A lot is being banded around at the moment about newspapers needing to charge for content. This is an old debate and it’s about time we push on.
One solution currently in its infancy for B2B publishers, is charging advertisers or merchants for the traffic they send to another website and which results in an action, such as a purchase or a sign-up.
Make traffic pay
We’ve written about this earlier here in our making online publishing pay series which looks at cost per acquisition (CPA) marketing.
Rather than locking up general content and charging for it, B2B publishers need to look at CPA models which enable them to monetise the traffic they send to another site.
Few examples
The CPA ad metric has huge potential yet there are still very few B2B affiliate marketing programmes. However, give it another 12 – 24 months and I think we’ll see more. The most notable B2B CPA programmes include big brands such as Dell, Vodafone and O2 who are looking to target business readers.
Education and the next generation in business media
Movement to the new online model will take time. It will also involve us getting together as community – whether a PR, an advertiser, publisher or journalist – to understand how each function plays out in the online process. Peter Kirwan writes a brilliant article here which argues that “it’s time for the rising generation to devise a better way.”
Yes, it will involve us, the younger generation, but we can certainly listen to our peers who have strong creds from the print media days.
Who’s up for a beer in the last week of April?
April 10, 2009 at 1:19 am
Publisher-driven b2b lead generation is for the most part not tied to sales and that’s how it should be. It’s the advertiser’s job to take it from there and convert down the road. If those leads don’t convert then work with the publisher or do something else.
Affiliate marketing is, for the most part, a bad idea for b2b publishers. Sales cycles are too long and involve too many people and touch points. Vendors are struggling to track leads internally so you can bet sales will rarely if ever be attributed back to a publisher who originated a lead 9 months earlier. Add in long payment cycles and account receivable issues and the publisher gets paid (maybe) 12 months after running an ad? Terrible business model.
At the end of the day CPM vs. CPC vs. CPA has little to do with performance or accountability, and a lot to do with who bears the risk and who gets the rewards. A model where publishers bear all the risk and get little in the way of rewards is not going to be sustainable.
Lead gen for actions such as signing up for a webinar or white paper can work for all parties (i.e. early in the sales cycle), but that’s about it. Few online b2b marketplaces (remember these?) really ever worked, and even fewer once you factor out vendor-driven marketplaces (as opposed to these created by third parties).
April 10, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Hi Oiliver,
Thanks for your response.
The adoption of CPA marketing can happen, it just needs a change in mindset and the promotion of good case studies.
In the UK there are many advertisers looking to target the business community; from energy (npower) and finance (Alliance and Leicester) to computing (Dell). The sales cycles for these will all vary in length and it can be tracked by the relevant affiliate networks.
It’s also an alternative for publishers who just rely on selling CPM space. If a publisher can run a campaign which generates 100 leads where the advertiser is paying £20, surely that has to be worth some consideration.
Our point is that, publishers need to thinking about charging the advertiser for the traffic they send to their site, rather than reporting a product and service for free. To do this, publishers can plug into the relevant affiliate networks and programmes.
Thanks
Jonathan
May 12, 2009 at 11:12 am
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