Legal Marketing Blog

Lead Follow-up Research From Harvard

Thursday, September 15th, 2011

The rising cost of generating leads has forced practices to seriously evaluate how to improve their effectiveness in turning leads into new business.

However, recent Harvard Business Review research shows businesses waste opportunities created by online queries: Most companies are simply not responding fast enough. 

Online advertising to generate leads has grown from roughly $12 billion in 2005 to nearly $23 billion in 2009. Yet, 50 percent of leads don’t get a response within 24 hours (23% never get addressed at all!).

Opportunity #1 – You can likely steal business from other practices marketing online simply by having decent follow up.

This is particularly surprising when you consider how quickly leads become cold and old.

Businesses that follow up in less than an hour of receiving the query are seven times (700%) more likely to have a meaningful conversation with the prospective client than those that attempted to connect an hour later. They are also 60 times more likely to connect than those waiting 24 hours or longer.

Opportunity #2 – Connect with, qualify and convert more leads by following up within the hour.

Let’s face it. Leads grow cold very fast, particularly when prospective clients don’t believe they have been heard by anyone in your practice. The key is to get visitors who are willing to engage your office feeling like they have a personal “connection” with your practice.

Opportunity #3 – Utilize a Chat Service

Chat services have shown to increase leads to offices (I have heard that about 25 percent of visitors engage Chat elements on websites!). Since these chat leads have already had some human “contact” with your office, they are likely to be more receptive to your follow up and you may buy your practice more time to connect with leads. An important key is that Chat services are supported by live people, and you only pay when a chat turns into an actual lead (you get a phone number/email address to follow up). You should plan on spending no more than $10 per Chat lead.

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