This blog post is sponsored content by a 2018 Business Information & Media Summit sponsor NetLine

When it comes to lead generation, many publishers are faced with mounting challenges that test the limits of retaining quality while offering reliable scale. As experts of their content and their audiences, publishers increasingly find themselves straining to adopt in-house solutions that resolve customary pain points without exhausting resources. 

We’re working with publishers to resolve their pain points and even delivering an additional benefit – previously unforeseen revenue through content monetization. By collaborating with leading publishers to transform their lead generation business, we’ve been able to isolate and resolve the top three pain points that have become pervasive in the industry (and the problem most publishers didn’t know they had.)

Pain Point 1: Incremental Revenue Growth

Starting with the “unknown”: incremental revenue growth sounds more like an obvious “nice to have” than a pain point, but for every time a user downloads content, publishers are dealing with opportunity costs. How? Without the right technology powering existing gated content, publishers are missing the opportunity to monetize their content. Users are continuously engaging but publishers leave opportunity on the table. The NetLine Lead Generation Platform creates monetization opportunities across Publisher sites – delivering a user experience that provides more content, faster and more thorough form technology, while supporting upwards of 30% in additional revenue.

That’s 30% additional revenue for doing what publishers are already doing – delivering high-quality content on their websites to the same audience. And users are making additional content requests which increases loyalty through an enriched experience. As ‘the platform that pays you to use it’, additional net-new revenue is not a typical “must have” quality when shopping vendors, but it’s there for the taking.

Pain Point 2: Reliable Scale to Deliver on Client Campaigns

For publishers who have forged a loyal, niche audience, there is the fear of scale and fatigue that oftentimes becomes a limiter for client campaigns. It can be nearly impossible to promise consistent lead quotas when these factors are at play. Commonly, those selling lead gen have backed themselves into a corner with nowhere to go and the client is left searching for answers. Or, they can’t really answer to how many leads are being generated.

Publishers can comfortably promise a certain number of leads by tapping into a fully compliant network of B2B professionals on the NetLine network. Top publishers have been able to ‘flip the switch’ to the NetLine network and quickly fill difficult-to-execute client campaigns. Particularly of benefit to those publishers who fear fatigue, this is a feature that delivers the same high-quality, niche leads without exhausting a loyal audience base. These publishers then have greater success in booking repeat business.

Pain Point 3: Operational (in)efficiencies

In any industry, when clients start asking for more, it is always a good thing. When publisher clients start asking for lead gen, it’s sometimes cause for a deep breath and concern about outcomes. Inclined to say yes, publishers reach for solutions, home-grown or otherwise, to try and deliver on expectations. With that approach, publishers often incur wasteful spend on initialization of campaigns. Developing landing pages, forms, assets, cover art, fulfillment rules and more can be an in-house debacle. Then, they find themselves laboring over Excel files to fashion a client report deliverable. Finding a vendor that does what the publisher needs, and what the client needs, also usually comes with a hefty price tag or limitations anyway.

We challenge publishers to expect more for less. A no-cost solution, that delivers a 90% improvement in launch time; that shakes out to be over 550 business days’ worth of emails, phone calls, and discussion to launch a campaign after one year of adoption. From there, real-time interactive reporting with sharing capabilities means publishers can instantly share detailed campaign performance reports with clients. The Publisher Lead Gen Platform delivers on all of these and has had transformative impact on how publishers deliver lead gen to their clients.

Overall, publishers who are offering lead generation or want to offer lead generation will inevitably face the same barriers and find ways to overcome them – with or without a 3^rd party solution. Those who look inward may find strengths and flexibility, but many find inefficient processes, red tape and uncertainty. As the industry continues to diversify, publishers will have greater opportunity to look outside of their organization for support from niche martech solutions. Ensuring that a vendor checks the boxes (for known or unknown needs) will be keys to success. 

Nevena Jovanovic is the Marketing Manager at SIIA.