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Does Ameriprise’s buying lunch business model work?

Colin — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:52:14 +0000

My friend Srirup invited me to a “free lunch” (the cynic in me knows nothing is free). Ultimately the cost of this lunch was my time for 20 minutes to listen to a sales pitch, and me taking (or not) a follow up call. Im not going to do business with Ameriprise because of the lunch.

This reminded me of an article Ramit at iwillteachyoutoberich.com wrote a few months ago. He does a better job of tearing apart their business model, so if you are interested in that – take a look.

In my old job, we used to take potential clients out to lunch. Buying lunch was an excuse to get their undivided attention for an hour. In that time we could establish what their needs were and if we could move forward with a potential relationship. We didn’t win them all. However, it did enable us to know most people in our small industry.

This Ameriprise thing is structured in such a way that it’s more of a fishing expedition. Throw some bait in the water and see if anyone bites.

It is a waste of time and money for them. Sure. I feel like Joe is a nice guy and I’m happy he bought me lunch. Im not going to go any further than that!

What is your reaction to this kind of marketing?

Someone at facebook or microsoft is an idiot.

Colin — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 12:00:58 +0000

Facebook has a gold mine of user information to do targeted advertising really well. They have an ad deal with microsoft to monetize their site. Who is dropping the ball? Why in god’s name is a 25 year old unmarried male being served up the following ad:

Ad Council
Adopt Us Kids

You may have what it takes to adopt a teen from foster care.

Because teens don’t need perfection, they need you.

Learn more at adoptuskids.org

Excuse the cynicism, but are the teen and I supposed to become facebook friends before or after I adopt the teen? Who at facebook or microsoft doesn’t get the concept that if you have information about your users, you can serve up advertisements that are relevant to them?

Click fraud rampant on Looksmart ?

Colin — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 13:03:50 +0000

Looksmart is a smaller PPC (pay per click) advertising platform. Google is the gorilla in the room and offers great tools to track the conversions of other systems. Unfortunately, I cant give you specific numbers. I can tell you that Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are all within 1 – 2 percentage points of each other. Looksmart is around 10% lower than the others on conversions. Does this mean that click fraud is rampant? Or is the answer, that users like to click but not convert on looksmart. Either way, performance is significantly better on other sites. If you’re doing PPC advertising, Looksmart will likely disappoint.

More info on cross channel conversion tracking with google