The best part about digital marketing is the numbers. With traditional media, we would send out our flyers and throw up our posters and just hope for the best, but in this day and age, we can track exactly where our efforts are getting us.
In an earlier blog post I talked about How To Calculate The Value Of Website Visitors. The number we just came to in that post is really important. With that number (and I recommend testing it out over different time periods and sources), you understand exactly how much value you’ll bring to the company if you increase web visits by, say, 20%.
But there’s some additional information you should be tracking if you want to improve that visitor value from $3.32 up to $4. Couple the increase in visits with the increase in value per visitor, and you’re talking about some serious profit.
Here is how you can work on increasing the value of each visitor (now that you know the number):
Calculate the visit to lead conversion rate.
What percentage of your visitors become leads over a year?
FORMULA: Number of leads / Number of visitors (over the same period)
EXAMPLE: 11,375 / 325,000 = 3.5% visitor to lead conversion rate
Our example receives 3.5 leads for every 100 visitors to its website.
Calculate the lead to customer conversion rate.
What percentage of your leads turn into customers over a year?
The next step in the funnel is to move leads to sales. This conversion rate tells you how well your team turns leads into customers. Try out some ways to improve your conversion rate, and stick with the ones that work. When your conversion rates go up, the value of each lead goes up, and so does the value of each visitor.
FORMULA: Number of customers / Number of leads (over the same period)
EXAMPLE: 200 / 11,375 = 1.75% lead to sale conversion rate
This means the example gains, on average, 1.75 customers for every 100 leads it receives through the website.
And one all-important note.
There is one important concept to keep in mind. You should be able to tie the new customers that came through during the year back to web leads directly. In saying that, I mean that these particular customers should have found you on Google, or a social network, or came directly to your website, etc. If they became a lead at a trade show or through a friend’s referral (both offline sources), they shouldn’t be included. Including those customers will overvalue each visitor since some of the end customers didn’t go through your website process. So, keep in mind if you can’t segment by source, most likely, your visitor value will be inflated.
