Having a wealth of information is great, especially when it comes to Internet marketing campaigns and website leads. Online marketers build their lead generation websites to provide them with as much information about their potential customers as possible. However, even though they want to collect as much information as they can, they don't always get all the information they need. Without lead validation and tracking built into their lead generation websites, marketers run the risk of only getting part of the story from their sites.
A surprising number of online marketers are leaving information on the table because they don't validate and track their website leads in terms of actual sales leads. Instead, they base all of their decisions on the raw conversion numbers supplied to them by Google Analytics. They believe these numbers tell them everything they need to know about how successful their lead generation sites are. What they don't take into account is the fact that there are serious gaps in that information.
For example, nearly half of all website conversions turn out to be interactions other than sales leads. These include job applications and customer service inquiries - interactions that have practically no chance of becoming new customers. Nevertheless, Google counts these along with conversions that are serious about becoming customers. Google's numbers also exclude any information about leads that come in via phone call. Because a significant number of website visitors still choose to convert with a phone call, that's a substantial amount of lead data that marketers simply ignore.
Without those bits of vital information, online marketers don't really know how successful their lead generation websites are. They could wind up emphasizing sources that churn out a large number of conversions without knowing the majority of those conversions are anything but sales leads. They also could tinker with a source that has a lower number of conversions but a much better ratio of sales leads to non-sales leads. This, in turn, could hurt that source's effectiveness.
Through the lead validation and tracking process, however, marketers can gain the insight into their lead generation websites they need to make informed decisions. Lead validation and tracking can tell marketers exactly which conversions are the true sales leads and where they were generated. The following guide will take you step by step through the process of adding this critical reporting to your lead generation website.
Matt Cannon is Director of Web Services at Straight North, an Internet marketing firm that specializes in SEO, PPC and web design services. He manages all web development activities to make sure that every project is applying current development standards and techniques. The following is a slideshare of Matt's presentation diving into this topic even further.
