Using Facebook For Lead Generation: Underground Elephant CEO Jason Kulpa (Part 5)

Sramana: Do you see any trends on your radar regarding retraining the workforce? Huge industries have become emaciated over the past decade. Are you seeing people looking for retraining opportunities?

Jason Kulpa: Individuals who are retraining and moving into new industries is a major segment of what we are doing. It is split 50/50 between people coming out of high school who are looking for nontraditional options and older people who are displaced who are looking to build relevant skill sets. Some of the more technical degrees such as X-ray technician and ultrasound are tangible skill sets they can use at a real job. It is almost like a trade.

It is not limited to rural or big city areas or to younger populations. The economy has hit just about everybody equally. Our position is that the more people that we can train to be relevant and participate in society then the better job we are doing. Our approach avoids shoving thousands of degrees in front of them and asking them to make a life decision with little information.

Most of those types of people are not ready for that at this point. They have been displaced and their lives have undergone major change. We try to give them a set of options that other like minded people like them have found successful. In a sense are helping them re-target their careers by cutting out the nonsense and giving them good career paths that others in their situation have found success with.

Sramana: What is happening in Michigan right now?

Jason Kulpa: We see a lot of interest from Michigan. As far as conversions go we have seen equal conversions across the country because of our process and the way that we market. We tend to see high conversion rates because of how we market. We think that is a function of what we do. In that sense we are not getting better conversion rates from there compared to the rest of the U.S. The reality is the entire country has been hit very hard.

Sramana: What is the business model? What does it cost you to generate 75,000 leads a month, and what do you sell them at?

Jason Kulpa: The business model starts with the purchase of an impression. We track the impression into a click. The impression might be 50 cents, and the click might turn into a function of a few more cents. We eventually create a performance number.

We are paid only on performance. That performance would be when the person is actually qualified. We essentially take the risk out of the actual transactions. We place the media, and we are paid based on the actual delivery of the product versus what a traditional advertising agency does which is spend and charge a percentage. A traditional agency would probably take 15% off the spending.

We have mitigated the risk: We place the media, we write the content, we find the consumers, and we qualify them. We spend all the money and take all the risk ourselves. We are compensated over that number per-unit. We sell 75,000 units per month. We may start off with 100,000 candidates, but not all of them are able to be qualified. It is not a bulk process, it is a refined performance process.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Using Facebook For Lead Generation: Underground Elephant CEO Jason Kulpa
1 2 3 4 5 6 7