Anura PR Team
Lead generation is necessary to grow your business; however, producing an effective lead generation strategy is hard work, and it takes a lot of time and effort to grow organic traffic. A quick and easy way to boost traffic is to purchase a lead list (or email list) from a lead generation agency or other company. Sure, you instantly receive hundreds (or thousands) of leads, but here's the question: are they legitimate?
TCPA Compliance with Ad Fraud Solutions
When a business is in lead generation, they run the risk of fraud. Oftentimes, a percentage of the leads they accumulated is fraudulent, and violates Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulations. TCPA prohibits telemarketing calls/messaging without the prior consent of the owner. This means that anytime you reach out to someone without their consent, you've violated TCPA. The average percentage of ad fraud is 25%; if 25% of your leads are fraudulent, not only are you wasting marketing dollars and the time reaching out to people who never gave their number, but you are also liable for major TCPA violations. Non-compliance with TCPA can cost millions in fines, so it's important to ensure your leads are legitimate.
Even when you're doing the hard work of generating your leads organically (e.g. landing page), you’re still at risk for ad fraud. What is the solution? Ad fraud solutions can help keep you TCPA compliant by mitigating the types of fraud that affect landing pages and lead lists. Here’s what you need to know.
Landing Pages
Landing pages are the main method of lead generation. The purpose of a landing page is to gather information about the visitor, such as their name, email address and/or phone number. Most people don't freely give up their personal information, so the page must offer something valuable in return for this information. Landing pages come in a few different forms, each with a vulnerability to fraud.
Typical landing page forms include:
1. Subscriptions
The image below our blog post is a CTA for Anura. When clicked, it brings users to a landing page that asks for their email. Once their email is added, they become a member of our email list and receive a generated email whenever there’s a new blog post.
However, if we weren’t using an ad fraud solution, a fake user could easily enter a fraudulent email address, and we’d never know. If we were to reach out to this "fake" email address, even unknowingly, we would be violating TCPA compliance.
Related Post: Are You Paying For Fake Leads? Stop Lead Gen Fraud Now!
2. Call Backs
This type of form requires more detailed information, such as a name, phone number, etc. Although it tends to result in fewer leads; it yields higher quality leads. Without an ad fraud solution, fraudsters and bots can easily enter bogus information into the form, diminishing the quality of leads. Plus, if you’re calling a user who didn’t personally enter their information, you’ve committed yet another TCPA violation. Hello, lawsuit.
3. Quotes
Insurance companies favor this type of landing page. After all, their job is to spit out quotes at a rapid speed. Since there are a lot of factors that go into computing a quote, users are required to fill in extremely detailed information.
Again, a fake user could populate the fields with fake or stolen information, putting your insurance company at risk.
Related Post: Fraud Detection: Online Survey Scams and How To Spot Them
Lead Lists
Sometimes when there aren’t enough users filling out lead forms, businesses will purchase lead lists from third parties to compensate. It sounds like a great idea; you can save time and resources on organic leads, and just buy a ready-to-go lead list. It's easy, but unfortunately, many of these lists are fraudulent.
If you unknowingly buy a fraudulent lead list and pick up the phone to contact those leads, you could end up like Resort Marketing Group. The cruise line ended up settling a lawsuit costing them millions. Each individual TCPA violation is a fine of $500-$1500; if you buy a list of 100,000 leads, and 25% of the list is fraudulent, you're looking at a minimum of $12.5 million dollars in fines.
Related Post: Why TCPA Regulations Matter to Lead Gen Marketers Addressing Ad Fraud
If you’re using lead lists, having an ad fraud solution to filter your leads ensures your list is TCPA compliant, saving you a ton of money in fines.
Ad Fraud Solutions Ensure Better Leads
By filtering your leads (and traffic) with a third-party ad fraud solution, you can ensure real people are filling out your landing page forms and your lead lists are legitimate. This will minimize your chances of becoming non-TCPA compliant and potentially losing millions of dollars.
