Disqus - Latest Comments for michaelferree

Re: Best Takedown Of A Fox News Producer Ever

michaelferree — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 12:08:49 -0000

The government is made of people, by the people, for the people.

Re: Twitter’s Official Tweet Button Has Arrived

michaelferree — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:04:44 -0000

exactly! Why is this a big deal. seriously.

Re: Starting a New Book Project. Will it Become a Book Deal?

michaelferree — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:09:03 -0000

That is a good point and I agree that social media is exposing behaviors, however I am not aware of any other ways to expose these behaviors other then physically observing them. That goes without saying you can track entry points to your site or phone. Point is that it is still very difficult to track real effectiveness of SM, especially down to the sale.
Its not impossible, by no means, but it is an art.

Re: Starting a New Book Project. Will it Become a Book Deal?

michaelferree — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:39:17 -0000

Very cool Bill!

Marketing should be metric driven and unfortunately in many cases it is not. Many marketers go off of "feal" and guessing. However more and more marketers are bringing data into the mix. Is the social media throwing a wrench into that trend?

Re: Buick's New Tagline: "The new class of world class." - mediabistro.com: AgencySpy

michaelferree — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:46:04 -0000

I think it can work as long as the vehicles actually step up to the plate.

Is it me or does the term "world class" sound like something your parents or grandparents would say?

Re: Can We Do Right By The Customer And Still Make Money?

michaelferree — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:50:25 -0000

A company must charge more for a lead that has less competition or that is being distributed less, obviously. It seems logical and simple enough to build a tiered pricing model based on how many companies the consumer chooses and I am sure that is what InsWeb is currently doing.

However I think there becomes a problem with this pricing model when a consumer picks only one company. This is pure speculation, but I would guess, based on my experience of buying and selling leads, that the exclusive price is at the very top of the buyers acceptable price range and in fact probably is out of it. Unless the lead seller decides to accept a lower profit margin for these exclusive leads, which is my guess of what is currently being done.

This problem stems from the fact that exclusive leads do not always convert at a marginally higher rate as compared to shared. In other words, the increase rate of conversions doesn't match the increased price that is needed to sell a lead exclusively and the ROI could, in many cases, be lower then that of a shared lead. Now there are a lot of caveats to that statement, but I think it can generally be accepted. Even more simply stated, exclusive leads are not worth the price, in most cases.

Regardless, my guess is that a large % of the consumers pick multiple choices and only few that make one choice. It would be interesting to find out, especially for this type of self-serve model, how many choices is optimal to present to the consumer. How many options should be presented so that they choose the most options. Example: if I show 6 options will the consumer pick 3, if I show 3 options will the consumer only pick 1, etc.

Anywho, good post and I couldn't agree more that the consumer experience could be improved. The question is, as you already asked, how to do it and still make money and use quality media to do so.