A new year is quickly approaching which means your company has probably been making plans for the year ahead. You're getting budgets approved, solidifying goals and laying out plans to achieve them.
You undoubtedly want to grow your business next year and a key determinant of whether you'll actually do that is whether or not you can generate enough leads.
Think Beyond a Lack of Traffic
Hands down, the biggest misconception companies make about their website is that they simply don't get enough traffic, and if they did, they would have leads flooding into their CRM waiting to be followed up with by their sales people.
This is almost NEVER the case.
Traffic does not equate to leads. It is only one of several components that impact lead generation online.
Consider this...
If you are currently generating 1 lead per month through your website and your traffic doubles, is it reasonable to think that your lead volume will also double? If so, do you see the problem here? Unless 100% of the leads are qualified and you have a 100% close rate on your leads, the impact will be minimal.
This means, your site is not optimized for lead generation.
Your Contact Us Page Won't Generate Enough Leads
At p80 we think of your 'contact us' page as a softball-sized fishing net, trying to catch the rarest of fish in the Pacific Ocean. Your early stage (see Buyer's Journey) visitors will NEVER fill out your contact us page...EVER...
It's simply too high of a commitment.
Think of your contact us page like a 'Please call/email/harrass me' page for your website visitors. If they are just researching, they will not invite you to follow up with them.
You might be wondering then, how the heck are you supposed to generate leads?!?!? Enter the Inbound Marketing Methodology.
Your Goal Is Lead Generation - Your Plan Should Be Inbound Marketing
Yes, you need traffic and should be looking to increase the volume and quality of traffic, but ultimately you need a strategy that turns your website into a lead generation tool, supported by well orchestrated (and planned) use of the other web tactics like content marketing, social media, email, landing pages and your CRM.
Your goal is to get leads, not traffic. As mentioned above, doubling your traffic won't help much unless you're optimizing your site for lead generation.
Would you like some FREE pointers on how to make your website a lead generation machine? Comment below!
How to Audit your Online Marketing
If you are executing digital marketing, congratulations! You are most likely already one step ahead of your competition, and making strides to meaningfully connect with prospects online. But, how do you know if you’re seeing continual success year over year, and improving your metrics?
Without the tools in place to analyze and benchmark your efforts, it is impossible to scale your online marketing and ensure continuous success.
