Warm Qualified Leads versus “Hits”

(This article, originally published in 2018, has been updated with new content.)

People ask me, “Now that we are investing more time and money in our website and social media, when should we expect to see more traffic and hits on our website?”

Whenever I hear that question, I’m reminded that many business owners still misunderstand traffic and hits, and miss the goal of marketing.

Traffic to your website isn’t as important as you think

Anyone can generate traffic to their website, and traffic is all that a website “hit” is. If your goal is to increase traffic and hits, you are focused too narrowly and you may be missing the goal of marketing.

A hit is simply a request made to your website — it might be made by a legitimate visitor, or it might be made by an automated program, such as a search engine. There might be thousands of hits to your website each day. Traffic and hits are a measure of exposure to be sure, but they’re not what you ought to be striving for.

The only thing that really matters is the number of warm qualified leads that can be traced back to your marketing efforts — that includes the website, social media, email, as well as everything else you’re doing to make your products and services known.

What’s your definition of marketing?

A good definition of marketing goes something like this:

“Marketing is all of those things that influence a prospect’s perception of my business, my products, and my services, such that when they are ready to buy, they will think of me ahead of my competition.”

Wow! That really is a great definition of marketing!

If you hold that definition of marketing to be true, then you can see that warm qualified leads for your business are more important than website hits.

What does a warm qualified lead look like?

So, what exactly are warm qualified leads and how do you recognize when you have one?

A client of mine said it best: “The inquiries we get now on our website are all warm qualified leads because these people have already vetted us online and are ready to do business.”

If you need help generating warm, qualified leads for your business, contact us online or call (203) 548-0070.