In the current digital marketplace, publishers and other marketers are looking for new ways to generate additional revenues from their existing Web sites and traffic. One largely untapped revenue stream for companies that capture visitor information on their Web sites is to participate in a business-to-business co-registration network.
Co-registration refers to the practice of making multiple offers on a single transaction or landing page. This is a great way or affiliates to build a new prospecting database and target buyers when they are still in purchase frame of mind.
The specifications for a co-registration ads vary, but they are typically limited to a few lines of copy and perhaps an image. The company who owns the registration form is charging the companies whose offers appear on that page for every visitor who clicks on their ad and opts into their list.
With banner ads, the visitor is first taken to a landing page on the advertiser’s site, where the advertiser must persuade the visitor to provide full contact information. With co-registration, the advertiser receives the visitor’s full contact information in real time as soon as a visitor opts in to receive more information. This is a clear distinction and one of the main reasons the co-reg model is so effective.
The idea of co-registration is that landing pages attract high-quality traffic: users with specific interests who are ready to take action, whether to buy a product, sign up for a Webinar, or download a white paper. By placing small online ads for related offers at the bottom of the page, you can get visitors to click on and request those additional offers as well as the primary offer.
Co-registration ads can appear not just on landing pages but anywhere on a site that uses a registration, subscription form, or log-on function. Typically, no more than four co-registration ads appear on any form.
B-to-b companies are discovering that business-to-business co-registration deals are one of the most consistent and affordable methods of generating quality sales leads and capturing opt-in e-mail names online. As a result, co-registration deals can be highly profitable, both for the publisher selling the co-registration as well as the advertiser buying it.
The co-registration advertising model is similar to search engine pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, where advertisers can bid up the price. And with only 4 positions available per transaction page, the real estate is very valuable.
Co-reg came along just in time as Google and the other search engines have been stealing ad revenue away from media companies. With co-registration, traditional publishers now have another source of online ad revenue, enabling them to compete with search more effectively. More than $300 million a year is spent by online advertisers on co-registration programs.
Publishers profit handsomely because b-to-b co-registration leverages an existing online asset: empty space at the bottom of their landing pages. However, when the co-registration deal is made with a single publisher, the advertiser grabs leads from that publisher’s traffic only. Given that only 3% to 6% of landing page visitors click on one or more of the co-registration offers on that page, the traffic from a single-publisher co-registration site often does not give advertisers the volume they seek.
Although a publisher can market b-to-b co-registration deals on its own, a far better tactic is to join a business-to-business co-registration network. When publishers participate in an established b-to-b co-reg network, there is no new infrastructure to create, and the cost of adding the co-registration copy and hyperlinks to landing pages is virtually zero.
The co-reg network is in essence a media buy the advertiser or his agency can make to reach a certain demographic from a broad collection of publisher web sites targeting that audience. The network attracts more advertisers than a single publisher co-reg offer, because of the target and volume the network can provide. In exchange, advertisers gain access to highly targeted traffic and quality b-to-b leads at an affordable price.
When a publisher joins a true b-to-b co-registration network, advertisers looking to reach a specific market can generate co-registration names from multiple publishers in the network whose audience fits the target market’s demographics, not just a single publisher. The advertiser gets not only the quality and low cost per lead desired, but also sufficient new names to make the co-registration program worthwhile.
Business and trade publishers must evaluate co-registration networks carefully. It is easy to confuse a true b-to-b co-registration network with one of the many business networks on the Internet.
Many “business networks” try to make themselves sound like business-to-business lead networks, but actually cater to a consumer market: primarily individuals looking for new jobs or to network online. Marketers who advertise on these so-called “business networks” often find the quality of the leads to be inferior.
Advertisers want good quality online leads and are willing to pay for them. This demand has given rise to true b-to-b co-registration networks. A true b-to-b co-registration network consists only of legitimate trade and business magazine publishers. The higher the quality of the member publishers in the b-to-b co-reg network, the greater a premium the network can command in ad fees.
The Web traffic of these publishers is comprised of highly targeted business and technical buyers, usually at their place of employment. These b-to-b prospects come to the publisher’s web site looking for products, ideas, and information to do their jobs better and faster. In short, the co-registration network delivers to advertisers qualified prospects actively searching for products and services the co-registration advertisers provide.
When prospects check off the advertiser’s co-registration ad and then submit the page, the advertiser is notified. The advertiser delivers whatever the offer promised (e.g., a free white paper, product guide, whatever) and adds the prospect’s name to their own internal database for follow-up. The advertiser, in turn, pays $10 to $50 or more for each lead generated. And the publisher gets that money for no added work or investment, making co-registration a win-win deal for both publishers and marketers.
