We recently ran a quick report on one of our clients to determine the cost of a lead from his website.
A few Notes
- The report spans the year of 2023.
- We ran NO paid ads for the client. It’s all organic traffic.
- We base the cost of the lead on the price of his website hosting.
- A lead conversion, in the case of this client, includes any of the following:
- A WhatsApp click.
- A phone link click.
- An email link click.
- The completion of a booking form inquiry.
- We’re not responsible for what the client does with a lead.
- If the client doesn’t answer his phone when someone calls him from the website, or if he ignores a WhatsApp message, we still consider that a successfully generated lead. Conversion is largely the client’s responsibility.
- Although we track social media link clicks (clicks that lead a person away from the website to, say, Facebook), we don’t consider them successful lead conversions. (The client might; we don’t.)
- Mobile traffic accounts for 77% of all traffic.
The Results
Turns out, a lead cost the client a mere 0.55USD (ZAR10.50).
I don’t know which vertical you find yourself in, but you might be shocked at that number.
It’s much lower than most paid ad channels, like Facebook and Google Ads.
In discussing these figures with someone who runs paid ads (admittedly, in a different vertical), they were surprised to hear this number. They managed to get their cost per lead through paid ads DOWN to 1.31USD (ZAR25).
Bringing it Down Even More
Is it possible to bring the cost down even more?
It depends on what you define as cost.
If you refer to cost only as a monetary unit, then bringing the cost per lead down is a definite yes. By how much, one can only speculate.
In the case of this specific client, there’s scope for creating a ton of content for his website, which should see a significant increase in traffic, and consequently, more leads.
However, if you consider time spent on creating content a cost, then it’s not that clear-cut whether the cost can be decreased.
In the long term, yes; you should see an increase in traffic, an increase in leads and a decrease in time spent creating content.
That’s a simplistic way of looking at the picture. There are many variables involved in driving traffic, least of which is not the vertical you find yourself in.
But the gist is, it’s possible to decrease lead gen costs by increasing organic traffic to your website.
Conclusion
It’s often said that websites are a thing of the past, and that you should be spending your time on social media.
We take a different tack.
We want our clients to benefit long term from a well-built website designed around conversion.
You can still have your social media channels; still make use of paid ads; but when you switch off your paid ads, you want your website to still bring in traffic.
That’s the better way.
Contact us for a mobile-friendly, optimized website and start benefiting from organic traffic.
