Help Me Read & Handle this Situation

animalstyle

animalstyle

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The Situation
My main earner is an authority site for a specific industry. I have multiple business deals, but one major one. For the past year I've been sending traffic and leads to a provider. Its been the majority of the earnings of the site.

After a strong holiday season, the provider paused our agreement for a month in order to evaluate our relationship and measure the incremental value. It was made clear that the agreement was not terminated, just paused. I've felt this was coming, just didn't know when.

Site Setup
Im going to use a pizza authority site to give you an idea about what I've got going on. I work to provide value on the site - lots of articles about how to make pizza, types of crust etc. - I am an go-to in the pizza game. Generally, avid pizza eaters know about the site.

I have a listing of businesses that get lots of traffic both directly to those pages and through larger landing pages helping people find them. IE searches for 'bobs pizza' as well as 'pizza places' both ending on 'bobs pizza location page'. I directly refer people off these pages via a link or collect leads via a form on my site. I tend to rank quite strongly for both terms in the example above. If I don't have an agreement, these pages still exist but there is no link/form on the page. Instead there are ads and links to other nearby pizza places.

The industry is fairly small without much competition. I don't have another provider I could send these leads and traffic to within the industry. There might be other providers in nearby verticals, but that would be a last resort.

For the next month its pretty much a waiting game when it comes to this project. I just want to get my head on straight and plan for the reconnection on the other end.

Has anyone been through anything like this before? What can I expect on the other end? Is there a position or stance that's best to take during any communications?
 
Can you elaborate on your gut feeling this was coming?

Unfortunately, without an agreement with other providers this one has all the leverage at the moment (and probably realizes it).

What is stopping you from reaching out to other companies?
 
The gut feeling was actually when this would happen, not if. They were always happy with the volume and wondered about proving if the sales would still be there without our agreement. I suppose a shutoff is the only way to get some info.

backwoods said:
What is stopping you from reaching out to other companies?
Click to expand...

Lack of competition in the space.
 
Is there any way that you could fill the role of the company you are sending leads to? Maybe that's the play. You start your own company doing that, use your own leads and other websites leads.
 
@Prentzz solid idea but unfortunately no this isn't something I could jump into.
 
Sounds like they are re-evaluating their ROAS on your platform vs others. You need to be showing them the value, and you need to be optimizing your leads to convert on the backend for them.

Is your agreement complete once the lead is in their possession? Can you influence the closing of the lead on their end?
 
@Flex you've got to be spot on about the ROAS.

Once I pass the leads, they are out of my hands. I can only educate on the front end and that only goes so far.

The volume Ive sent is quite high, enough to be taken seriously. If they do consider continuing, Im sure I'll see a push back for a reduced pay structure. If that happens, how serious should I take the renegotiation? Since I have a high volume could I barter back a bit?
 
animalstyle said:
@Flex you've got to be spot on about the ROAS.

Once I pass the leads, they are out of my hands. I can only educate on the front end and that only goes so far.

The volume Ive sent is quite high, enough to be taken seriously. If they do consider continuing, Im sure I'll see a push back for a reduced pay structure. If that happens, how serious should I take the renegotiation? Since I have a high volume could I barter back a bit?
Click to expand...
Your response really is dictated by a couple factors:
  • The diversification of lead buyers you can serve
  • Their ROAS on the leads provided
  • The cost structure of a lead. Are they paying per lead, per closed lead, per visit, etc
I would not say high volume means anything unless you know their ROAS personally. As to how serious you should take a negotiation, well that depends on the monetization alternatives for the particular site. Ultimately if they are your only advertiser, then you are kind of at their mercy to a degree.
 
It's a % of the final closed lead / converted traffic value. That leaves me knowing the marketing cost for my agreement, just not knowing what the marketing cost for their other channels is. I don't have any other obvious options for monetizing. If the deal crumbles it sounds like I'll have to get creative/hibernate the project and keep an eye out for possibilities down the road.

Thanks for all this back and forth, really sobering. I'm oddly content with everything. I've got options, and even if it crumbles to the ground it's a great learning experience and only motivates me.
 
The industry is small but they are not the only players aren't they?

Gaslight the shit out of them. If the agreement is paused, continue to capture leads for another 'pizza' place and keep them updated (nicely) that since the agreement is paused- you will do a trial for another pizza place that may or may not be interested.

You don't actually have to have contacted another pizza place to do this. Though you may want to hand this set of leads to that other pizza place anyways and see if that might materialize into something in the future.

Continue to update your existing (on the fence) partners about how many leads you've captured for their competitors while the agreement is not running.

Keep them sweating (again, nicely of course).
 
@Raymond Luo They are not the only players, but they are the majority player in most markets. Largely I don't have anyone else to send the leads to. I've actually removed the links to the lead forms all together.

What I am collecting is the resulting emails in customers contacting me looking for services. I've used that surge of messages as leverage before, and I will use it again to keep them sweating as you say.
 
I've been in this position on a smaller scale a few times before, and didn't have good candidates to adequately fill the volume I had. I don't know if this will match up with your industry or not, or how national/local based it is, but maybe you can take something away from this.

Here's what I did:

I put together a scraped whois list of every company/website/service provider I could find in my space. Then I personally, and manually, researched each one to get the owners best contact email, etc...

Then put together an email like this:

Title: Pizza Job? (vague, but intriguing... you just want them to open, not understand)
Body: I've got several people desperately looking to hire someone to make pizzas for their company catering parties, but I don't have a service provider that can take them all right now. Would you be interested by chance?

*note - this is a first come first serve basis... I'm sending this email to every company listed below right now: (all of their direct competitors, or names they would know... could care less if they're a good fit or not)
  • Bobs Pizza
  • Lis's Pizza
  • Papa Johns
  • Pizza Hut
  • Your Town Pizza
  • xxx
  • xxxx
  • etc....
What happened?

Well it's been different results every time, but the best situation that could have ever happened one time I did this, was the same company who put me on "pause," also owned another website/brand name that I didn't know about, and immediately contacted me to renegotiate. They did NOT want someone in particular on that list to get a hold of these leads. (keep in mind, this had nothing to do with me. Hell, it wasn't even really a threat to their business IF one of the other companies did take them!)

The point is, there may be leverage points you don't see (and rightfully wouldn't know about) hidden there that can work in your favor. The other times I've done this, one of them I just gave them free leads for 30 days so I wouldn't have to take my forms/call tracking lines down (people would get pissed and called multiple days in a row if they didn't get call backs!), and told them if they make some money with them, then lets set something up. <---- not ideal, but better than nothing, and have successfully on-boarded new client that was as well.

Hope that gives you an idea or two.
 
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