There is an old adage that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink. That plays out every day in marketing on websites. I often talk with business executives who are frustrated by the fact that, although they have everything buttoned up on their website – they have SEO working for them, they have social media links, they have paid for ads and they get a good amount of traffic on their site, few people ever contact them from the site. The answer they get from their marketing people is one that infuriates them: just spend a little more. There are some things you can do that will help you get a handle on where to spend your marketing dollars when it comes to your website based on the success of your efforts.

The very first thing you should do is take a look at specific analytics from your website. We often look at summary totals on web analytics, such as accumulated Page Views and Visitors to the site. However, delve a little deeper in these numbers. Do you know where your web traffic is coming from? I recently asked one of our clients if they were doing any work in China because they were getting a fair amount of visitors to the site from China. They were not getting business from China, but were being contacted by multiple Chinese sales reps who were trying to sell to them. We made an adjustment to their advertising and hit their North American target demographic harder. That paid off in getting more U.S. and Canadian visitors to the site.

Getting a specific demographic to your website is one thing, but that doesn’t guarantee they will buy from you, does it? Whenever you are advertising, especially when you are using a digitally formatted marketing medium, you should use a landing page that is exclusive to the ad. Make sure you build the landing page with an action step that links the potential customer to a next step that is needed to complete your desired outcome (talk to your sales rep, request a quote, ask a question, etc.) Make sure this is easy to use. Pay attention to the response you get on that particular landing page when you look at your analytics. But also take a look at the browsing path visitors take after they leave the landing page. They may not click through your action button, but rather look at your service offerings, take a look at information on your company, etc. This will tell you what the customer needs to complete the sale. For instance, if you are seeing a trend of visitors hitting a landing page and then going to your About Us page, you may need to invest more in awareness marketing – they don’t know your brand. Most importantly, measure the response between landing page and next steps.

The end goal of marketing is sales. Your website should be a conduit to get customers to buy from you. If you take a closer look at your analytics, they will tell you whether you are meeting this goal or not. Adjust your online strategies and then measure the response you get.