LightNow campaign yields 1,300 leads for top advertiser
When lighting manufacturer consultant David Shiller took over the digital-only LightNow, the magazine of the lighting retail industry, it was an online magazine in search of a revenue model.
For Shiller, a lighting manufacturing consultant, the good news was that LightNow was already well-known within the industry.
He tested several digital products before creating “25 Lighting Trends,” a gated white paper, from the website’s content, and selling a sponsorship that included leads from lighting distributors and retail stores who signed up to receive the PDF.
In its second year, the single advertising campaign generated “tens of thousands” of revenue and 1,300 leads for one sponsor.
Here’s how Shiller put together the model:
The sale of a program 2025 sponsor, NaturaLed, was made easier because Shiller already knew that the most popular story of the year and would generate leads. The bigger the advertising campaign, the better exposure for the client – and the more leads generated.
As the number of leads passed 1,300 responses, Shiller knew he had landed on a winning combination.
Pricing and packaging
So what is in the “tens of thousands” package?
• $3000 for the content creation
• $400 a month for LightNow to host the page
• A small charge for the PDF to be professionally designed
• Thousands more in promotional display ads that included a large banner ad at the top of the website, and in the twice monthly newsletter reaching about 15,000.
He recommends publishers create a price point that is 2 to 5x the size of a typical contract sale for the added value of both the content creation and leads generated.
Mechanics of the form
The audience simply fills out the form which unlocks a page on WordPress with the downloadable white paper.
It can be easily built on Jotform, WordPress Contact forms, or even forms in Facebook. Required and optional fields can be tailored to the needs of the advertiser.
What’s next for the lead generation program
Shiller said that today his website and newsletter inventory is sold out, restricting the opportunity for additional sales.
So he plans to create additional advertising inventory via new kinds of premium ad units.
The next lead campaign, he said, will probably be customized to the advertiser – and may focus more narrowly to attract qualified prospects for a particular client. For example, for manufacturers of industrial lighting the white paper created could appeal to buyers in the industrial lighting and building trades.
Here are his thoughts when we asked what concepts he thinks will work to create and sell more lead generation white papers:
The lead generation model used elsewhere
Selling gated lead-generation forms are not a new concept.
Industry Dive has a library of white papers sold to publishers in each of its 26 of job-title based B2B online-only niche magazines. It hosts all the lead capture landing pages on its website under a tab “library” in the top navigation bar, and shares the email data created all year long.
The power of a job-title based niche, is that Dive selects the niche for an exclusive target audience with major corporate purchasing power, and one that has an active group of vendors trying to reach them.
Fishing Tackle Retailer is another publisher that has tested the model. It partnered with the Sports Fishing Association for a survey of fishing tackle retailers that they could use to see how their businesses compare with others. Participants, of course, left contact information in return for receiving the report.
The goal of that program was to co-promote with using both partners’ email lists to get a better sample, as well as to expand the list.
Another company using the model is FreshCup, which offers salary surveys and other key information to the coffee shop industry.
In the B2C space lead generation also works
While Best of contests are also primarily used to generate emails for the publisher, contesting and sharing results such as “Top Restaurants” can also attract sponsors interested in sharing contact information gathered.
The secret sauce
It goes without saying that online traffic – whether search, social or direct – and more importantly, the size of the email list is assumed for any lead generation program to work. The general standard is at least 10,000 emails to be taken seriously by a large advertiser (Industry Dive). To get to that number, start-up publishers can consider selling paid campaigns to the advertiser, so that the “click bait” program is more widely distributed on Facebook or LinkedIn and helps build the much needed list faster.
The secret sauce, however, is the value of the content to the audience.
That is what compels the audience to give their contact information and drives value to the campaign. Publishers have great information – more than advertisers do – about what audiences want, so pay attention to Google searches and email click throughs.
Even very small exclusive audiences, if they are hard to reach and have major purchasing power, can command high dollar campaigns when leads are involved.
Many thanks to David Shiller for sharing his expertise.
