Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

I opened up my email this morning and found a very interesting email from Facebook.  At first I thought it was a phishing email but it looked legit to me after taking a look at it.

So this is pretty interesting.  Facebook is willing to give me a $500 Facebook Ads credit on one of my accounts if I change the phone number on my Facebook Page to a call tracking number that they provide.

This test apparently has nothing to do with the Facebook Ads platform because they aren’t asking you to send any Facebook Ads traffic to your Facebook Page in order to qualify.  They just want to know how many phone calls are being derived off of Facebook Business Pages.  So what’s Facebook up to here?  Some Ideas I Have:

• They just want market research and it’s worth it to give away a $500 coupon which essentially costs Facebook nothing in order to get a glimpse inside whether Facebook is making a businesses phone ring or not.
• They want to test if what businesses are doing on their pages has any effect on making the phones ring.  For instance does a business who updates daily get more calls then one who updates monthly?  Does the amount of fans have an effect on the quantity of calls that a business receives?
• They are considering a pay-per-call program where if you want phone calls from Facebook you have to pay for them…
• They are considering charging a fee for Facebook Business Pages (or upgrades to pages) and want this data to justify it.

Facebook’s IPO is around the corner and they want a piece of the local online advertising pie.  Is this the ticket to the data they need?

Why do you think Facebook is offering this?

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As we all know reviews go a long way online.  Social proof is a huge influencing factor in buying decisions made online.  If you’re a local business and Google Places is attached to your Google listing, you reputation on Google Places means everything.  The problem is that most local businesses don’t have many Google Places reviews and the ones they do have, tend to be bad because people put forth a lot more effort to complain then they do to praise.

We do reputation management for some of the clients we handle.  Getting our clients legitimate positive reviews from their customers is no easy task but we consider ourselves to be pretty good at it.  As part of our process we ask the client for their customer database and then send out an email requesting reviews.  We separate their list by people who have gmail accounts from people who don’t.  The gmail users are asked to leave a review on Google Places whereas the non gmail users are asked to leave a review on an industry specific website. The reason we do this is that you can’t leave a review on Google Places without a google account.  We assume that if someone has gmail then they are already logged into their Google account and hence it should be incredibly easy to leave a review.

What we find is that far more people will leave a review on another review site then they will on Google.  I’ve pondered why that would be and here are some reasons I can come up with:

• People want to feel anonymous when they leave a review online and by leaving a review tied to their Gmail account they don’t feel anonymous.
• They don’t think of Google as a place to leave reviews.
• The interface is confusing.

I opt for reason #3 being the interface is confusing.  Let’s take a look at Googles review area vs an industry specific review site that we use a lot.

Google Places:

Industry Specific Review Site:

As you can see the Google Places interface for leaving a review leaves a lot to be desired.  It doesn’t break anything down.  It just asks for a star rating and a comment.  Then when you select a star rating it pops up with some annoying message that makes no sense to the user.  They aren’t joining a social network.  They just want to leave a freakin’ review.

When you look at the industry specific review site you see that they break down the review into categories like customer service, price etc etc.  In my experience this review site gets way more completions then Google Places does.

We’ve made it to the end of my ramblings but without a real solution.  How do you get customers to leave more Google Places reviews? (and don’t say give them something free)

Let’s hear your take in the comments.

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I’ve been considering putting together a skype group of people who do local online marketing so that we can talk and share ideas.  No cost obviously.  Anyone interested?  Leave your skype id in the comments and i’ll add you.

11/18/2011 Quick Update: The group is on fire.  Lots of interest and lots of members and some good discussions too.

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I’ve been designing a lot of lead generation offers for various types of businesses lately. Designing a lead gen offer isn’t as easy as it sounds. A lot of the time it’s the OFFER part which get’s complicated. I do a lot of lead generation for complex sales. By complex sales I mean expensive items like cars, homes, medical procedures etc.. Sales that don’t take place over the internet with a credit card or with an instant decision. The problem that comes with creating an offer is HOW are we going to convert a potential prospect into a lead?

Let’s take for example an expensive motorcycle. Let’s name this motorcycle the “Hustler 1.” The Hustler 1 costs $22,432. Its an awesome bike. It’s not unique though, all of the motorsports shops sell the Hustler 1 for just about the same price. If there is a price difference your talking about $100 difference, nothing major. So how do we generate a lead on an expensive ass item with no real unique properties. Not only is the bike not unique, neither are the businesses selling them. They all have the same value propositions.

The reality here is that you have 2 major strategies to sell this sucker:

1) The Straight Up Info Sell: You design a landing page that has all of the information about the bike including the price and really anything that the prospect would want to know about buying it. You include a contact form and phone number and hope the price is competitive enough to generate a lead.  If you actually DO have a killer price compared to the competition, this tends to do well.

2) Withhold Information Sell: You design a landing page that withholds information that the potential buyer really wants to know. For instance a statement like “Ride the Hustler 1 For As Low As $149/month.” Although the bike is still $22,432 maybe a prospect will look at the $149/month and say, “Hey I can afford that, whats the details about this deal?” – Once they are thinking about affordable payments they aren’t worrying as much about the actual price.  Then maybe they fill out the form or make a phone call inquiring about this deal.

Both ways are perfectly legitimate ways of generating a lead or making a complex sale. They are just totally different strategies.

Here’s where the conflict of interest comes in:

• You as the lead seller or internet marketer usually want to get paid for your services (a lead) – The more leads you generate the more monies you make.

• The seller of the item wants to sell their items – The more items they sell the more they can spend on coke & prostitutes.

• You have a vested interest in seeing the seller succeed because the more items they sell the more leads they buy (sometimes, not always).

• The seller of the items has no vested interest in seeing you succeed because quite frankly they don’t really care about you.

So which style of landing page is better?

With the direct “Straight Up Info Sell” often times you WILL sell product.  Since the page is kind of a salesman in itself, it relies very little on the business selling the products to “make the sale.”  A lot of the time once someone turns into a lead off of this style of landing page, the sale is already made because the person has all of the information (or most of it) to make a decision.  This is good for the business, not so good for you as the lead generator.  The reason it’s not as good for you is that there are a lot less leads generated but the quality tends to be a lot higher.  Less tire kickers, more buyers.

With the “Withhold Information Sell” you can generate a lot more leads.  You’ve peaked people’s interest and now they become a lead. to get more information  Personally if it were my product being sold, i’d probably want a landing page that was more this style.  Although the quality of the leads will be a little lower at least you get the OPPORTUNITY to work these leads into a sale instead of never making any contact at all.  The unfortunate thing is most businesses (especially on a local level) have a hard time selling.

As the lead seller you can make money either way.  You can charge less per lead for a higher quantity of leads or more per lead for a lower quantity of leads.

I hope this opened some peoples eyes about how to generate leads for a complex sale.  Any questions?

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I’d venture to say that a large percentage of local & small businesses have tried online marketing in one way or another at this point.  Whether it be through a phone book company, search engine company, newspaper or social network most small businesses have tried SOMETHING online to get them more business.  Unfortunately for them, most have failed and they’ve decided that the internet doesn’t work for their type of business.  Why do so many fail?  It’s because they always buy the sizzle and never buy the steak.

I’ve dealt with a lot of local businesses and the people running the show typically have a few traits in common:

• Ignorant: They are typically ignorant to technology and to learning anything new.  They know all.
• Super Type A: Don’t want to listen, just want to bark orders and think you should listen to them.
• Cheap: Think they should get an original Picasso at Dollar Store prices.
• Unreasonable: Have completely unreasonable expectations.

Having these traits leads to them buying into the biggest loads of crap that salespeople come in selling to them.  In their minds a fast talking, ass kissing, wheeler dealer salesperson who is promising the world, MUST be selling a superior product.  “Hey these guys are from the local newspaper they must know what their doing.”  “Wow these guys came from the phone book company, they must know the internet.” “These guys are telling me they have a special relationship with the top 750 search engines that gets them clicks at half the price, it’s a no lose situation.”

Local businesses don’t want to be educated, they don’t want to see the results….they want to be lied to!

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