Small Business Web Lead Statistics

I recently surveyed our client and prospect base to ask the question where do they now generate most of their sales leads.

Our clients are small companies in North America, UK and Australia/ NZ. The results of the survey were interesting.

I approached the survey by first assessing the web site quality and SEO metrics of the client or prospects web site.

Then I contacted them to ask the question "What is their primary lead source for new business"

When the results were analysed it became clear that companies still fall into three very distinct categories.

1. Active Web Marketers
2. Static Web Marketers
3. Traditional Marketers

Traditional Marketers. These companies still had literally not adopted the web in any form as a source of lead generation. There were still over 8% of companies in this category.

These companies identified primary lead sources as word of mouth or yellow pages.

Static Web Marketers. These companies had at least created a web presence, but the sites were primarily static brochure ware. Nearly 80% of those surveyed fell into this category. Effectively the site did not do much more than showcase on line what they do.

The results showed that they however still generated around 23% of their leads from the web site. However most admitted that these were estimates only. The reason was that their sites tended to be a first point for customers, who then phoned or came in to initiate a sales inquiry.. Hence the true source of the lead generation was often not correctly recorded.

From an SEO level Static web marketers, who were by far the bulk of the survey, had very low SEO ranking quality.

Active Web Marketers. These companies, nearly 9% of the survey base were active in ensuring that their web site was well ranked and effective as a business tool. There web sites enabled the customer to do more than just browse, they could also make booking or further information requests.

Not surprisingly, these companies cited that over 55% of their new business sales leads came from the web.

Update

This survey was originally conducted 12 months ago. Since then Social Media has begun to take hold amongst small business. Many of the more Active Web marketers are now expressing a strong perception that Social Media Marketing can help them.

Many stated that they have experimented but are unsure about how to do it properly or that they lack the time to do it effectively.

There was some analysis done at a subjective level which also rated the estimated profitability of each client surveyed. Whilst this analysis was subjective, it did show that Active Marketers were apparently the most profitable. Now this may also be a perception issue created by viewing the client or prospect through lens of their web presence.

However that aside, the evidence is becoming clear (if it wasn't already) that web marketing is the key to new business growth.  In the update, many now see Social Media Marketing as a key to building their web marketing effectiveness.

Next years review will look at Social Media marketing effectiveness in more detail