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Bill Rice is the CEO of Kaleidico, a leader in lead management systems. Prior to founding Kaleidico he was the VP of National Home Equity and the Home Loan Benefit program at Quicken Loans and one of the founding executives of DeepGreen Bank, an Internet-only bank that was one of the first and (at that time) largest buyers of LendingTree leads in early 2000.

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Where Did All the Lead Generators Go?

June 3rd, 2008 • Related • Filed Under

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:

Google Refinance Mortgage

100% mortgage lenders and 0% mortgage lead providers. This might tend to indicate that the price of mortgage leads no longer supports the $18-$25 PPC?

ppc mortgage refinance

However, the other interesting note is that in the organic results it is 100% lead providers and 0% mortgage lenders. So, maybe lead providers are getting their clicks for free.

I think the stark segmentation is the interesting discussion thread. Does the pay per market create a  bifurcated search landscape?

Just to round out the discussion starter–I did similar searches in other heavy pay per lead verticals (auto, debt, education, and insurance) and did not get the same dramatic segmentation between lenders and lead generators.

There Are 5 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by LeadCritic on 3 June 2008:

    I think they are still there, but simply working PPC more efficiently, ie long tail keywords, rather then the more expensive generic terms.

    At $20 a click you are looking at a $100+ lead that you are selling at $25 on average 3 times, if your lucky and that is only if the leads is a prime filter. What if the lead generated is subprime or purchase, you may not be able to sell that $100 lead at all. ouch

  2. Comment by Bill Rice on 3 June 2008:

    You would know :) Thanks for the comment LeadCritic.

    I think that is smart. Especially as you take control of the organic searches. I guess I was most surprised by the contrast created by this market–lead providers gaining organic search placement and lenders paying in for PPC.

    This is a very unique market!

  3. Comment by JB on 9 June 2008:

    Just to clarify - the highest bidder in your search above is a lead gen company!

  4. Comment by Bill Rice on 9 June 2008:

    Just to highlight ridiculous comments–>@JB you can’t comment on a post’s search link a week later and expect the results to be the same.

    Also, I took the liberty of removing your LowerMyBills affiliate link out of your comment!

  5. Comment by Lee on 11 June 2008:

    I have to laugh at someone putting an affiliate link to LMB here… Come on people…

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