Scott Hettman heads up sales & marketing at boberdoo.com, a leader in automating and innovating the lead generation industry since 2001.
Boberdoo.com has been building the most elaborate lead generation system on the market since 2001.
What was your background in business and marketing, before beginning boberdoo?
Before we begin, I just want to clarify that I did not start boberdoo. Boberdoo was founded, and is currently owned, by Brad Seiler. I head up marketing & sales at boberdoo so that Brad can focus on bigger picture items. Prior to coming aboard boberdoo as an employee, I had spent the previous 10 years working with several lead generation companies in both sales and operations, so I was actually a client of boberdoo’s before coming to work here. As the old saying goes: those who can, do; those who can’t, sell software to those who can.
What did you feel was lacking in the lead generation market, prior to 2001, that prompted you to start boberdoo?
What need did you set out to fill?
It is an interesting story because Brad started boberdoo as a generic web development shop and almost fell into the lead generation industry right about the time that mortgage leads started to become “a thing”. He saw that the process of tracking, routing and billing for a mortgage lead could be applied to really any vertical, and so the generic lead distribution system was born.
Boberdoo allows marketers to streamline their lead flow and maximize revenue.
Can you talk a bit about different methods of optimizing lead flows, and why it’s important?
We have companies that operate in surprisingly diverse ways, given that they are in the same industry. The key to lead generation is matching your supply and demand. A big part of that is having the tools to gain that insight and to automate it, allowing the company to concentrate on revenue-producing activities. Boberdoo allows you to get very granular in determining which leads are routed to which buyers and at what cost, giving you the maximum flexibility to take advantage of whatever opportunity you have.
Speed-to-lead is also very important because most lead generation forms are free so there is nothing preventing the lead from submitting another form. Therefore it is important for lead generation companies to get the lead from submission into their buyer’s hands as quickly as possible.
Boberdoo offers lead distribution systems for buying and selling web and phone leads.
Where are some places that you look to find legitimate, useful leads?
We often get asked why we do not start an exchange for lead buying & selling into an anonymous marketplace given our position in the industry. The truth is that, due to the wide variety of ways in which leads can be generated, it is impossible to standardize a lead, which is one of the main functions of an exchange.
We have clients that generate leads via all marketing methods: paid search, email, affiliate marketing, TV/radio, even direct mail. The key to long-term success in the lead generation industry is transparency, both for the lead so they know what to anticipate as the next steps in the process as well as the lead buyer so they understand the path the lead took to reach them. That is why it is important to develop your own network as a lead generation company, so you have control over what leads are being routed to what buyers.
Along those lines, what are some of the risks of using leads that are NOT verified and useful, such as buying a pre-made email list?
Well, the simple answer is that things like email lists, data and even aged leads are not truly leads in the traditional sense of the word as there is an implied “inbound” before the word leads. Inbound leads are people that have taken some action, at that snapshot in time, to submit their information in anticipation of a free quote, consultation or whatever the value proposition from a service provider(s). Things like email lists are just results of a query and have no inherent interest or desire for more information at that snapshot in time. This leads to lower quality and less efficiency by the lead buyer due to poor contact & close rates.
I think it is important to also point out here that real-time lead generation helps the consumer as opposed to bombarding them with unanticipated contact attempts. For example, if your bathroom is flooding and need a plumber right now, lead generation companies can match your request or call with contractors in your area that are looking for business right now. It is in facilitating this relationship that lead generation companies can add value to the process.
Boberdoo helps get leads into the right hands using a complex set of filters.
What are some different cues you use to determine what will be the best fit?
This answer is completely vertical-specific so it really depends on your industry. There are some filters that are pretty universal, like geography for example, but it is more important to focus on these 3 questions when determining what fields or filters to utilize:
- will this field affect to whom the lead is sold;
- will this field affect the price at which the lead is sold;
- is the answer to this question vital for the service provider to know
before calling the lead.
For example, a mortgage lead may contain fields like mortgage amount, interest rate & loan-to-value ratio while an auto insurance lead will have fields like credit, additional driver & number of accidents because those determine to whom and for how much the lead is sold.
Boberdoo clients utilize a process called ping post that allows lead sellers to send non-contact fields (like the ones above) to lead buyers who can then bid on the lead in real time.
The inbound marketer Wayne Davis said, “The lead generation process starts by finding out where your target market ‘lives’ on the web.”
First of all, how might a marketing team find the best place to reach their intended market? Secondly, what are some of the benefits of using the best platform to reach your ideal market?
There are 3 ways to figure out the best place to reach your intended market: test, test and test. With all of the different marketing methods available, testing is the only real way to find answers to these types of questions because the answer might not even be “on the web”. For example, a portion of our clients that operate in some senior verticals find great success with TV and direct mail. But the segmentation options available to online marketers do allow lead generation companies to drill down to identify and market to their ideal customers. Our clients can utilize boberdoo to analyze the success of their marketing campaigns. It allows them to take into account things like lead quality and refunds, providing them with a more complete picture.
Boberdoo is particularly useful for automating lead generation.
What are some different lead generation tasks that are easy to automate? What might a marketing team do with that additional time?
Anything that a lead company does over and over again is something that can be automated. Our clients can automate their email marketing, reporting, billing and client on-boarding in a variety of ways. Even communication with lead buyers and the leads themselves can be automated on a time or trigger basis. This frees up the company to focus on other revenue-producing activities.
You gather leads using web forms, phone calls, and 3rd party sources.
What are some useful data points to include on customized web forms that might indicate a useful lead?
Yes, our clients generate leads from online forms, via inbound phone calls and from 3rd party lead sellers, all of which is tracked, routed and billed through their boberdoo system. The most important data points are contact fields obviously, but other fields that answer these questions are also important:
- Will this field affect to whom the lead is sold?
- Will this field affect the price at which the lead is sold?
- Is the answer to this question vital for the service provider to know before calling the lead?
Inbound marketing is becoming increasingly important, with declining organic reach on social media and incessant, unwarranted advertising.
How might a marketing team integrate blogging, social media, and classic marketing techniques like landing pages and CTAs to create the best possible lead generation strategy?
The key factor is to provide value to the lead. One of the important aspects is to be transparent on the process to follow. Leads are reacting to a call-to-action on the landing page so it is important to make sure the process the lead goes through is expected and matches the CTA. This leads to a better experience from the lead’s behalf, which translates into higher contact and close ratios with the lead buyers.
Scott Hettman
boberdoo.com LLC
800-776-5646 ext. 3
[email protected]
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