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MediaWhiz Whizdom: Daryl Colwell on Best Practices for Holiday Lead-Gen Marketing

By Sultan Riaz | @Riaz_MediaWhiz | Marketing Coordinator

Daryl Colwell, VP of Business Development, MediaWhiz

The holiday shopping season is officially here and plenty of businesses have taken advantage of the shopping frenzy. With holiday online retail sales expected to reach around $80 billion, companies developing and promoting their lead-generation campaigns before the holiday season have benefited greatly. If your business has not taken advantage of lead generation yet, there is still some time left.

Daryl Colwell, (@DHColwell) vice president of business development at MediaWhiz, gives a few tips for those who haven’t yet taken advantage of the holiday season with lead generation and its rewarding benefits. Click here to watch a video snippet of this interview.

Sultan Riaz: In a recent article in DMConfidential, you mention that marketers need to be ahead of the of competition and promote their brands and offers before Thanksgiving. What advice would you give a company that has waited until now to advertise/market their product/service online? Is it too late for brands to start lead-gen campaigns focused on the holidays?

Daryl Colwell: Get busy! Start working some long hours. Most companies spend plenty of time developing their creative message, media strategy and negotiating their buys long before Thanksgiving. When Thanksgiving arrives they hit the ground running with their Black Friday and Cyber Monday splashes. If you haven’t done it, it’s not too late! There is still some time before Christmas, but now is the time to work on it.

SR: How big of a role does lead generation play when it comes to brands’ holiday marketing campaigns?
DC: Lead gen plays a big role. The key, however, is not what you do during the holiday season; it’s what you do before that. Your company’s best asset, when it comes to marketing, is your in-house list. As the marketer, if you have been diligent in acquiring names, as well as messaging customers with relevant content, relevant offers and keeping them engaged with your brand, your customer will be that much more engaged when they do get that holiday splash offer.

SR: What are the three best lead-gen practices during the holiday season?
DC: Here are three best practices I recommend to clients:

Get out there early. If you haven’t started yet, time is of the essence. Get to work on spending your money towards lead gen.
Be prepared to spend a little bit more during the season. Marketers are very aggressive at this time. They have a short window to reach the consumer before the holidays, so be prepared to pay more when demand is high.
Make sure your creative can meet consumer demands. Make sure you have a fall creative for Thanksgiving and a winter creative for the rest of the holiday season.

SR: What are some ways firms can prepare to pay a premium for traffic to their website during the holiday season? Do those strategies differ from other times of the year?
DC: MediaWhiz is a performance marketing company; a majority of our clients pay us on a CPA (Cost per Acquisition) or CPL (Cost per Lead), but we certainly see a rush of CPM (Cost per Thousand Impressions) requests during the holiday season, whether it’s around our display inventory or email inventory.

If you have historically been a performance-based marketer, be prepared to potentially pay for CPM inventory. Start small, test small, manage the performance and if it warrants a secondary or tertiary spend, on a CPM, go ahead and do so.

SR: Cyber Monday brought in nearly $2 billion in revenue for businesses. What role did lead generation play in Cyber Monday being a big hit?
DC: The companies that did a nice job applying lead generation through the year, not just around the holiday season, caught my attention. Again, it goes back to building up your list through the year, and at the same time engaging your customer with relevant content.

Use these tips from MediaWhiz’s Daryl Colwell and you will experience the significant rewards of lead generation. If you have started your own lead generation campaign, how has it worked out? If you will start your lead generation campaign let us know if these tips helped you.