Your Website is the Problem – A Case Study

The hallmark of any digital marketing campaign—or any marketing campaign for that matter—is the number of leads it converts to customers.

The vast majority of businesses, or marketing firms, either get it right by luck or settle for less than optimal outcomes. Few actually examine each of the metrics and consider how every factor impacts the results.

In the following case, we break down why every factor matters and why it is important to listen to good advice from people who don’t take any single factor for granted.

The case is an internal study on a project the client considered a failure. The evidence, however, suggests quite the opposite.

Client: Law Firm

Specialization: Consumer Protection

Campaign Objective: Generate & Convert New Sales Leads

Resources Deployed: Graphic Design, Social Media Posts, Social Media Ads, Video, Metrics & Reporting

Marketing Strategy Successes

Our formula for finding and defining our client’s markets proved to be on point. Our planning incorporated extensive effort in the following:

• Market Research
• Audience Definition
• Target Identification
• Creative Production
• Target Engagement
  • Activation (link clicks and leads)

Marketing Strategy Failures

Client Management

Perhaps it was hubris. Maybe it was an oversight. More than anything, I the made the mistake of taking a client we shouldn’t have because they weren’t ready. We should have insisted on website development as a condition of our working with the client.

For as little as $1,500, we could have built a landing page that would have provided proper metrics, been dialed in to specifically engage the target audience, and results could have been dramatically different.

By electing to opt-out of our recommendation, the $1,500 they saved on site design may have actually cost them well more than $75,000 in revenue (if we assume the minimum fee for their average clients).

Expectation Management

We allowed the client to believe they could succeed despite having built their entire campaign on a sandy foundation.

Rather than insist, we abdicated. Additionally, because we didn’t have good metrics to begin with, we weren’t able to navigate the client through the turbulence.

We should have insisted the client start with a solid foundation before we began the work.

Timely Reporting

Monthly should have been weekly. It is rare to get game-changing results in a week’s time. The marketplace is complex. Consumers are complex. Aggregating an audience that has to succeed at the individual level of a purchase is complicated.

Rather than waiting a few weeks to report in (as was set in expectations at the beginning), we should’ve been more active with reporting – even though it wasn’t significant (statistically, that is). If we had been committed to weekly client engagement, we could have conditioned them to pay attention when the valuable monthly metrics were reviewed.

Over-simplified Reporting

Reliance on media outlets’ metrics to do the job is typical. And, it also ensures transparency and fidelity to the results. These high level data points are a good starting point. Often, it’s in the weeds where real results are driven.

As painful as it can be for clients to wade through, we should’ve gotten in the weeds earlier.

Operational Oversight

Lastly, we took for granted how capable the operation was. Now, we still have confidence they had closers. But, because of site dysfunction, they never got the chance. 

Early Warning Signs of Marketing Failure

In the initial client interview, we determined that their site had been built by a semi-skilled marketing employee on a WIX template, a DIY website builder that makes it difficult to rank in Google.

Because they didn’t want to pay us to redevelop the website, we should have said, “Your website needs some work. Start there.” And waited until that problem was solved.

Consequences of Marketing Failure

The consequences of the combined failures allowed the client to erroneously believe that the work we had performed was ineffective.

I am sure they felt their money was wasted—and they’re probably right about that. Or, at least would’ve looked vastly different if the leads we were sending to their site would’ve made it to the next step of the sales funnel.

Even more, it left a bad taste in their mouth for the value of digital marketing and its capability for driving new business.

The Marketing Metrics

Audience

Through careful market research, we were able to find and target 4.4m US residents who were potential beneficiaries for the client’s services.

Furthermore, we found a subset in the population who may benefit from their services due to excessive indebtedness and age-related demand.

Target Acquisition

Our initial estimates projected a success if 1% of the target audience could be reached during the mature stages of the campaign (typically indicated between 3-6 months after executing).

Within two months of execution, 1.1% of the target audience had been reached.

Engagement

It is established to anyone in advertising that in order to reach an audience you have to pay the piper. Whether it’s traditional (Radio, TV, Billboard, etc.) or digital (website, SEM, SEO, Social), access comes at a price.

However, creativity is still king! Case in point:

Creative Posts

Creative posts with subsequent boosting performed at a rate of $.16 per link click and contributed 2.2% engagement out of the total engagement of 2.73%

Social Media Ads

Ads performed at a rate of $1.90 per click and contributed .53% to the total engagement of 2.73%. For the industry, that is proficient.

Creative Post v. Ad Engagement

Head to head, the importance of quality creative is demonstrated by the fact that link clicks from creative posts outperformed Ad link clicks by a ratio of more than 4 to 1.

Total link clicks in a two-month period totaled 1,356. Assuming all things are equal, the site should have produced a minimum of 13 leads directly to the client. If paired with engagement statistics, between 26-28 would’ve been likely.

Website Analytics

The key page on the site responsible for conversions was found to have a glaring problem.

98.75% of all traffic directly acquired from our social media post and ad links resulted in an immediate drop-off.

Landing pages we design for clients typically see a drop off rate closer to industry standards under 50% (different for every industry).

Because no attention was paid to optimizing the landing page for conversion resulted in a false assumption that the marketing itself was flawed.

First, “We warned you about your website!” Or, at least, that’s what I want to say to the client.

Second, digital marketing is effective in delivering actionable lead generation. In this case, as with so many others, a business with a commitment to digital success as strong as their brick-and-mortar operations will build sales leads.

Third, digital marketing is the only medium in the marketing landscape to provide such definitive metrics. If tracked and managed properly, marketing in digital media is the ultimate solution for perfecting lead acquisition and business growth. Case closed!