It is the time of year when many of you are in the very early stages of your optimistic annual plans or beginning new initiatives that will drive your company to greater success. We are also at the very beginning of the Chinese New Year, with 2012 being the ‘Year of the Water Dragon’, symbolizing a year for growth and positive change. Innovative leaders in the Year of the Water Dragon are believed to always be granted great rewards.

Here are a just few of my insights for the year ahead that may motivate you to be more of an innovative leader and marketer in our evolving lead generation ecosystem.

• Dramatic changes in how consumers access information on the web: The number of (adult) consumers who own tablets and e-readers doubled over the past holiday. This growth has reached nearly 20% of the total available market, and another rapid shift in how people access digital information; probably second in significance only to the launch of the iPhone and the resulting smartphone products, Apps, and new mobile operating systems spawned as a result of the Apple game changer.  The Internet is now accessed more through App’s than traditional web browsing or searches. What does this all mean?  The “How & Where” consumers connect, gather information and ultimately transact or make decisions has changed more in the past 2 years than in any period since I’ve been in online lead generation (since 1996). This is no secret. Yet, it is remarkable how only a limited few are truly addressing these shifts via their consumer experience. The dated and frequently cloned marketing tactics of old are still the driving force behind many of leads transmitted today. How are you addressing these changes in how and where people engage and convert? Are you committing the right resources into addressing the fact that mobile users access your web sites, regardless of whether you are actively doing any mobile marketing? Are you embracing the new HTML5 best practices to ensure that your consumers can always engage and communicate with you, regardless of their physical web device, OS, or browser choice?

• The decline in ‘traditional’ SEO generated traffic: If you are following the search industry data and recent news in SEO, and organic search has historically been a key factor in your business, it has probably been an interesting time for you.  Google is still the dominant source of search and in the past 12-18 months Google has implemented more changes to its user experience than any time in its history. Why? Similar to my first insight above, Google is addressing the change in how and where consumers are searching, plus addressing the change in consumer expectations during their searches. This is a good thing, right? For consumers, absolutely. For some traditional SEO focused marketers in our industry, not as much. The introduction of new Google products, new Google UI’s (user interfaces), and significant tweaks to the Google ranking algorithm (Panda 1.0 – 3.2 from Feb. 2011 through today) has reduced the amount of traffic and conversions available per unique organic search head term. Does this mean that total consumer search volume is decreasing? Not at all. Does this mean that you can not increase the amount of organic search volume to your sites in the months ahead? Not at all. It does mean that the total amount of traffic available from the traditional (white-hat) organic search term results will continue to decline, even when you proactively follow all of the known SEO best practices. Why? Because all new company initiatives at Google are solely focused on improving in two areas: Google’s Mobile Products & Location Based / Local Search. Again, as a consumer, this is a great thing. For good SEO marketers, it means that far less real estate will be available to consumers in the form of the traditional organic search listings (fewer organic listings per page & more ‘below the fold’). The traditional organic search listings continue to get pushed down page in Google, to make room for expanded sponsored listings (paid search), Google+, +1 results (when available), a Google Map (when appropriate), and several local map listings.  For the industry innovators and SEO trail blazers, this simply means that new search optimization processes and methods are now needed to address these ongoing organic listing changes and ramping up efforts to address the new Google products’ positioning.

• Maximizing the use of third party solutions and ‘your’ data: The one area of this industry that has always positively amazed me is the amount of new ‘lead seller’ and ‘lead buyer’ third party resources that continue to evolve or become available to make our lives easier and more efficient on a daily basis. The list is so expansive that I would not only exceed my word count here, but I would most definitely omit good companies that include some of my trusted peers, or a new provider that I have not had the good fortune to research or test yet.  That being said, I do like to test new products and relevant services frequently.  It exposes you to even more smart innovators in your industry and makes you take a hard look at your existing services and processes that could be outdated or could start having a negative impact in the future (after previously providing a positive impact).  A new service that I have recently found both unique and extremely valuable for lead generation is the ability to third party certify the ‘When, Where, & How’ of all leads provided to a lead buyer, without completely exposing all of the sensitive marketing data that may be a niche to a lead generator. While only in beta testing at this stage, the promise and capabilities this new certification offering provides will surely eliminate many of the older lead generation practices that resulted from years of working with the less than trustworthy lead providers.  If lead buyers want more transparency, I cannot think of a better way to provide it, than with third party certified leads.The area where I have seen the most passionate debates in the past year are around third party real-time data verification, which some will often refer to as their lead scoring. Why the increased buzz?  More people are analyzing their current end-to-end consumer data and seeing the impact of not properly accepting or routing volume based on older verification rules or business decisions. Many of the leads that were previously considered non-performers based on the ability to confirm a phone number matches a name and address on record, are now being identified as some of the volume that has the highest contact rates and eventual conversions. If this volume is incorrectly being ‘blocked’ by a lead seller or a lead buyer in real-time, it can lead to lost conversions and increased costs per conversion.  Am I saying that the third party provider services are not as good as they used to be? Not at all. It simply points out that with so many changes in consumer data (switching mobile carriers, new VoIP options, etc.) over the past few years, you need to continually analyze your data and challenge the rules you have in place to be 100% certain they match the true results they are yielding.  Lead providers and lead buyers that call verify their own volume have a wealth of data to compare to the individual data verification disposition codes and rules that have been around for years, to be sure you are not eliminating valuable leads from your conversion funnel.  The great third party services that are available to you are only as good as how you have applied them in your business.

I hope the brief insights I have covered here are not completely new to you, but that it does inspire more thought around innovative ways to address these industry dynamics, and leads to business initiatives or process improvements that bring you growth and positive change in the Year of the Water Dragon!

In a world shaped by advertising and brands, do marketers have an obligation to push towards positive social impact? 85% of consumers say yes, yet only 20% feel that brands have a notable, positive impact on our sense of well-being and quality of life.

In an industry focused primarily on lead generation initiatives versus brand development, how can our brands truly find a way to successfully align society with a greater sense of purpose within the communities we service?

Some brands have found a way to drive positive change, build a better community, and still make a profit. These brands have been thought leaders leveraging their advertising by the good they do to help shape our collective future.

The future of profit is purpose.

A great example of a brand that has found their niche and become champions within this space is TOMS, a company dedicated to giving to those in need upon each purchase made. The TOMS brand is a successful social media strategy for social good. Representing inspiration, philanthropy, differentiation and emotion, TOMS took a simple business relationship with its consumers and turned it into a human relationship. The brand found its true calling by giving back a pair of shoes for needy children for every pair of shoes purchased. The company created a shared value, told a story and inspired people to contribute toward a better purpose, all the while purchasing a product consumers enjoyed and believed in.

Brands must become community celebrants, not celebrities.

Consumers are becoming more mindful. They want a better world, not just better widgets. There is more and more buzz amongst social networks, most notably by Simon Mainwaring, author of We First, that 2012 is the year of customer activism. Mainwaring reports that with the influx and continued rapid usage of social media, customers will be looking for the brands they choose to do business with to become more socially responsible and act as custodians for social change. Supporting this statement, the world’s largest PR firm, Edelman, states 86% of consumers want companies to place society’s needs on the same level as their own business needs.

Brands that choose not to adapt to this type of perspective and continue to focus solely on their bottom line will ultimately feel the impact on their bottom line, and the customer loyalty that likely took years to establish may be eliminated by one simple, self-serving act of business practice.

Bank of America can attest to this as their years of building strong relationships with their customers began to crumble at the end of 2011.  With plans to implement a monthly $5 fee for debit card fee purchases, they quickly regressed their decision based on the overwhelmingly negative reaction they received from customers. Many accounts were closed once this surcharge was announced, and even after retracting the proposed fee, displeased customers took their banking elsewhere.

Brands are people.

Represented by the consumers that interact with them, service providers brand themselves by those that use their product or services. It can be assumed that an individual who attended Harvard University is not lacking intelligence based on admissions criteria.  In turn, customers further push the brand byway of the buzz they represent and create amongst social media platforms and other outlets.

In a marketing age where lead generation initiatives have led the trend toward general inquiry volume, versus genuine expression of interest from consumers of their products and services, it’s important not to lose sight of branding. Branding works before the consumer is in the market, whereas lead generation works once the consumer enters the market, so the two must go hand in hand.

In the case of social networking, platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are able to be used for limited lead generation work, especially if you, the educator, are answering questions posted among social networks; however, in order for such answers to have any weight, content further establishing your brand is required in order to define your brand as an expert.  A mass amount of Facebook status updates just isn’t going to cut it.

Branding is a long-term marketing play. Over the long haul, the differentiation you establish with your knowledge and expertise is perhaps the single most valuable asset you have. Understand that branding and lead generation are somewhat in conflict. Doing lead generation while being cognizant of your overall brand promise is one of the trickier things in marketing, so think and think again as you engage in it.

In the past we have had Wall Street analysts give their macro views on particular industries, which we could do again, or we could get an expert in email marketing or compliance issues for example. Please email me with any thoughts or suggestions. Looking forward to scheduling some great sessions for you.  Best, Dave.