Pursuing fake leads isn’t just a waste of time; it’s also a waste of money and puts your company’s reputation at risk. On average, 25% of every dollar spent on leads is lost to fraud—percentages like that add up fast. As you work toward your 2023 marketing goals, new lead generation strategies are likely top of mind. However, finding quality prospects is trickier than it used to be. Focusing on quantity alone will not benefit your sales today or in the future, as many leads will be invalid—either providing fake information or legitimate contact information that was taken and shared without permission. Pursuing fake leads costs your company plenty in wasted hours, and it can also lead to fines if you reach out to someone whose personal information was stolen and they report the contact. The cost of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) can range from $500 per violation (to $300 million!). Aside from the hit to your bottom line, it can also cost your company’s reputation.
“It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” —Benjamin Franklin
Anura has fraud prevention solutions that weed out bad leads with such accuracy you’ll know not to pursue them before your lead form has even been completed. Click here to calculate how much of your current web traffic is fake.
But first, what are fake leads?
A type of ad fraud, fake leads cause you to waste your time and energy. They take your attention from real leads and cause your marketing campaigns to either perform poorly or have inflated results that skew the ROI for your campaign.
As unbelievable as it seems, there are individuals working in fraud farms whose whole job is to commit ad fraud. There, they fill out lead forms with personal information stolen from real people, recycle old leads as new ones, or input completely fake information. Bot traffic is another source of fake leads. Operating in much the same way as fraud farms, bots use stolen, old, or phony information to complete lead forms that will lead to losses if they are pursued. You can learn more about how to spot fake leads, too.
What's at stake?
There’s four major risks when you do nothing against fraud:
Lower ROI
Brand reputation issues
Wasted call center resources
TCPA violations
The most direct impact fake leads have on your marketing efforts is they take money out of your budget. If you’re running a pay-per-click or pay-per-lead campaign, every fake lead costs marketing dollars that will not translate to sales.
Fake leads can also confuse your customer data and target ads toward people with little to no conversion value.
Contacting fake leads is time-consuming, costly, and risky. At best, vetting and chasing fake leads wastes time. At worst, you can be reported for TCPA non-compliance and heavily fined.
Why fake leads?
So, what’s the point? Why are fraud farms and bots targeting your marketing efforts? Sometimes they’re compensated by your competitors, and sometimes the incentive is to earn affiliate commissions. Either way, it’s costing you money with no possible return on your expenses. The Wise Marketer explains why businesses based in the United States are lucrative targets for fraud: we have the largest digital advertisers globally and the biggest pool of data centers and carriers in the world (including Apple). Being the largest slice of the pie comes with severe consequences and puts targets on our backs.
How do I prevent lead generation fraud?
Finding the right ad fraud solution for your lead generation campaign starts with a focus on data. Anura provides a solution that empowers marketers with a user-friendly experience that works. By analyzing the visitor data of your traffic and lead sources, you'll be able to identify fraud in real time so you can deal with it immediately. We offer a detailed analytics dashboard that can drill down and pinpoint exactly where fraud originates. We provide the industry's leading fraud solution with definitive results to improve your conversions and marketing spend. With 99.999% accuracy in fraudulent visitor detection, no other fraud prevention solution even comes close to our level of accuracy and thoroughness. Add all that to our unparalleled customer service and an exhaustive library of educational resources, and there’s no good reason not to start your free trial of Anura today.
It's time to bring in the high-quality leads
Now that you know how to get your fraud prevention system in place, here are some proven lead generation strategy tips to gain even more high-quality leads with your marketing dollars. The key here is to get them in the door — to engage them enough that they want to give you their invaluable contact information.
Not all five of these tips will work for every business, but that’s where you come in. You can probably knock some out fairly quickly by knowing who your customers are and what motivates them. Beyond that, it might be time for trial and error through a few small campaigns until you find the best way to capture leads that will convert to sales. The important thing is that you have your ad fraud tools in place upfront—before you start your marketing spend—so you know with confidence that every one of the leads you bring in has legitimate value.
Create several opportunities to share information, and make them as tempting as possible. You’re likely giving resources away on your website, so turn those into gated giveaways! Offer newsletters with bonus content for subscribers and PDFs of blog entries, but also try to re-think your giveaways to ensure they’re unique. If your competitors offer similar resources, find a different way to package your information to create memorable value for your customer. Interactive tools are great, so consider providing a game that leads to a discount or a tool pointing them to the product that best matches their needs.
Test even minor changes, and track the results! Changing one word in an opt-in form can drastically affect conversions, and those results can be hard to predict. Test images, colors, graphics, and copy, then optimize accordingly.
Use simple, concise landing pages. Your audience is likely overwhelmed by options and inundated with offers. Provide information as clearly as possible and show how your product outperforms competitors. Remember, most people access the internet on mobile devices, and smaller screen sizes make crowded websites frustratingly difficult to navigate. Unclutter your page and make the call-to-action button easy to find!
Keep your sign-up form short and only ask for the information you need. Customers are much more likely to provide one contact method than multiple, and if they’ve made it to the form, you don’t want to lose them there!
Analyze your competitors. Sign up for their newsletters and follow their social channels to see what techniques they’re using. Use yourself as a test subject and think about which of their marketing techniques would appeal to a consumer like yourself. Target your ads to those who frequent your competitors’ pages, whether it’s through Gmail, social media, or YouTube.
Mix and match the techniques above until you find your company’s ideal formula. And don’t forget to follow up with remarketing and retargeting to keep your leads engaged and create lasting customers.
You’re almost ready to get started with a strong lead-generation campaign. To eliminate fraud from your upcoming efforts, make sure you’re also signed up for your free trial of Anura.
Anura PR Team
