Coordinate Traffic and Lead Generation

Traffic generation is about getting visitors to your site. Lead generation is about converting visitors into leads (i.e. serious business enquiries). It seems blindingly obvious to me that it pays to coordinate traffic and lead generation.

Obvious it may be, yet it seems they seldom are. I come across plenty of sites here in the UK where traffic generation continues apace, with no thought to what happens to a visitor when s/he arrives at the site (i.e. no thought given to the conversion of visitors into leads).

This has a major negative impact on the resulting lead generation ratios. And the business owner usually concludes that people surfing the web here in the UK aren't serious buyers. Or that they're merely browsing, and will use some other means of contacting the company when they're ready to buy. This is a tragedy of lost opportunity.

Naturally, none of this is measured. On site after site after site, nobody has any clue about who is visiting, how they got there, or what they do next. Neither does anybody seem to know the weaknesses in Google Analytics, or why AdWords may not be the best online ad solution for a specific client (especially when it costs more than a pound for a single click).

Frankly, it's not good enough. Web Marketing professionals in the UK need to up their game. In particular, they need to understand that SEO and AdWords are a poor substitute for actual marketing. And that traffic generation isn't the same thing as lead generation.

UK Business owners aren't exempt either. They need to stop naively viewing their website as some kind of brochure, and take a long hard look at what it can really do for their business. The place to start is the site's budget. This is typically poured into design, which turns out unsuitable sites that look fabulous and achieve nothing.

Leading edge design only matters if your clients expect leading edge design. If you're not in the fashion industry, or a designer yourself, the latest design may actually hinder the very thing you're hoping to achieve.

The USA leads the world when it comes to understanding how to develop a business website, and implement an effective web marketing strategy. They don't view traffic and lead generation as seperate entities to be conducted independently of each other. They're a decade ahead of the UK in terms of their sophistication.

The key to making the web pay is to change your view of what it can do for. Your website really can make you money. And the key to achieving that is to find out who is visiting, and what they're trying to achieve. Then make sure they can do so.

Rather than start with a designer, take a step back and talk to a web marketing expert instead. Not a search engine optimiser. Not a social media expert. And definitely not a web developer. What you need is somebody able to take a strategic look at your business, and how it might be conducted on the web.

Your web marketing expert won't simply generate loads of traffic and claim success. Neither will s/he focus only on lead generation. The focus will be on building a site designed to meet the needs of a specific type of customer (i.e. your target market). And then generating traffic aimed directly at that type of person.

Your site's visitors will arrive on special pages created specifically to receive them, and either offer the product they're looking for. Or give them a compelling reason to call you.