Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

This article first appeared January 23, 2008 in the Tatum Marketing Blog

Yesterday I wrote about two strategies for using marketing to increase sales – 1) increase inbound traffic or leads and 2) improve conversion rates.  (Actually I wrote about three strategies, but I’m not going to talk about adding products or services anymore. At least not here.)

The next question is: How do you know where to begin? Should you work on increasing traffic or improving conversion rates?

Start by taking a 30,000 foot view and answer these questions:

1. How many new leads or new website visitors are you currently generating from all of your marketing tactics combined?

2. How many active prospects do you have in your marketing system now? This may be the number of prospects in your marketing database or it may be the number of visitors moving through your website.

3. What percentage of inbound traffic or leads is being converted to a sale or a sales opportunity?

With the answers to these questions, you can assess the overall efficiency of your marketing efforts. Every business is different and it isn’t possible for me to tell you what these numbers should be without knowing more about your specific situation. You should be able to tell, though, if these numbers are way out of whack.

For example, let’s say new traffic or leads are funneling consistently into your marketing system, but few turn into sales or qualified leads to be passed to the sales team. Your prospect database is growing but your sales aren’t keeping up. You have a conversion problem. This needs to be fixed before you do anything else.

On the other hand, if your conversion rate is at an acceptable level but your number of active prospects isn’t growing, you’ll want to focus on improving your traffic or lead generation efforts.

Once your 30,000 foot view seems well-balanced, you can begin to focus on adding or improving individual tactics and specific conversion points. More about that in later posts.

One word of caution: pay close attention to your conversion rates. It’s easy to get excited about generating more leads or traffic, but it’s your ability to convert those prospects that makes the greatest difference. Don’t fall into the trap of driving leads or traffic into a faulty system. That’s just a waste of money.