LeadsCon Coverage: What’s In Store for 2010 – Industry Leaders Session

An all star line up of panelists representing major verticals focused on online lead generation shared their thoughts on the outlook of the industry. Bruce Eatroff, Partner, Halyard Capital moderated this panel at LeadsCon 2010, held at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The session started off with a reap of last year and it should come as no surprise that 2009 was a tough year for the mortgage and finance industries.

Ty Taylor, Group President of Experian InteractiveSM, began by sharing some of the challenges Experian faced last year, “2009 was definitely challenging, so much of lead gen was focused on mortgage.  Those companies that diversified, leveraged their scale and sell leads down multiple channel and verticals had success.”

Continuing the theme Thomas Evans, President & CEO, Bankrate, Inc., shared insights on the mortgage industry which seemed to be one of the largest verticals represented this year at LeadsCon. Evans also felt 2009 was a tough year, “it was a challenge, CD’s were a good business, credit cards were awful and insurance was good.”

According to Ronald Pruett, Jr., Chief Executive Officer, MercuryMedia, “financial services and health care took a dip, debt settlement and health and beauty went well, however the end of 2009 saw some advertisers pull back (on their marketing spend).”

There was a lot of insightful information in this session and below I will highlight the top three things discussed in this panel. Most sessions at LeadsCon are limited to 30 minutes which makes it challenging to fully dive into a topic.  Thankfully this session was 45 minutes, but it could have gone on much longer.

1. Lead generation marketing emerging into a multi-channel approach
2. Impact of FTC regulations
3. Industry trends to watch for

A lot of time was spent discussing the emerging channels for lead gen in 2010 and beyond.  Leads were historically driven to a call center, however they are now also driving consumers to a website, mobile and social media channels.  Taylor shared that the volume of leads isn’t as high in these additional channels, however the quality is much higher.

Mr. Evans had this to say add,“Lead gen is the hot new thing, it was almost a dirty words a couple years ago and now we are sitting in a room full of smart people. People buying leads only want to deal with a few people through direct, large relationships”.

Matt Coffin, Investor, Coffin Capital discussed some of the impact from the recent FTC regulatory guidelines that passed December 1^st, 2009.  He had this to say about it, “Some of the bigger names are filing Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  It is happening in direct response TV”.  Mr. Evans was able to provide some perspective from the banking industry regarding this matter, “People in Washington are trying to be sure consumers are protected regarding violations of privacy and integrity of data.  As a result, legislators will try to over correct this”.

As for industry trends to watch for everyone agreed that there would be more consolidations of companies, however some felt it would involve a lot of small acquisitions.  Mr. Pruett felt that the application of web and television would be important going forward.  He added this, “You can build great brands through lead gen, it is quickly becoming main stream.  When you can quantify it, you can sell it.”

There was a lot of great information in this session, I hope this recap provided some insight into content this all star lineup provided.  If you attended LeadsCon and would like to add to this, I’d love to read your comments below.