(…but techies are also welcome to read and comment on our blog)
Our clients are VPs of marketing and sales and business owners; we come across many with questions about why their online marketing isn’t working the way it should.
So, who are we? Marty DeWitt and Kirk Carter. We are a Cincinnati-based online marketing agency. Our agency has been helping other businesses with their internet marketing for 6 years, building web sites, creating search engine optimization campaigns, implementing social media marketing campaigns, tracking web analytics on our customers’ web properties, and most importantly, generating cost-effective business leads. In that time, we’ve talked to many businesses like yours. We have a good idea what challenges most businesses face with internet marketing. In this blog we will provide you answers and tips to improve your business through online marketing.
How to Generate More Quality Online Customer Leads
Back to your questions, “why is my online marketing not working the way it should?” As we talk to customers, this very general question usually comes down to a much more specific question, “how do I generate more quality leads online?” And this question will be the focus of this blog.
My kids just started school and were shocked that they got homework the first day. We are about to give you homework in this first blog post. It is one question, “how much is a quality lead worth to your business?” Why am I asking this question?
Well, early in many of our first meetings with a client we get the question, “how much should X cost?” X can be:
- a web site
- an SEO strategy
- web analytics to track the performance of your online efforts
- a social media marketing strategy
- a mobile marketing campaign [link?]
- or, you fill in the blank
Your Online Marketing Strategy Should Pay for Itself
And our answer is “whatever online marketing strategy you implement should pay for itself.” It should pay for itself in the sales or leads it generates. If you’re an ambulance distributor and a sale is worth $250K, and you get one sale per year from your online marketing efforts, then those efforts should cost less then $250K per year (we do work with ambulance distributors, but these numbers are made up to protect the innocent). If your online marketing costs $125K per year, you’ve doubled your money. So our first tip is to talk to your web marketer about what you will get for what they offer — in sales leads — and use that to measure the value of what they deliver.
Why is this important? You can find SEO experts who charge $250 per month, and you can buy a new web site for $300. If you’re selling ambulances, then ask these vendors how many sales leads on ambulances can they get you? Can they measure sales leads? Do they have examples where they’ve done this? If they don’t have good answers, start talking to providers who do have good answers. I think you’ll find someone selling these services at rock bottom prices doesn’t have the time to talk you about what is important to your customers — ambulance buyers — much less the experience to know what to do once you’ve explained it to them.
In this blog we will educate you on how you can determine . Your first homework assignment (we won’t give many) is to figure out what a quality lead is worth to you.
Do you know how much a quality lead is worth? What online lead generation questions would you like us to answer?
