Using Soft Incentives to Generate Leads
In the previous post, we highlighted an approach by affiliates to both promote a service where the creation of an unrelated jump page was necessary to have the ad listed. Were the affiliate or even the company themselves to send traffic directly to their landing page, the cost per click that Google would set would as a minimum would make it cost prohibitive for them to spend. If for example, you have a target cost per action of $1.50 (the case with the email submit campaigns), you can’t buy a $5 click. As a result, those wanting to promote certain campaigns get creative in order to buy more affordable clicks. For the free ipod offers, it can mean using “Polls” to buy traffic on keywords unrelated to the ultimate campaign. The ultimate promotion is a free (ipod, gift card, camera, etc.), but the pages have to do with users opinions on pop-culture. Without such a tactic, the free offer couldn’t ever appear directly on keywords relating to Harry Potter or Twighlight.
Distilled, the affiliate tactic used for the incentive promotion ads involves creative ways to a) buy traffic on keywords not directly relevant to the core business and b) pay less for traffic than they would if they tried to bid directly.
The online education landscape is among the most competitive, especially in paid search. It’s also full of schools being heavily wooed by Google to spend directly with Google and rely less on the aggregators. Google is even reportedly offering pricing incentives. One area, albeit with less traffic and arguably lower intent, where there aren’t the same brand / direct advertiser issues involves scholarships. Below is another example, this one from the online education space, courtesy of Vantage Media, although they are far from the only ones. (Education Dynamics for instance has run a very successful and well-branded scholarship promotion they call Project Working Mom.)
The Ad:
Clicking on this ad, takes you to the follwing landning page:
The page above is interesting. Being experts in the online education space, Vantage knows that schools don’t want just leads. They want enrollments. Enough people fill out forms with no real commitment to enrolling as is, so making it even easier to do that (offering them an incentive) makes the liklihood for conversion even lower. To combat that, they put the following disclaimers to discourage just those wanting money:
- Who Can Apply: Anyone planning to enroll in a school of higher education
- Requirements: Winner must be enrolled in a school when the scholarship is awarded*.
Fill out the essay, and it takes you to:
While they collect some lead data here, outside of the check box asking users to join their email list, they don’t suggest that it will go to a school. That opportunity comes later, on the third page:
Notice the subtle prompting of the headline saying, “Which school would you use a $1000 scholarship at?”
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