November 7, 2007

Biznology Blog by Mike Moran

« The Do It Wrong Quickly Challenge | Main | Why Don't Bid Management Programs Optimize For Profit? »

Tracking Offline Conversions

In my books and my appearances, I emphasize how important it is to identify your Web conversions—just what are you trying to persuade your customers to do? You also need to measure them. It sounds easy to measure when it's a shopping cart on an e-Commerce site, but when you sell offline its not so easy.

Different companies take different approaches. Auto manufacturers use elaborate mechanisms that allow you to "build your own car," selecting the colors, options, and equipment and seeing the manufacturer's suggested retail price. The consumer prints out the result and brings it to the dealer and asks, "How much for one of these?" The dealer notes that this customer came from the Web and the car company can attribute the sale to the Web if one results.

This technique works because people will do almost anything to spend less time with a car salesman. If your customers actually like your salespeople, then you might need to offer a discount for anyone who prints a coupon and redeems it at your store. Or you might provide a special phone number shown only on your Web site—you know anyone calling that number came from your Web site.

I've just finished reading Outside-in Software Development, and that book offered a great suggestion for measuring a different kind of offline conversion: how a software manufacturer knows their product was successfully installed. If you set up a message board for customer support, you can monitor which questions are about installation (didn't install yet) and which are about usage (successfully installed). It's admittedly a gross measure, but it is far better than nothing.

So how are you measuring your offline conversions? If you're not tracking them at all, then you have no basis for identifying which marketing expenditures are working and which ones aren't. Without that kind of feedback, you can't continuously improve your marketing because you don't know how to keep score of the winners and losers.

Posted by MikeMoran at November 7, 2007 3:14 PM

Comments

Mike-

Good column topic! Your focus on both getting people to a conversion point and the importance of tracking those conversions is one of the reasons we recommend your book "Search Engine Marketing, Inc." to our new clients. We feel that your book (along with "Call To Action") lays down the law about why the tracking and improvement in conversion is so important.

Dealing almost exclusively with industrial manufacturers that sell business to business (B2B), we have found it critical to be able to measure phone calls as a very basic metric of what works and what doesn't in terms of driving THE CONVERTING traffic to a website.

As much as we’d like to think that every time a prospective customer calls, someone captures prospect interaction information - we know that it doesn’t always happen. To best track exactly how many phone calls are generated via clients' website marketing, we developed what we refer to as "trip-wire" designated toll-free number system.

Phone calls always ring directly to the clients' existing main phone. However, we use up to 25 separate phone numbers which appear site-wide on the client website. The change in number - on every page of the website - is "triggered" by arrival from a known ad location (i.e. ThomasNet, Google, GlobalSpec or Industrial QuickSearch.)

The phone numbers and associated billing statement give a perfect chronicling of which media and campaigns generate calls. The monthly reporting gives the actual phone number and company name of the caller - super helpful for harried sales executive types to be able to "scan" for interesting or known high-quality prospects.

Posted by: Rick Brown at November 9, 2007 1:12 PM

Thanks, Rick, and thanks for your tip. I've seen systems that work the way you describe and I think they are fantastic for closing the loop between online marketing and an offine order, which as you say is critical for allocating revenue to the Web channel. Only when you do that properly will you choose the right invesment level for Web marketing. In my new book, I go beyond the revenue model to attack Lifetime Value, because that is an even better method for some companies.

Posted by: Mike Moran at November 9, 2007 1:21 PM

It sounds like we need to add your new book to our clients’ required reading list! Your point about Lifetime Value is dead-on for the subset of manufacturing companies with which I work.

These industrial manufacturers all deal with a small number of prospects and customers (relative to consumer-focused businesses). Their entire customer base is sometimes measured in thousands or even hundreds.

Because of this, we've seen cases where the entire year's worth of Internet-based marketing expenditure is offset by a single new customer acquisition.

Posted by: Rick Brown at November 10, 2007 9:12 AM