Behind the Web-to-Leads Curtain: 5 Lead Generation Insights from 2016
December 5, 2016 | By: Steve DuncanFor more than 12 months, DCI has been championing the concept of utilizing an economic development organization’s website as a key lead generation tool, not just an information resource. Our Web-to-Leads service has been a critical part of that strategy, allowing EDOs to track companies that are visiting their website and then contacting key executives to see if a conversation about an investment is appropriate.
With IP recognition in economic development an emerging trend, DCI looked back at 2016 and uncovered five take-aways from our own experience with clients. While we have implemented the technology with six different organizations in 2016, the data below was drawn from three specific instances (two states and one region) where DCI was responsible for significant follow-up outreach to website visitors.
1. Building a Better Mouse-Trap
Across the three clients, we secured 18 meetings so far, with another 20 suspects (companies indicating near – or long-term investment interest). That is an 11% success rate on actual meetings, with a combined 23% rate of qualified leads and interested suspects. Based on a traditional “research and call” approach, we would normally have to contact about 1,900 companies to achieve the same number of “opportunities.”
2. Quality of Pages Viewed Trumps Quantity
In reviewing the website behavior of those same 38 leads/suspects, we found that 21 of them viewed six or fewer webpages on their initial visit that prompted our call.
3. The Right Keywords Matter
We also noticed that the visits for 26 of the 38 originated from Google, with type-in traffic coming in second (5). DCI predicts search engine marketing will see greater significance in 2017, and this underscores why.
4. Incentives Information is Key
Taxes/incentives was the most frequent page content viewed from this subset of leads/suspects, with 24% of the companies doing so. Growing a Business (mostly visited by local companies with potential expansion opportunities) and Major Employers were next at 15% each, followed by “Why [Location]” (13%), Industries (9%), Workforce/Demographics (9%), and Property Search (6%). This is consistent with DCI’s 2014 Winning Strategies survey, which named similar navigation content as high priorities.
5. Decision-Making Audiences are Diverse
From a functional level, we ended up arranging meetings most often with someone in an Operations role (12), followed by Corporate Real Estate/Facilities (9), CEO or President (6) and Finance (4).
To summarize, quality trumps quantity once again, Google is taking over the world, companies love incentives (shocking!), and the end audience is diverse. Most importantly, Web-to-Leads has proven to be incredibly more efficient than traditional methods of lead generation. If you’re interested in learning more, check out our Web-to-Leads page and email us for a complimentary two-week trial to see if this is the right fit for your organization.