measuring online leadsEvery business has a goal or purpose. Many business related websites today count on their website for lead generation.  Currently, over 80% of our own clients will tell you that their end goal is to generate a lead online.  A lead is then considered anyone that emails or calls the company. 

After we setup a client and begin measuring their leads the inevitable question usually follows:  “Why do I get so many useless leads?”  The purpose of this article is to help explain online lead generation and also offer some helpful hints to improve the overall quality of the leads you receive online.

If You Consider More Than 2 Out Of 10 Leads Hot You Are Doing Well!

For most clients that we speak with we usually recommend that you add a very short ‘quick form’ to every page of your website.  Why?  People don’t want to hunt around looking for a way to contact you.  A form on every page gently reminds the visitor of how accessible you are.   This is the primary method (other than phone calls) that you are able to measure the level of business being generated through your website.

Once this is setup, and you are running your ad campaigns, (hopefully Organic and Paid Search!) you will begin to receive leads from people that want more information about your company.  The most common thing I hear from clients is that the quality is not where they would like it.

Here is what I always tell clients to consider.

Think about all of the people that go to a mall.  Some of them may go in with a clear idea of exactly what they want.  Others may have an idea.  Others are just in to window shop. 

Online behavior is very similar.

We receive leads all the time from inquiring minds.  Some of them are fortune 500 companies, some of them are clear on exactly what they want, but most of them are tire kickers.  They are small shops that want us to teach them everything about internet marketing but don’t want to spend money.  Not everyone has the money! (so we point them to our blog!) 

Essentially our lead breakdown works like this.  Out of 10 leads we receive we find that it is reasonable to expect the following:

1-2 –> Fantastic Leads
1-2 –> So So prospects that may or may not turn into a solid client
4-6 –> Leads that will never account for anything

What Do We Do With Clients That Get Mad At Us For So Many Bad Leads?

When some clients come to us we are sometimes faced with the following call, “Since I started doing Organic Optimization and Pay Per Click all I am getting is crap leads.” 

We are then faced with explaining exactly what I have stated above.  While companies just like ours can generate lots of targeted visitors to your site we are not able to identify each individual person.  Further, if your site is accessible to the world then people will find it.  Just because you have an internet marketing company managing your site does not always mean that we are responsible for every single contact that you make. 

Instead, as stated above, you need to be set with the expectation that not everyone that walks into the ‘mall’ comes out with a truckload of product.  The key is keeping your eyes open and finding the ones that will work well with you.

There is also some other things you can do to improve the overall quality of leads.

Ways To Improve The Quality Of Your Leads

This is one of the biggest things that any formidable internet marketing company can do to improve your lead generation.  Here is a small list of suggestions that you should be made aware of.

Website Presentation

The most impactful thing you can do to improve the overall lead quality is to ensure your website clearly states what you do.  Here are a few things to consider:

1. Offer your visitors a Sales Funnel.  By clearly stating the core purpose to your website at the very top banner will not only improve your bounce rate but it will also improve your lead quality.  To learn more about sales funnels read here.

2. Write in Point Form.  Internet users are click happy.  They don’t want to spend hours reading when they are out window shopping.  State the main points that each page is set to prove either in the top banner, or at the top of the page.  It is fine to elaborate later in the page with proper sentences but give the visitor the option to do this.  By not having point form points, you are forcing them to read long winded text OR just leave.

3. Keep Your Forms Short But Qualified.  It’s important to structure your forms so they are simple but effective.  This means in most cases only using mandatory fields like: Name, Phone Number, Email, & Comments.  Above the form you may want to qualify the visitor and let them know why they should contact you.  Read more about optimizing contact forms here!

Pay Per Click

Some people get concerned that the source of their poor leads are from pay per click.  If this is the case (and your internet marketing should be able to tell you this!) then you may want to ask your company to review the following:

1. Campaign Targets – Are you focusing on very specific services that your company offers or are you being too broad in your keywords?

2. Are you using Landing Pages? – If you are selling immigration law services are you sending the traffic to a page talking about your immigration law services or to the homepage which also talks about class action and family law?  If you are paying for a visitor to come to your site, don’t make them dig for your information.  If they don’t find what they want on your site, chances are they will go elsewhere and find it.

3. Schedule you ads to run when you are in business hours! – are you available to call leads back on weekends?  Will people looking for your services be looking for them at 4am?  If not, make sure your ads are scheduled to run during peak periods that more legitimate visitors would be looking!

4. Know your geographic target! – are you able to serve the world?  Only your country? Just your local city?  A region within your city?  With most paid search campaigns you can target by region.  If you are unable to service an area then make sure you are not advertising to it.  Not only are you not interested in getting leads from these areas but you also would be wasting budget in areas you can’t serve.

All of these suggestions relate to setting reasonable expectations for your leads and helping to improve the overall leads you receive.  If you are one of those people receiving those annoying SPAM type emails.  (the ones you know are automated somehow), then you definitely should be adding CAPTCHA code to your forms.  Doing this, forces the user to validate their inquiry by entering a number that matches the one they see.  It is an extra step but unfortunately, the only real way to block automated inquires.

 

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