Matt Farber
So what is a good conversion rate anyway? Well that most likely depends on which benchmark you are looking at. When it’s time to do an analysis of lead conversion rates how do you even know where to start? There are so many different numbers that we marketers look at every single day that it may be difficult to find a good starting point. I’m going to be looking at five different rates in this article that should give you a great idea of how your website is turning leads in sales.
Visitor to Lead Conversion Rate (VTL)
The VTL of your website analyzes the rate at which your website is turning visitors into leads. Whether they downloaded a cheat sheet to success or requested a product demo, both of these are examples of a VTL. If a website has 100 visitors in one day and five visitors filled out a form, the VTL for that day would be 5%. According to Smart Insights and some research they did in April of this year 2-3% is a good benchmark to shoot for. I can also say that from hands on experience with multiple clients this rate is a solid average to shoot for.
Call-to-Action (CTA) Conversion Rate
For me personally the rate at which a CTA is converting into clicks gives a lot of insight into how well we’re turning visitors into leads. This is obviously tied directly to the VTL rate depending on where visitors are sent after clicking. Ideally CTAs are linking to a landing page which I’ll cover next, but getting clicks on the CTA must occur before even worrying about how the landing page is performing. This is essentially the first metric when figuring out the VTL rate. Every industry is different for average CTA rate but if you’re seeing rates above 5% things are great! Anywhere in the 2-4% range would be fairly average.
Landing Page Conversion Rate
When creating a conversion path the next logical step after the CTA would be pointing visitors to a landing page giving them an opportunity to convert on what was previously clicked on. Looking at the rates you’ll find many sources give different numbers, but from an inbound perspective and experience I’ve had with websites anywhere in the 15-20% range is average. This is dependent on what stage of the buyer’s journey your offer is for. An awareness piece of content will convert much higher (30 – 40%) than a decision stage offer like a demo request.
Leads to Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs)
After leads are in the funnel by converting on an offer it’s time to look at how far into the funnel they reach. Do you know what percentage of your leads turn into MQLs or SQLs, and even beyond that sales opportunities and closed deals? These numbers will give better insight into how many leads are needed to be generated to hit your business goals. It’s likely a revenue number needs to be hit and an average closed deal brings in a certain amount of dollars. Track these rates backwards to see how many leads are needed to be generated.
Continued optimization of all these conversion rates will maximize your ability to convert leads into hard dollars for your company. What lead conversion benchmarks are you struggling to wrap your head around?
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