Why (& How) You Should Focus on the Quality of Your Website Leads

Not all website traffic is equal, because not every person who visits your site will convert into a sale. While it's tempting to prioritize quantity and aim for a high volume of website traffic, the quality of those leads ultimately determines the success of your sales efforts.

Knowing the Difference Between Lead Quantity & Quality

“Quantity leads” refer to a larger volume of potential customers who have shown some interest but may not have provided extensive details or demonstrated a strong intent to make a purchase.

Benefits of Driving a High Volume of Website Traffic

• A higher quantity of leads means there is a greater chance of finding some who eventually convert into sales.
• Leads can be nurtured and re-engaged through ongoing marketing efforts, increasing the chances of conversion over time.
• By reaching a larger audience, dealers can increase brand awareness and visibility.

Challenges of Driving Website Traffic Without Strategy

• Dealerships that have limited resources and/or a limited marketing budget will find it difficult to manage a large volume of leads.
• Driving unqualified website traffic is an insufficient use of resources since the conversion rate is low.
• Dealerships are paying a higher cost for website traffic but receiving a lower ROI.

“Quality leads” refer to potential customers who have a higher likelihood of converting into actual sales. These leads exhibit genuine interest, intent and purchasing power. They are often pre-qualified or have expressed specific interest in the product or service being offered, and they may have provided detailed information about their needs, budget or timeline.

Benefits of Driving Qualified Website Traffic

• Quality leads have higher conversion rates, resulting in a lower cost per acquisition and reducing your overall marketing expenses.
• Since qualified leads are genuinely interested, they are more likely to be satisfied with the product or service they purchase.
• Quality leads may become loyal customers and provide positive word-of-mouth referrals among their peers, increasing your potential customer base.

Finding Balance Between Website Lead Quantity & Quality

Creating a balance between website lead quantity and quality is essential to maximize your sales conversions while effectively utilizing your resources.

You need to have a high volume of website traffic in order to drive qualified leads into your sales funnel. Similarly, qualified leads will spend time on your website interacting with your unit listings and other important pages, signaling to search engines that your website is a valuable resource. This increases your website’s organic search ranking, which can help more shoppers find your site.

Measuring Success: Metrics for Evaluating Lead Quality

First, you need to determine if your website is currently driving poor quality traffic. If you think you might be attracting the wrong audience (that is, generic leads who aren’t serious about making a purchase), your website analytics will show it. 

High Bounce Rate

If you’re seeing a high bounce rate, this means shoppers are leaving your site without clicking around because they aren’t ready to take the next step, or the webpage doesn’t align with their interests.

Low Conversions

Low conversions are another sign that your website isn’t attracting ready buyers. If you have a decent amount of traffic to your unit pages, but you’re receiving very few lead form submissions or phone calls, this is a good indication that the majority of your website traffic is just general browsers.

Time Spent on Website

The amount of time visitors spend on your website is similar to bounce rates – if shoppers are spending very little time on your site, they either aren’t finding what they’re looking for, or they’re just idly looking around. 

Alternatively, spending a large amount of time on your website isn’t necessarily an indication of a hot lead; it could mean the shopper is having trouble finding the right information on your site and has become lost. In order to determine if time spent on your website is correlating with qualified sales leads, look at the pages receiving the most traffic and the number of conversions generate from those pages (lead form submissions, phone calls, clicks to your physical store address, etc.).

If you’re a Dealer Spike customer, you can access multiple resources for our internal web stats platform through the Knowledge Base library. Click here to start exploring.

Establishing Clear Qualification Criteria

Develop a clear understanding of your target audience and create an ideal customer profile to ensure your website traffic meets your desired quality standards. Identify the demographics, engagement level, interests and behaviors of your most valuable customers and use these factors to create a lead scoring system. This will help you focus your marketing efforts on attracting leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers.

Leveraging customer relationship management (CRM) tools will help you track and manage leads efficiently so that you can prioritize your efforts on leads that are most likely to convert. Your CRM tool can deliver the following data about your customers:

• Conversion rates
• Sales attribution
• Customer satisfaction and retention rates
• Return on investment (ROI)

Strategies to Attract More Qualified Buyers

We know you don’t have the time to follow up on every website lead, which is why we encourage you to focus on the qualified buyers and invest your marketing spend on strategies that will convert them into a customer.

The dealers who drive highly qualified leads and are maintaining excellent lead conversion are those who dedicate a portion of their budget toward lead targeting strategies. Are you currently allocating your marketing budget to fuel effective strategies that draw in the right shoppers?

By implementing the following strategies, you can strike a balance between quantity and quality, attracting a steady stream of high-quality leads while maximizing sales conversions and resource utilization.

Choosing an Industry-Savvy Website Vendor

Websites have evolved from digital brochures to an online extension of the dealership that serves a critical role in attracting online shoppers. It’s crucial that your website is built to support your specific industry and the types of shoppers you want to pull into your sales funnel.

Each industry has its unique characteristics, challenges and best practices. A website vendor with industry experience understands the nuances specific to your dealership, such as market challenges, inventory management, lead generation and CRM integration. They are familiar with industry jargon, customer preferences and sales processes. 

This expertise enables an industry-savvy website vendor to develop websites and digital strategies that cater specifically to the type of buyer you want to attract to your dealership.

Leveraging Targeted Lead Generation Strategies

Utilizing targeted strategies ensures that your marketing efforts are directed toward individuals who align with your ideal customer profile and, therefore, are more likely to convert into paying customers. Lead targeting also helps you engage shoppers on a more personal and relevant level by showing them content that addresses their unique interests, questions and pain points.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in helping your dealership target qualified sales leads because it optimizes your website to be found by the right shoppers. By conducting keyword research specific to your industry, you can identify the search terms potential customers use when looking for units or services. Optimizing your website content with these targeted keywords enables search engines to understand the relevance of your dealership's offerings and attracts leads with genuine interest and intent to purchase.

Once on your website, shoppers need to be able to navigate the platform to find the information they need and progress to the next step. SEO optimizes the website's structure, navigation and page loading speed to improve the user experience, encourage leads to spend more time on the site and increase the likelihood of conversion.

Local SEO targets potential customers within a specific geographic area. Optimizing the website for local searches, such as "dealership near me" or "best dealership in [location]" helps your dealership appear in local map listings and "nearby" search results, making you visible to local, qualified leads.

Targeted Digital Advertising

Targeted digital advertising focuses your paid ad efforts on specific demographics, interests or behaviors that align with the ideal customer profile. It allows you to segment your target audience so that they only see online ads tailored to their interests and how ready they are to make a purchase. This also conserves your marketing budget for qualified leads, reducing wasted ad spend while increasing your ROI.

One of the powerful features of digital advertising is the ability to retarget and remarket to individuals who have shown interest in the dealership's website or engaged with their ads in the past. By placing tracking pixels on your website, you can target ads specifically to those who have previously visited your site or interacted with your content. This helps keep your dealership top of mind and encourages qualified leads to return and take further actions.

Social Media Marketing

Marketing on social media is a very cost-effective strategy no matter your budget. Both organic and paid posts can drive interested leads to specific Vehicle Detail Pages and other pages of interest. The best results involve a marketing budget because it opens the door to using the sophisticated targeting options offered by social media platforms. You can narrow down an audience based on demographics, interests, behaviors and location, and then tailor your messaging and offers based on the individual needs and preferences of quality leads.

Social media also gives you the opportunity to expand your audience base by creating lookalike audiences, which are groups of users who share similar characteristics and behaviors to your existing customers. By leveraging data about your current customer base, you can reach new potential leads who are more likely to be interested in your inventory and services.

Let Shoppers Self-Qualify on Your Website

Think about this: We all browse and buy online, which makes each one of us a digital shopper. Your customers want to shop on your website the way you do on other sites. They want to be able accomplish more of the buying process online, without having to visit the dealership multiple times to confirm it’s the right destination for their next purchase.

Once you’ve used lead targeting strategies to bring qualified buyers to your website, you need to let them see for themselves that your dealership’s inventory and prices are a good fit for their situation.

Remember how you don’t always have the bandwidth to follow up with every lead and gauge their qualifications? Take some of the lead qualification process off your plate by letting shoppers demonstrate their interest through completing some or most of the buying process online.

Digital Retailing

Digital retailing is the process of preparing for and even conducting unit purchases online. It means giving your shoppers the tools to research, configure and complete their purchase on your website. 

A significant piece of digital retailing is providing transparency in pricing and financing options. By offering upfront pricing, trade-in valuation tools and payment calculators, your dealership will appeal to qualified buyers who are actively considering their budget and financing options. Qualified buyers are more likely to engage with these tools and provide accurate information, indicating a genuine intent to make a purchase.

Website visitors can further qualify by applying for financing on your website. Digital retailing offers a secure and convenient way to submit credit information, which provides you with valuable data to assess a lead's financial eligibility and, ultimately, focus your efforts on leads who are more likely to secure financing and complete the purchase process.

Nurturing Qualified Leads into Customers

Gaining the attention of a qualified lead isn’t the end goal; you need to keep that person’s interest and nurture them into becoming a customer. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than leads that aren’t nurtured.

Nurturing sequences are automated email series designed to guide leads through the sales funnel. These sequences consist of a series of pre-planned emails sent at specified intervals. Based on the lead’s behavior on your website, the automation software sends personalized emails to move that lead closer to a purchase decision. 

Establish ongoing communication and build relationships with quality leads by systematically delivering relevant information and maintaining consistent communication. This capitalizes on your lead targeting efforts by re-engaging individuals who already interacted with your dealership. It also helps you stay in front of your customer base to keep them interested in making another purchase.

In the fiercely competitive digital market, being mindful of website lead quality is crucial for your dealership. Quality leads yield higher conversion rates, reduce wasted marketing spend and support ongoing profitability for your dealership.

By leveraging effective lead targeting (and retargeting) strategies, you can strike a balance between quantity and quality to attract a steady stream of high-quality leads while maximizing sales conversions and resource utilization.