Be careful what you wish for… it may not be what you really want.
Recently someone proudly told me she got XX hits to her new website and was really pleased that all the money she’d spent on SEO were getting her visitors. She then proceeded to ask me how many I got.
Wrong question and frankly the wrong metric which brought home a crucial point. “Traffic is vanity… conversion is sanity”. In effect, she was focusing on the wrong thing.
Visitors alone don’t make you money. Visitors converting into clients spending money do.
Unfortunately, it’s a point missed by many a business when it comes to any form of lead generation.
You can be in a high traffic area and have lots of people come into your shop or website, but if they’re “just looking”, and walk out, what’s the point?
To be successful you have to master two distinct skills. Marketing and sales. And yes, they’re different – think two sides of the same coin.
“Marketing” is getting the prospect to your door and having him express interest in what you offer.
“Selling” is getting them over the threshold and converting that interest into a sale.
So what should you be measuring?
Start by asking yourself what action you want prospects to take. Is it to raise their hands and express interest or simply buy your product right there and then?
Before you answer that, here are some facts that will help.
Unless you’re a selling a commodity, low priced item, it’s unlikely that someone will buy right then and there.
Most people will want to do some form of research – both about the product/solution and you.
They’ll go to your website and check you out. And that’s where you want them to give you their details in return for some useful information in the form of a free report or course.
Then you can start the follow up mechanism.
Not convinced about going to the trouble of getting their details? Here are some more statistics…
About 1% of people buy something the first time they come to a site. If you capture their details and consistently follow up, this can go up to 4-5%. If you further qualify and send them something physical in the mail – free reports, case studies, testimonials… and follow up with a phone call or two, this can go up to 30-40% over time.
So the first thing to measure is your opt-in rate. How many visitors are you getting and how many opt-in for more information.
Then measure what it takes in the form of sales follow up to turn them into a client.
And if you know the average value of a client, you can then reverse engineer how much you can afford to spend getting a visitor to your site.
Now you can test different marketing and sales strategies to increase the number of opt-ins and sales per visitor.
The important thing is to keep testing and tweaking to make sure you maximise the value of every visitor who comes to your door.
Now if your marketing isn’t converting visitors into opt-ins and eventual sales, we can help.
We have proven processes to improve your copy, offers and sales process as well as write “free reports”. If you’re running online advertising, I guarantee we can improve your results.
Interested in knowing more? Send me an email with “Improve my results” in the subject line.
Rashid.
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