I wrote the following email to a client of mine who contracted my firm to do some cosmetic work on their website. We did a great job, they rae very happy, but the site itself is still “brochure-ware”. I removed the individual names and company name out of courtesy.

M,
Hope the new year is off to a good start for you!

I had recently exchanged emails with SalesManager about biz dev and lead generation. I mentioned that most companies today are using SEO/SEM for generating sales leads from the company website.

What drives this is cost. All companies in good times and bad need to look at their cost of sales. In other words, what does it take to put revenue on the bottom line? Traditionally, sales leads come from advertising, promotions, cold calls, networking, referrals, etc. The cost associated with these activities is primarily the cost of professionals’ time to execute these activities. If you take the company’s annual revenue and divide by these costs, the result is the “cost of sales”. Cost per lead and cost per sale are also derived from the same process.

Now if you compare these traditional business development costs to what it costs to generate leads from a website through SEO/SEM, it is usually an order of magnitude less. I’m not sure what the numbers are at CompanyName, but I’m sure they are within industry norms.

With an order of magnitude difference in cost to acquire sales leads and then close business, it is usually a no-brainer to justify SEO/SEM costs.

When I reviewed this with SalesManager, he suggested that I send you an email and copy him. This is it!

I’d be delighted to work up the numbers with you for CompanyName and take the website to the next level - producing revenue!

Best,
Thomas Morling

Makes sense doesn’t it? Websites need to pay their fair share!