It's all about conversion. In today's day and age, a lot of companies are investing in search engine optimization and pay per click advertising in order to increasingly drive traffic to their website. The real question is, what are they doing to convert those visitors into actual sales leads? Are they capturing their contact information through the exchange of an offer such as a download or some sort of contest, sign up, or other premium in exchange for that contact information so that those contacts can be followed up on. That's what we call conversion.

Many companies do a great job at driving traffic but do a poor job of actually working on increasing those conversion ratios so that a higher and higher percentage of visitors are actually leaving their contact information so that you can follow up on them. In an integrated guerilla marketing campaign that uses search engine optimization and pay per click,on the front end, is only as good as a well designed set of conversion mechanisms and offers on your website to transform those companies and sales leads. When we deploy systems for our customers, we're always looking holistically at creating not just good traffic but making sure that conversion ratios are at or above industry standards so that we can actually achieve a return and investment from our marketing efforts.

A lot of companies miss this point and they mistake activity for productivity. The fact is, is marketing only comes when you actually capture a lead and convert it into a sale. So the higher percentage of leads that you're able to convert on your website obviously will translate into a higher percentage of close orders from those potential visitors. But it's extremely important to make sure that you're focusing across the whole spectrum of your lead generation mechanisms when it comes to online marketing. Some companies do really well in one area, such as search engine optimization, but fall down when it comes to calls to action in conversion mechanisms that generate sales leads. We believe that all of those activities are equally important and it makes no sense to invest in one without investing in the other. The same goes for companies that are interested in upgrading or renewing their websites.

A lot of times, we have clients that come to us and they want to spend money to upgrade the graphics look and feel and navigation and messaging on their website, but they're hesitant to spend money on search engine optimization so that if actual buyers who are looking for their products and services can find them on Google, MSN, or Yahoo. We think this is a big mistake. Why would you build a brand new website if nobody's going to see it anyway?

Other companies come to us and believe that they should have a new website and are willing to invest in search engine optimization but they fail to see the significance of developing and placing strong offers in conversion mechanisms on that website. So they end up getting a lot of traffic but since there are no compelling offers to capture leads from visitors they end up converting very few prospects into real sales leads they can follow up on.

As a result, CEO's are cracking down on spending money on new websites and new creative because they're still not getting good marketing ROI. We believe that there is a better way, where you're focusing on all aspects of an integrated internet marketing program, including good website development with strong offers and conversion mechanisms through to strong SEO and pay per click campaigns in order to drive targeted searchers to your website and convert them.

Andrew Rowe

Cube Management provides sales acceleration services to emerging growth and mid-market companies in the technology, manufacturing, healthcare and business service sectors. The experts at Cube Management work across the entire spectrum of marketing, sales and business development to provide customized solutions that drive revenue and profit growth. Cube Management combines Strategy, Process & People to produce winning results.