Notes gleaned from the Twitter feed at Interactive Local Media West.
Yesterday they discussed leads at the #ILMWest Conference. It’s a top subject of sales people, marketers, SMB owners and business development pros. Where do you get leads? Where do you get online leads?
What is a lead? What makes a good lead? The panelists said a lead could be most anything; a phone call, emails, form submissions, lead sheets, “likes”, and digital word of mouth. Interestingly, they said that leads include “an intent to buy.” Obviously an intent to buy makes a better lead than one that is not, like the difference between “Prospects” and “Suspects.”
According to a survey of small businesses by BIA Kelsey, 61% of small and mid size businesses rate the phone call as the most valuable lead…far surpassing other leads. So, what will you do to make the phone to ring? What has worked best to make your phone ring? What marketing tactics yield the most leads with an intent to buy? Where do you get online leads? Where should you concentrate your marketing resources and initiatives to maximize website ROI?
Other interesting survey results.
What is your primary source of leads offline?
68% say word of mouth
20% say search engines
15% social media
What share of overall leads come from online? 33% say more than a quarter of their leads come from online. That surprises me. I would think more than 33% would get a large number of their leads online and that more businesses would get more than 50% of their leads online. I’ll bet very successful companies do.
What prevents you from converting leads to sales?
Adam Burrows, VP of Business Development for ServiceMagic suggests that you respond quickly – leads are perishable. Even a 24 hour quote response results in customers getting a quote from another source or business. I believe it! I’ve followed up on leads withing a couple of hours, only to be told that they had already made a decision. Learn from that – it gives you a competitive advantage!
Another #ILMWest panel revealed the results of a survey of a half million SMB websites in the U.S that indicate that small businesses still have room to improve.
- Only 13 percent of smbs have a local phone number on home page.
- Only 24 percent have an email address on the website.
- 36 percent of websites are only a single page in length.
IMPORTANT: Some people prefer to email, especially if they’re online outside of normal business hours. Put an email address on your site! Better yet, put the appropriate email on specific pages, such as a sales email on product or service pages, a customer support email on a support page and your Contact Us page should have all of them, including an accounting contact.
IMPORTANT: Create more content (and pages) on your website. I like to call it “owning a bigger share of the Internet.” Don’t confuse your website visitor. Give them the right information in the right places. Read why you should update your website content regularly.
Other important takeaways:
- SMB focus is shifting to long term value, driving strategy and go to market plans.
- 40% of small business ad budgets will be online in next 12 months.
- 51% of SMB websites not found.
- 61+% of SMB Facebook Fan Pages have zero fans.
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