How Long to Get Website Marketing Leads

This is a popular question that comes up when someone is looking at getting a new or updated website.

First, MyOnlineToolbox personally feels the question is the wrong question. For us, the question should be “How long for us to get Quality Leads?”.

The response has too many permutations, so we will begin with “it depends”. While we realize that is not the answer you want to hear, it is the truth since there are just way to many variables to consider.

From one day to over a year

For the contracting industry we are in, our company has experienced everything from one day (it shocked us) to over one year (which we were expecting). On average, MyOnlineToolbox sees its’ customers getting More Quality Leads in three to six months.

MyOnlineToolbox hears many other SEO, Website & Marketing firms generally indicate it can take between four and six months to start getting leads. That is a fair “average” response to hear.

We want you to first read this entire Blog, and then feel free to come back here to review a more complete (and complex) review about How Long It Takes To Rank In Google. It gives a slightly more quantifiable answer, something more concrete than simply, “It depends.”, but it can be intimidating, so we prefer you to first focus on the high level observations before micro analyzing all the variables.

Tire Kickers versus Quality Leads

But what is more important for MyOnlineToolbox is to go back to the focus of getting More Quality Leads. So many people look to target the “low hanging fruit” of “leads” that they miss the target of “quality leads”. Getting many tire kicker leads is more of a distraction than an opportunity to grow your business.

So when MyOnlineToolbox says say you should start seeing results in three to six months, you should also be aware you are starting to see quality results, and these quality results are going to grow over time. At some time you may see these results maintain a continuity in quantity while also being more consistent with the quality.

Lead Generation tells you what you want to hear

The Lead Generation companies know many do not want to hear the word “months” when planning for leads, so they will tell you a much less time frame. We have even been told by customers that some lead generation companies attempt to use the MyOnlineToolbox time estimate as a way to support feeding ridiculous expectations. One customer was asking the Lead Generation company “So what makes you different than say us working with MyOnlineToolbox?”. The answer was, “MyOnlineToolbox will tell you it can take more than three months to get leads but we know you want them much sooner.”. At least they adequately represent the truth in what we say, but the omitted the “Quality Leads” as part of their explanation.

Do I deserve quality leads?

You need to go back to our statement pertaining to Leads and Quality Leads. You need to ask yourself, while I want more leads today, do I really deserve them based on your online marketing image?

When you ask this question, we are not referring to your own personal feeling towards how good you think you are. You need to look at yourself as if you are new to your town, and you do not know a single person. You now go to the web to begin to research. Your answer to the question needs to be in the context of ensuring you have the answer to these questions, and so many others:

• How big is the size of my market, both in specific services and territory?
• Is the status of my current website good, somewhat OK or awful?
• What is the age of my Domain (website address)?
• Do I have good content (pictures, stories and video)?
• Is this content used correctly, both cosmetically and for lead generation efforts.
• What is my reputation today as far as Consumer Reviews (from Google, Facebook, etc.)?
• Am I updating the website myself, or going to use another company?
• If I use a website company, what is their experience in my industry (since it makes a difference)?
• Am I thinking short term or long term (which always impacts the quality of the implementation)?
• Did I sign up for Lead Generation services who may redirect opportunities to other paying contractors?
• How are my competitors doing with all of the above?

Thinking Short Term or Long Term?

Many contractors underestimate how much time and money it takes to be successful with generating More Quality Leads. It really isn’t too expensive of a proposition other than most contractors shooting from the hip in the beginning.  Only then to find they wasted years with a dormant website or thousands upon thousands in lead generation service fees that could have been going to them building their own online opportunities – quality leads for life!

You do not just want to target the first three to six months averages mentioned above since that is when you just started building your traction. Some people actually get successful so they then just stop with all marketing activities, which is just plain wrong. Planning for three to six months out to build success in your online marketing objectives is just the beginning.

Short Term versus Long Term investment

Your website is the nucleus of your marketing. Much effort, time and money goes into building the correct way, similar to the foundation of a new building. You can only build so high based on the foundation. Same goes for a website. But your website does not stand alone. There are outside factors that help bring in More Quality Leads. For example, you can have a great website and be perfectly indexed, but having many bad Google Reviews can easily diminish Google’s desire to rank you for more opportunities. Getting Google Reviews is a FREE item, but you do need to make an investment in the effort to get your customers to leave you a review.

Most of the more expensive financial investments will be done up front. It can easily level off after the site gets traction. But you should also consider spending the money to keep it active, especially when you have something flamboyant to promote about your business. Say you just completed a top notch job, have some great pictures and even a before picture. On top of that, you are able to get a customer review (possibly even on video). Then by all means you should strategically add a new webpage to your website. Pay the website company as part of the profit of your job since the marketing efforts will be rewarded so many times over. You can have a great cosmetic representation of your best work while simultaneously improving (or maintain) certain keyword rankings.

Short Term Strategy

Nothing beats someone who has the desire to do something.  Not because you have to do it, but because you want to do it. A little extra effort in the Education and Planning to build your online reputation will pay dividends for years out. Too many quickly hire a website company with the assumption of a few pictures, some cut & paste words, and the magical wand of SEO will simply start bringing leads your way. That may happen but more than like it will not happen. And even if you do get leads, you probably will not be getting quality leads. Take the approach of doing this right so your Short Term Strategy feeds a Long Term Strategy. Otherwise, it just throwing good money into the wind, and worse yet, losing time to build momentum.

Your New Websites Helps Close Sales

When you have a website that is a true marketing machine, it helps you generate leads. But it also helps close more sales.  Don’t just sit around waiting for your new site to bring you leads when you update it or build a new one. Use it every chance you have to make a point.

For example, assume you created a new remodeling website with a dedicated page for Kitchens, Bathrooms and Basements. You get a referral and then start bidding on the job. When you send your communications, ensure to have a sentence inside the communications.  It may look similar to “We are looking forward to working with you on this Kitchen Remodeling project”. The Kitchen Remodeling project is then hyperlinked to your new Kitchen Remodeling page. The prospect will many times click on the link to see what you are expressing. Then your image is re-enforced when they land on your website.  Users see some nice pictures, explanations for those images and even customer reviews to re-enforce your integrity and great workmanship.

It takes time for the Search Engine Marketing topics to kick in to start generating leads. So in the meantime use your new marketing opportunity to support the active bidding you are engaged with too.

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One Response to “How Long To Get Leads?”

  1. Marta Garland

    That is the truth. It is tempting to spend small amounts of money on websites and marketing that is hit and miss. I have also heard of posting daily on social media, substituting volume for quality. I have found this can lead to lots of calls from people looking for services you don’t offer.

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