“The Leads Are Weak”
November 3rd, 2010
That refrain from the weary salesmen of Glengarry Glen Ross came to mind the other morning when I received an email from someone at LocalVisibility.org, which purports to be:
a service for local business owners who are interested in understanding and improving their online visibility. The service shows how visible any given business is to potential customers, compared with its direct, local competitors. By covering millions of web pages on the leading search engines, yellow pages directories and popular local search sites, localvisibility.org provides the most comprehensive analysis of local businesses’ online visibility.
Sounds terrific. After all, every small business wants to stay a step ahead of the competition … and Local Visibility was even kind enough to send along a copy of their “visibility report,” which listed keywords I’m missing for my business that included “nitrogen,” “aquariums” and “restore” — hardly the kind of specific, targeted long-tail terms that apply to CKPcreative.
Then I took a look at my competition, as defined by Local Visibility. In the “Communications & Public Relations Consultants” category, they listed Universal Space Network, Inc. (which provides services “used by satellite owners and operators for world-wide, ground station coverage supporting both Telemetry, Tracking & Control,” according to their site) and a 7-Eleven about 20 miles away.
Later the same day, I received an email from one of my clients asking me whether Local Visibility is a service worth exploring.
Of course, the answer comes from the call to action on their site: “Fill out the form to have one of our experts* answer your questions on how to improve your online visibility, and what it will cost.” That asterisk leads to this footnote: “*We partner with highly-qualified local web marketing companies.”
It’s a pure lead-generation play, and while their About Us page says nothing about who specifically is behind Loal Visibility, some additional digging indicates that it’s these guys.
For my $.02, I find this sort of broad-based cold-calling obnoxious, especially when their market analysis is showing 7-Eleven as one of my direct competitors. The targeting they provide is clearly anything but targeted; it might draw in an extremely naive client or two, but it makes me incredibly doubtful about their ability to generate quality leads.
Oh, and one more thing: It turns out that when you buy leads from them, you’re one of many companies buying the same leads from them: “Leads are typically sent to 2-3 lead buyers simultaneously,” says the general overview they send out when you fill out the form on their site. Good for them; not so good for the lead-buyer.
Takeaway for marketers: If you’re going to deal with a lead generator, make sure you’re getting the Glengarry leads, not the weak leads.