In a recent survey, over 70% of small business owners ranked their company website as their primary marketing channel. Here’s why that’s plain wrong.

In December 2015, Leadpages and Infusionsoft (now Keap) surveyed more than 1,000 small business owners across the U.S. about their marketing practices, challenges, and goals for 2016. When asked, “What kind of marketing channels do you use?,” 71.6% said “my website.”

In reality, your website is no more a marketing channel than your business card. Both are marketing tools. And like any tool, you can use it wrong.

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The true marketing channel is whatever brought the lead to you. Even if you think that’s just semantics, your website still isn’t a marketing channel unless the following is true:

Getting Found

Are you getting traffic from organic search, social media, or paid advertising? If your website can’t be found, it’s just a billboard in the desert or a postcard you never mailed.

Lead Generation

Another study found that nearly 75% of SMB websites can’t generate a lead because they lack a phone number, email link or contact form.

Traffic isn’t enough. Unless you capture that anonymous visitor’s contact information (via a form) or have a call to action that compels them to email or call, your website is not a marketing channel.

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You Can Prove Both of the Above

Do you believe that your website is an effective marketing channel? Then prove it. Can you answer the following questions?

• How do you rank on Google for your various keywords?
• How much monthly traffic does your website get?
• Where are your visitors coming from?
• How many inquiries do you receive from your website each month?
• What percentage of inquiries become qualified leads?
• What percentage of those leads become customers?

If you’re not tracking these metrics, you don’t truly know how effective a marketing channel your website is. If you don’t measure it, you can’t prove (or improve) it, can you?

A lead is only good if you follow up on it. But how fast do you need to? The answer is found in our free ebook: How Fast Should You Respond to a Sales Lead? Get your copy today.

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