Building Trust Between Lead Generators And Brands

We talk to Alain Desmier of the wonderful Contact State to deep dive into the ways technology can be used to help build trust between lead generators and brands.

We get you answers to the following questions:

• What can lead buyers do to feel confident when buying leads?
• How do you ensure quality when it comes to lead generation?
• Is lead generation now more of a long term process?
• You’re essentially trying to change the way a lot of industry works, what are the challenges of that?
• What are the fundamental problems of lead generation as an industry?

Below is an abridged round up of some of the key ideas we discussed, but be sure to check out the entire podcast.

Could you explain to us how the “Certificates” Contact State offer work, and what problem they solve?

Alain Desmier: It solves the fundamental problem of “You always know where a lead has been generated.” That was the thing we set up to unequivocally change. So a Certificate is two lines of our javascript that sits on a landing page that tells us what landing page was used, it takes a screenshot of that landing page, it scrapes the landing page for GDRP consent data, and also the privacy policy and the terms and conditions that was used.

We don’t hold any personal data - we hash all the data. We’re specifically interested in Was the transaction a secure one? Did it happen with the consumer in mind?

What we then enable is, can you compare the time the certificate was created to the time the lead was sold? It just encourages good behaviour and good conversations.

We’ve had a few lead generators say they’re not going to do it, but overwhelmingly the majority of people have grown with us because we now work with a number of brands who want to be introduced to new lead generators, and we want the ones who are going to share their landing pages and who are going to be certified.

As a simple understanding of what our technology does, fundamentally we record what happens when a user presses submit and we package that up into the certificate.

So brands and lead buyers can easily access this information?

Both the seller and the buyer can. It’s not a process that is secret. Both the buyer and the seller knows what is going on.

In time we will look at the direct to consumer market and will get the consumer the certificate themselves. The way that we view it is like going into a pub and getting a round of drinks. You get a receipt back that says what you’ve ordered. We see our business become more consuming facing, a TrustPilot - if you wish - of the way forms work.

It works both ways, and a seller said this to me the other day. It’s also protection for the seller, because we’re not going to work with buyers that don’t pay their bills or cheat. We’re not going to work with clients on the buying side that are bad clients. One of the things that he (the lead seller) appreciates about us is that we were due diligence on both sides.

That’s interesting. When you hear about the bad side of lead gen it tends to focus in on the lead seller, but every lead generator has had a bad client, right? They either undercut the figures and misreport them to gain an advantage, or may just not pay?

I think the interesting thing here is - I say interesting when I’m probably one of the few people who get excited about regulation — but, if you look at the what the FCA are going to do with the Funeral Planning Industry. This is an industry that’s had some big corners cut over that last three years. On the marketing side, but also, it’s a consumer savings product essentially and people have been happily giving their money to these companies with no idea as to whether they would see it again.

When you start getting into it, you can tell quite quickly whether the buyer of the lead really gives a damn. Do they care about the consent? And actually I’ve had a number of conversations where people have said “Well actually we’re just gonna keep buying those lists of data because they work for us.” That’s fine, but we’re not the people you want to be advertising that to.

Is lead generation now more of a long term process?

Yeah, absolutely. It’s about the development of creative. It’s about the development of landing pages.

I know from my experience in life insurance and mortgage that these guys are sat on a gold mine of really great sales incentives, things they could use with lead generation firms. And one of the things we’re definitely making it easier to do is to build that level of trust between the lead seller and the lead buyer.

I think it’s about this idea of trying to encourage longer term sales plans. You know you’ve got a big sales promotion in June? Okay, let’s get the lead generators lined up and running in on their landing pages, so that when then consumer comes though we’re already halfway there.

To listen to the entire conversation check out the podcast on Apple, Spotify or watch the video over on YouTube