Case Study on How a Web Visitor Becomes an Online Lead

- December 7th, 2008 by Steven Leung

In this article:

Done correctly, Internet marketing is one of the most cost-effective mechanisms that businesses can use to generate leads.

The reason for Internet marketing is simple and ironic: permanence.   When a business launches a mail campaign, your pieces get delivered and you hope that you found enough people who are interested to make that mailing worth your while.

But most, if not all, of the mailings get thrown away.  People may not have even looked at them — and those that did may or may not remember your business. That’s why the author of The Fundamentals of Business to Business Sales and Marketing, John Coe, recommends mailing three times in a two to four week period in order to maximize effectiveness.  But after the mailers are sent, you have nothing of lasting consequence in your hands.  An online presence grows as you invest in it.

How Internet Marketing Is More Effective Than Traditional Advertising

The same happens with other advertising, whether over the radio, newspaper and other traditional means.  The owner of a large scale retailer in San Jose, with over $6 million in yearly revenue, notes that he ran a by-the-book radio advertising campaign: radio spots over months, with broad reach and repetition, at considerable cost.  When he finally ended the campaign, he said there was “no difference before and after”.

The reality: most traditional advertising evaporates.

For example, the author of The Media Handbook, Helen Katz, uses the phrase, “Today or Never” to describe newspaper advertising.  She follows on saying, “If the reader misses your ad that day, you are not given a second chance.”

However, when you have a strong online marketing presence:

1. People will find you when they’re looking for what you have to offer.
2. You will be able to track your success and improve upon it.
3. Your online presence gets stronger as you continue to invest.

Let me illustrate those three points.

We created a real estate blog for the Silicon Valley market which generates about 150-250 visitors per day — before the credit crisis, it was closer to 300.

Most of that traffic (75.3%) comes from search engines: you can find the blog by searching Google for “silicon valley real estate”.  Or any number of search terms where it also appears as the #1 listing.

Recently, a visitor from New York City found the blog on Google using “silicon valley homes” for which the site does not rank #1.  We didn’t optimize for this highly competitive term and I chose this example to illustrate how well-optimized sites can be found under a broad set of relevant search terms.

This visitor found what he was looking for and became a highly-qualified lead.  Here’s how.

Tracking How an Actual Visitor Became a Lead

Tracking success and repeating it key to the growth of any business.  Internet marketing has a number of metrics that can be tracked using very precise tools.

Understanding how visitors interact with your website is done using web analytics and log analysis tools such as Urchin, Omniture, StatCounter and others.  Each has its advantages and both are useful for capturing different types of information.

This screenshot from StatCounter shows that our visitor came from a Google search for “silicon valley homes”.  After clicking on the link, the visitor, like all visitors, tries to establish the credibility of the site he’s looking at.

The tried-and-true Consumer Reports study states that 46.1% of respondents use the site’s design as a measure of credibility, the second most used criteria was the way information is structured, at 28.5%.  In evaluating the credibility of the site, the visitor logs say he scanned the home page and two of the city pages for about a minute — similar to the results of the study.

Then he clicked on the most important link on the site.

The one that turns a visitor into a lead.

A visitor becomes a lead when they voluntarily provide their name and contact information.  In order to entice visitor into becoming leads, the site will automatically send visitors an e-book on buying a home if they provide their name and email address in a form that looks like the one below.

And, they do.

Seconds later, they get an email for downloading the e-book.  You now have a lead.

Building a Stronger Reputation By Combining Internet and Traditional Marketing

Other forms of marketing are losing steam.  For example, according to media research firm BIA in the article Radio Continues Downward Spiral, Online Only Hope, “Radio’s future will depend heavily on its ability to embrace new media, mobile technologies and local advertisers.”  And even using best practices, direct mail campaigns have always had a low response rate of around 1%.

But while traditional marketing is having less and less long-term impact, you can combine its immediate benefits with supporting the growth of a strong online presence.  Not just by pointing to your website from your other marketing materials, but by developing programs that allow you to create closer relationships with potential customers.  This is what Internet marketing experts ensure for clients.

A Virtuous Cycle

In fact, your online marketing presence gets stronger as you invest in it.  A content-rich website becomes a destination people return to.  The more quality content you have, the more search engines will refer people to your site.  That way, people will find you.

Your website is open 24/7, never gets thrown away, and as more people get to know your brand, more people will refer it to others.

According to Nielsen, 54% of users refer sites they found to other people, as referenced in the article Building Websites That Return Your Investment.  And as your brand gets stronger, more people will link to your website, which will naturally increase how many visitors you receive from other sites and how high you rank in search engines.

Blogs and social networks connect you with readers in a personal way that can’t be accomplished by a sales brochure and provide a level of interactivity that was never possible before using cold calling, direct mailing, or even at trade shows.  And this connection will differentiate you in a way your products and services alone can’t.

These people will know you, search engines will point to you, and the virtuous cycle of turning visitors into leads all over again.

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