Reader Alyssa O’Mara asks a good question:
Is there a good way to set goals for a site that has never had a PPC campaign and is geared more towards leads than sales?
Goal setting for any website is a good thing, but is goal setting for a site whose primary purpose is to generate leads any different than goal setting for a site that is geared toward sales conversions? The answer is the proverbial ‘yes and no’.
There are similarities. Obviously, you want traffic to your site. Targeted traffic is best. And you want to track what does happen on your landing page no matter what it’s purpose is. But the similarities don’t go too far. Lead generation is a whole different ball game than sales conversion.
How you generate leads is very important. Are you subscribing visitors to a newsletter or e-zine? Are you simply collecting e-mail addresses for future marketing efforts? Are you inviting readers to download a free giveaway? Your goals should depend on what the actual purpose of your landing page is. That is, if the purpose is to get newsletter subscribers then you should set your goals based on that; if the purpose is to give away free downloads then set goals based on that.
But how does the actual goal setting take place? You have to be realistic. Expecting windfall results from a new pay per click campaign isn’t realistic. You have to have a good way to measure your goals. First, I’d suggest defining what a conversion is. You may not be closing sales just yet, but you are generating conversions. Every new lead acquired is a conversion. So define what that means. That’s the first step.
The second step is to establish a realistic target expressed as a percentage of visitors. Don’t set a hard number goal because that’s elusive. If you shoot for 100 conversions per month but you are only getting 200 visitors then that’s unrealistic. If you set the goal for 100 conversions and you have 100,000 visitors then it may be too easy to meet your goal. So try for a percentage.
Don’t set it too high. With PPC, you can expect up to 10% conversion results on most landing pages if you do your targeting correctly. But it varies by industry and by purpose of the landing page. How much commitment is your visitor expected to give? If you are offering a freebie that is a high value giveaway and all your visitor has to do is give an e-mail address, that could lead to a 50% conversion rate. It also depends on what other methods of driving traffic you use.
So to answer Alyssa’s question, there are good ways to set goals for lead generation landing pages, but there are a lot of variables. In general, you want to ensure that you are targeting the right customers.
