Traffic, leads, and sales. Why doesn't everything depend on advertising?

“Lead generation” is one of the favorite words for marketers out there today. It has become so well woven into the business vocabulary that you can increasingly hear things like “We need leads” or “We need sales” from clients at digital agencies. And although advertising is an invariable engine of trade, in order for the sales machine to work, well-coordinated work of all mechanisms is needed.

What is a lead and why doesn’t everything depends on advertising? Let’s look into it.

Leads and Lead Generation

A lead is a potential customer who’s been brought to the site by an advertisement. Yes, they are ready to make a purchase and have already filled out the feedback form, but they still haven’t gone through the purchase itself due to communication with the manager and making a payment.

Lead generation, in turn, is a set of measurements aimed at attracting potential customers. It includes PPC advertising, the use of a corporate website, and attracting traffic from additional sources (social networks, external sites).

Lead generation is only part of digital marketing, which should lead to sales.

Three components of digital marketing

New marketing tools appear every day, including on the Internet. However, whatever the business is, and whatever marketing strategy has been chosen, it will consist of 3 main elements:

1. Advertising
2. Website
3. Communication between the seller and the buyer

Let’s look at this in further detail.

The objective behind advertising is to bring targeted traffic to the site (this can be an online store, a landing page, a page on a social network, etc). The possibilities of PPC advertising allow you to influence the wants and moods of your audience, offer them a dream product, and show how and where they can make their long-awaited purchase. A lot depends on the PPC advertising settings: the cost per click, the cost per conversion, the accuracy of hitting the audience, and the quality of traffic. Effective advertising leads a person who’s interested in making a purchase to the place where they can satisfy their desire as a consumer. Next comes the website.

A company’s website is the platform where conversions should take place. Whether a visitor takes a targeted action or not depends on a number of factors: the attractiveness and clarity of the site, the quality of the content (photos, product descriptions, videos), usability, the possibility of feedback, and how easy it is to make a purchase. No matter how good quality or exclusive a product is, the order form can ruin everything. If a client needs to fill out a whole questionnaire to buy a brand new iPhone case, their patience might just run out by the time they get to the second line. The mobile version of a company’s website has a huge impact on the conversion rate. There are some themes and products where the purchase is made almost impulsively, and it is enough for a person to have a mobile phone in hand to place an order. Now imagine that the first two components worked as they should, and you have a lead – a visitor ready to buy. All that’s left is to make the details clear, place an order and send it to the recipient.

Communication between the manager and the client is the final and crucial link. So many books have been written about the secrets of successful sales and even more seminars have been done on the subject. As such, we’ll just say here that the manager must do their job well and turn leads into sales. But it’s not just the skill of a manager that affects the client, but also the price of the goods (prices being too low can scare off potential customers just like prices being too high), reviews from other buyers, what competitors are doing, etc.

Keep in mind that one satisfied customer can bring two new ones, and one dissatisfied customer can take away ten potential ones. Therefore, the last element of digital marketing is decisive in terms of return on investment for advertising.

If all the responsibility lies with the advertising agency, then it will take a large percentage of the profits, which isn’t so beneficial to the client.

Real opportunities from advertising agencies

After being asked by the client to “bring in leads”, an advertising agency needs to expand its range to be able to influence the site, and the client needs fully trust the recommendations of advertising specialists.

When setting up advertising, Employees at Web-Sci agency pay great attention to analytics. If we see that something on the site prevents the visitor from completing a target action, then we send our observations and recommendations to the client. Only bilateral cooperation can generate maximum leads. But whether they become customers or even regular customers depends on the sales process within the company.

Sometimes a smaller advertising budget with proper internal management can bring more benefits than a huge investment. This is the result that can be achieved if you pay enough attention to all three elements of digital marketing!

If you don’t want to deal with the intricacies of advertising accounts and setups, consider delegating this work to certified professionals like the Internet marketing agency Web-Sci.