Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

Generating and Qualifying Leads with Online Advertising 85
could generate a high number of responses, even if they are unqualified.
Online ordering driven by advertising, with the order
taken within the advertising, is growing in the consumer market.
It is still somewhat early to tell how successful this will be as a
direct order channel.
2. The Web Response Form. If you make an offer of value that elicits
a response from a qualified prospect, you obviously want to
capture information about that prospect. Your second option,
then, is to have your ad lead directly to a special Web response
form. The Web response form should continue to entice the prospect
with the offer, encouraging him or her to complete the form
and answer some qualifying questions to obtain the offer. If the
offer can be fulfilled online (as is the case with information that
the respondent receives or a demo that unlocks and can be downloaded
once the form is sent), so much the better. Similarly, if you
are using the banner ad to generate orders, the Web response
form or landing page should offer the prospect the opportunity
to learn more about the featured product and provide the ability
to order it online.
3. The Web Site. Many online ads terminate at the advertiser’s Web
site home page. The objective is to tease the prospect with the ad
and then engage him or her at the home page of the Web site.
This is fine if you are measuring the success of your advertising
campaign by the amount of Web site traffic it generates, but Web
site traffic is meaningless to a direct marketer unless it can be
converted into measurable results—identifiable responses and
qualified leads.
Of course, if your Web site home page does a solid job of
highlighting a response area and making an offer to capture a
prospect’s interest, you could ultimately elicit a qualified inquiry.
In that case, you could accomplish a lot by leading the prospect
directly to your Web site. However, you may be better able to
focus your prospect’s attention by giving him or her a limited
number of options, and that could make the Web response form
more suitable for direct marketing. Even if the Web response form
resides on your Web site, you can lead the ad respondent there by
linking to the response form’s specific URL.