Marketing 101 : Traffic Conversion

May 1, 2013  by Home Furnishing Business in Business Strategy, Industry   

Getting ups today is not good enough to grow your sales. Converting impressions into contact information is how you grow your sales.

The world has changed. This is not a news flash, but it has changed. Marketing messages and metrics have changed as well. Long gone are the days of “shotgun” approaches just trying to get impressions. Today, every advertising dollar is valuable and so are the eyeballs (or ears) that absorb it.

We need to focus on the idea of cost per lead and what that effectively can do to our bottom line.

Cost per lead is not a measurement of sales or closing ratio. Cost per lead is the measurement of did you get your advertising to effectively lead to an action. An action in this case is the following:

1. A Web site visit
2. A customer up
3. A social media interaction (Facebook like, Twitter follow, Pinterest follow, etc.)
4. An e-mail open and a click through
5. A text message sign up
6. Any thing that could result in a customer contact

For one of our retailer clients in the month of March the following data was compiled:

• Number of leads generated during the month: 2,860
• Advertising dollars contributed to those leads: $21,000
• Total Cost Per Lead/Opportunity: $7.32 per lead/opportunity

How do you begin driving down cost per lead and generating more leads? Direct the consumer to go some where.

Here are some awesome things you can do to help drive her somewhere:

1. Utilized paid search on the major search engines. The consumer is searching for items every single day. However, getting in front of her is not always easy. To have your ad showcased when a consumer is searching for keywords that relate to you can only help drive home a possible opportunity.

2. Have different traditional mass medium (newspaper, TV, radio, direct mail) drive to different pages on your Web site, social media portals or dynamic landing pages. This will help you gauge the overall effectiveness of your messaging and media selection in your marketplace. It will also allow you to experiment with giving different offers and promotions to different segments of people.

3. Make your e-mail marketing messages come to life! Just sending out bland images or your current ad does not allow consumers to shop. Most e-mail suppliers allow for custom designs to help drive activity to multiple areas on the Web that can help allow for tracking and costs per lead to go down.

Today’s consumer does expect an offer. However, she also does not mind having to find that offers through different avenues. Let your advertising drive Ms. Jones to different vehicles so you can start capturing information from the consumer.

Once you captured Ms. Jones’ information you have the opportunity to speak to her before, during and after the sale. Not getting any information means the conversation cannot occur and thus an opportunity has slipped through your fingers.