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Feature Article #1

Bankrate.com Masterful at Managing Investor Expectations

Amid disappointing news that Bankrate.com (RATE) would cut 2008 revenue guidance by 2%, resetting expectations between $164 to $169 million, some analyst are rushing in with rating upgrades.
Why?
Because Tom Evans is smart and Bankrate.com has a sturdy platform for weathering economic and advertising storms. The masterful management of expectations early sets a nice low bar [...]

Bill Rice | July 8th, 2008 | Continued

About this Site

Lead Marketwatch is another lead management service of Kaleidico. Our unique insight, from servicing thousands of lead buyers and the most popular  real-time Internet lead channels, brings you data and analysis that will help you buy leads smarter and convert more of them to deals.
Lead Marketwatch brings you objective analysis on the lead market, its [...]

Other Recent Articles

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Are You Making These 5 Lead Management Mistakes?

Are you looking to acquire more customers with less leads? That strategy would certainly improve your profit and decrease wasted marketing dollars. Unfortunately, you probably don’t even know how many opportunities you are throwing away every day. Proper sales management will instantly put you on top of every deal and increase the pull-through on your [...]

2Jul2008 | Bill Rice | 2 comments | Continued
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5 Things That Will Change The Online Lead Generation Market

The lead generation market landscape seems like the same cookie cutter business models. Everyone trying to compete on the vapors of efficiency and lead quality. There is certainly growth, but most of it seems to be the result of advertisers shifting dollars into the media–not innovation. This is why I think the market is ripe [...]

1Jul2008 | Bill Rice | 0 comments | Continued
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Top 5 Online Lead Generation Ideas I Like

Online lead generation is still in its infancy, but I think it is still in for a major shift in business methodology and structure. Today, most of the lead generation market looks barely a step beyond cost per impression marketing, but we tack on a Web form to improve our traffic monetization. I think this [...]

23Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 1 comment | Continued
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Lead Marketwatch Launches State Concentration Lead Widget

Kaleidico is always trying to give you better tools and insights into the internet lead market, helping you to make smarter lead buying decisions. Today, we continue that goal by launching the Lead Marketwatch State Concentration lead widget–look to the right sidebar.
As any lead buyer knows state filters can have a significant impact on internet [...]

17Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 0 comments | Continued
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Internet Lead Generation 101-Figuring It Out

Consumers are spending less and less time watching TV and more time surfing the Web. Meanwhile, it occurs to me that people come to the Internet for 5 things: To Learn, To Buy, Find People, Find Opportunity, and Find Hope. Why wouldn’t I market here? The natural follow on question is how do I market [...]

16Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 1 comment | Continued
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Closed Loop Marketing, Generating the Best Leads

Generating demand and generating buyers are two very different lead experiences for a sales person. Demand generation typically delivers a great conversation that may evolve into something eventually at best and a non-responsive withdrawal at worst. In contrast, buyer generation delivers a lead that is ready to get to business and is just looking for [...]

14Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 0 comments | Continued
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Nextag Surges the Charts as the Top Comparison Shopping Engine

Channel Dollar’s report of Nextag’s recent surge in traffic caught my eye. I think this surge is just another indication of NexTag’s aggressive style in a timid market. I reported back in February my opinion that NexTag was feeding on the opportunities forfeited by weakening competitors. I am still in that camp.
They continue to be [...]

12Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 1 comment | Continued
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BillsIQ Reveals the Secrets of Your Personal Finances

There are a lot of reasons that the mortgage market is in a mess, but I think one clear influence was and continues to be a lack of customer knowledge.
As the mortgage refinance market feasted on historically low rates mortgage lenders (and investors) got increasingly exotic with loan products. Yet, customer education did not keep [...]

11Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 2 comments | Continued
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Generating Leads You Can’t Work, Become an Affiliate

More and more I am seeing mortgage brokers and regional lenders generating Internet leads on their own. It is not an easy endeavor and it certainly has little synergy with working a 1003. However, if you happen to have the right technical skills, a strong interest in learning, or maybe a talented Web-savvy friend or [...]

10Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 0 comments | Continued
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LendingTree Helps Borrowers and Lenders Find Solutions with a Bigger Vision

LendingTree is pursuing a bold strategy as it spins off from IAC to become an independent, publicly traded organization (Tree.com, Inc., eventually traded as TREE). After going through a painful right-sizing of its traditional mortgage lead generation operations it is now getting bigger, not smaller. The new company Tree.com is building a bigger vision, according [...]

6Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 0 comments | Continued
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Where Did All the Lead Generators Go?

You may be wondering if I got the question wrong. It seems that over the last year the prevailing question has been about mortgage lenders, not lead providers. However, a recent search for refinance mortgage brought up some interesting results:

100% mortgage lenders and 0% mortgage lead providers. This might tend to indicate that the price [...]

3Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 5 comments | Continued
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Google Competing With Their Customers?

Certainly the lead generation market has been a significant portion of Google’s growth. Which makes their latest offering a little disconcerting to the community.
The new Google Merchant Services (as pointed out by Paul Knag), as launched in the UK as a test market, seems to be directly competing with Google’s mortgage lead generation customers–which gets [...]

2Jun2008 | Bill Rice | 2 comments | Continued
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Don’t Buy Leads, Invest in Leads

You may have thought you couldn’t afford to buy leads. However, I am going to show you a secret that is going to prove you can’t afford not to. So often we go into marketing focused on the initial investment with no consideration of the return or the alternative. ZipSearch’s blog post on investing in mortgage leads [...]

27May2008 | Bill Rice | 0 comments | Continued
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Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo Finds Email Disgusting-Me too…

Reply all:
I think it is disgusting when people, maybe not even people (spambots), ask me for things using form emails that makes it impossible to discern if it is a legitimate request or one reply away from 3000 spam emails a day.
That applies equally to unfortunate people with money trapped in Nigerian bank accounts, requests [...]

22May2008 | Bill Rice | 0 comments | Continued
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