Lead Generation

What Do You Spend on Your Pay-Per-Ignore?

I’m coining a new marketing Web metric here—Pay-Per-Ignore.

Most of us have heard about, or use Pay-Per-Click, where we pay a search engine or affiliated website dollars and cents  each time a potential customer clicks a link on their page which brings that customer to our website. It is a wide-spread practice, and can be a  major part of a business’ marketing plan, marketing activities, and marketing expenses.

Pay-Per-Ignore is similar. In PPI your business spends money to get a potential customer to your website, and then you ignore that lead completely. Does that sound silly and foolish to you?

An example. A couple summers ago we were getting the family house in a Great Lakes state ready to sell. I live in Oregon, so I’d been using the faithful search engines to contact painters, realtors, estate sale agents, dumpster haulers…the works.

I found plenty of listings and associated Web pages. They had lots of pictures, good text, mission statements, service descriptions, and, very important for me, “For more info, contact…” links and some had built-in interactive email contact  frames. But the results from my contacts  were  dismal!

I contacted three estate sale agents. One never responded — Ignored. A second sent me an email in a couple days, asking for more info, and then nothing — Ignored. The third emailed me right back and followed up with a phone call the next morning. Guess which one  got our business?

I emailed two trash haulers about a dumpster. Neither responded — Ignored. One of two painters emailed me back. The other ignored me. The list goes on. Now, maybe these companies are in the enviable position of having so much business that they don’t need new customers, but I doubt it.

From  my business viewpoint,  this behavior  seems like a unconscionable waste of time and money. From  my viewpoint  as the  jilted customer  I  become annoyed, unsatisfied, exasperated, increasingly impatient, and  left me with a very negative “I’ll never deal with those jerks” attitude.

The goal of your marketing efforts should be to introduce yourself to prospective customers, get them to know and trust you, and convert them from prospective leads to cash spending customers.  You need a process for following up with each lead who asks for more information, who leaves their email address or phone number with your “Contact us” link. You need to  connect promptly  via a return email or phone call. This isn’t a cold call after all, the potential customer  invited to contact them!  They are asking you to convince them to give you their business.

So, ask yourself this: how much Internet marketing money are those  businesses I mentioned above  spending in Web design, hardware, infrastructure, search-engine optimization, etc., to attract me as a potential customer, only to ignore me? What is their Pay-Per-Ignore?

What do YOU spend on YOUR P-P-I?