activity for "business loans" and "small business loans" is coming from.

Messages get delivered at 1 penny a pop. A half of one percent response rate is 2,500 in bound calls out of 500,000 messages. This particular client has data that suggests they convert 7% of their inbound calls into closed deals. If that holds true, they have generated 175 deals for an upfront cost of $5,000. This is why I personally feel like buying leads makes as much sense as wiping before you squat. I am completely biased.

I dont think this particular client will ever spend more than $5k per month on marketing again.

i would be interested in hearing more about the above conversation

[NBDC_Leads]

Well there is an acquisition cost for every customer. Buying a lead is no different than spending on SEO, Pay Per Click, mailers, and telemarketing campaigns. For many smaller ISOs, buying a qualified lead is a more cost effective method at getting customers than spending 25K+ a month on various marketing efforts and seeing what sticks. Even the big ISOs and direct funders out there use a multi-pronged marketing approach that almost always includes purchased leads.

Cash Advance and loan type leads are to hard to sell straight out, because there are to many variables to set a price before talking to the business owner. We developed a program where we do all the marketing then talk to the merchant, ask questions and pre qualify the lead before transferring to the Inside sales reps. All leads are exclusive, as fresh as can be and already prepped for the reps to sell AND we only get paid if sold (a percentage like the Agents) and we generate a good volume too (we only work with large rooms with and inside sales force ready to take inbound transfers) these are transfers from a hand off from one of our "Senior Administrators" so we introduce the business owner and explain what they are looking for before getting off the line. We have had Tremendous success in both the merchant Service and Cash Advance industries with this transfer lead. This allows the Cash Advance company to do their job and we do ours, that is a true "Partnership" when it comes to leads, we have grown at a rapid rate and opening another facility in a few months, i think this type of system addresses the problem for big cash advance companies with a strong inside sales force, the small guy is still SOL.