24

Jun

Top 3 Concerns Businesses Have About Getting Leads From the Internet

Posted by: Jeremy Reither

by flickr.com/stevedepino

Yes, there are quite a few people who haven’t quite bought into the idea that a website can be a good source of leads for their service business. And even those who believe that although there are customers to be found online are not fully convinced that the lead quality (how well they convert, compared to traditional lead sources) justifies the effort.

But I’m here to tell you the same types of people who get referred to you through your friend or cousin or coworker are also searching for your services online, and can become valuable leads for your business through any source – even your website.  You just need to know how to attract those those customers to your website, and how to convert them from a ‘visitor’ into a lead!

According to my own anecdotal “research,” these are the 3 most common concerns that small business owners have with regard to generating leads through their website – followed by my quick rebuttals:

1. Concern: “Internet leads are no good”
   Response: Not to be harsh, but this is just too broad a statement – it’s just plain wrong. There are businesses in every industry that thrive solely on leads they generate online – and hordes of others that supplement traditional sources of leads (ie: word of mouth) with leads from their website. The quality of online leads does depend heavily on a number of factors – including lead source – but it’s the same way in the offline world: Let’s say you own a car insurance agency, and the two businesses next door – one a a sandwich shop; the other a car dealership – refer the same number of customers to you. Referrals from the car dealership will buy more car insurance than the people from the sandwich shop…period. The lead source makes a huge difference. On the internet there are so many ways to get leads from your website – it’s all about finding the sources and qualifications methods (ie: lead forms) that work best.
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2. Concern: “I prefer word-of-mouth leads from friends and colleagues”
   Response: That’s great – if you get a lot of customers from word-of-mouth referrals, then by all means nurture that source. But unless you’re just not looking for any more business, ever, why not also make it easy for customers to find you online? Extra leads is a good thing.
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3. Concern: “My clients aren’t online”
   Response: If your clients aren’t online by now (pretty unlikely) they probably will be soon. If you are serving the small percentage of clients who use the internet the least (ie: the elderly), and you’re sure that nobody else (ie: their children) is helping them find the products or services you sell, then internet marketing may not be your most pressing short term investment. But every demographic is becoming increasingly connected to the web, and this argument won’t hold water for very long. It’s not a matter of whether your clients will be online – it’s a matter of when. Why wait till everyone else in your industry is scrambling to reach your target customers – establish your internet presence early, avoid racing the pack, and you’ll be poised to reap the benefits of leads from your website before your competition.

If you look hard enough you can always find a reason not to pursue a new source of leads. But when 80%+ of consumers are online, and only 44% of businesses have websites, I’m confident in saying a good chunk of businesses are still missing out on an overflowing source of leads – the internet.