Author:
Nick Petty
You’ve invested time and money into your website, and you’ve dabbled in SEO. The homepage looks good and appears to be ranking okay for the right keywords. But you still have a nagging concern: Is the website generating enough leads?Â
Every business is different, and so are the number of leads each business can – and needs – to generate. A roofing company might max out at four or five big projects a month for its catchment area, whereas a dog-grooming salon might need dozens of smaller bookings every week for a healthy balance sheet. There isn’t a magic number that guarantees success.
So how do you figure out whether your website is pulling its weight? As a local digital marketing agency, we’ve managed the websites of hundreds of local businesses. When it comes to lead generation, we know what constitutes ‘good’ and ‘not so good’.
In this blog post, we give some industry estimates and explain a couple of methods to calculate the number of leads you should be getting.Â
At its simplest, a lead is anyone who shows a genuine interest in your services. It could be:
Not every lead becomes a paying customer. Some are just browsing, some are looking for price comparisons, and we’ve all been ghosted after making the quote. That said, every lead is an opportunity. The more opportunities you get, the more you score.
Using the methods detailed below this section, combined with sample traffic data sourced from Ahrefs, we put together the below table showing how many leads a local business can expect per month from its website.
It goes without saying that all of these estimates should be taken with a pinch of salt.
|  | Rural / Small town (few-thousand catchment) | Medium–Large town (20k–100k catchment) | City Suburb (100k+ catchment) |
| Trade business (plumber, roofer, electrician) | 5 – 10 | 20 – 40 | 30 – 70 |
| Catering (restaurant) | 10 – 35 | 30 – 110 | 50 – 200 |
Salon (hair, dog-grooming) | 5 – 20 | 20 – 80 | 40 – 120 |
| Professional services (accountant, lawyer) | 2 – 10 | 12 – 50 | 25 – 100 |
| Home services (cleaners, gardeners) | 5 – 25 | 25 – 100 | 40 – 100 |
Every business and catchment area is different. For estimates specific to your business, try the calculations detailed below (we recommend it!)
Sticking to the numbers above? Then don’t forget your pinch of salt.Â
There are two ways to calculate what constitutes a ‘good’ amount of leads for your business.
The first is to build from the ground up: Estimate how much traffic your website should be receiving and use a conversion percentage to calculate the number of leads.
The second is to build from the top down. Apply a typical ROI (Return on Investment) to your marketing investment, divide by the average cost of a job and work back to the leads from there.
Let’s look at each calculation method in turn.
The number of leads your website generates is determined by two key factors: the amount of traffic it receives and the proportion of that traffic it converts into leads.
The latter is easy to benchmark: A well-structured website for a local or trade business should have a 5% conversion rate.
The traffic, however, is a little trickier. It’s not as simple as applying the conversion rate to your current traffic, as low traffic might be a cause of subpar leads. Instead, you need to estimate the traffic you should be getting. Follow these three steps to do so:
1. Determine the organic traffic of your top search competitor. Look up your top search competitor for each of your chosen keywords in an SEO monitoring tool such as Ahrefs or SEMrush. Add up the organic traffic they receive for your chosen keywords.Â
2. Apply a ratio, based on a projected or desired search position, to determine your expected traffic. The top search result receives the most clicks and those beneath it receive fewer and fewer. Choose which ranking you think is reasonable for your business and apply the ratios below to your top competitors’ organic traffic.
Your Target Ranking | Percentage of Clicks Received for this Ranking(s) | Ratio to Apply to Competitor’s Traffic |
1 | 30% | 1 |
2 | 20% | 0.66 |
3 | 15% | 0.5 |
4-6 | 5%Â | 0.17 |
3. Add 30% to this number to account for direct and referred traffic (i.e., people typing your website into an address bar or following a link from a directory). This is a reasonable industry estimate.Â
Now that you have estimated the traffic you should be getting, apply the conversion percentage to get the total number of leads.
Note: You can also repeat step 2 for all potential search rankings to calculate a range of leads dependent on the results you achieve.
Example calculation:
Apply conversion rate: 533 x 0.05 = 27 leads per month.
Another way to determine how many leads your marketing efforts should be generating is by reverse-engineering the ROI. Essentially, you are asking the question: If I’m spending X amount on my website and SEO, how much business should I be getting and is that reflected in reality?
As the ROI varies for each type of business, we’ll use a range of typical results for a local company with a solid marketing foundation. This range of ROIs is anywhere between 200% and 500%.
We will also assume that about 10%Â of leads convert to paying customers.
To perform the calculation, take the following steps.
Example calculation:
A business spends £600 per month on its website and SEO, with an average job revenue of £500.
Total number of leads = 2.4/0.1 to 6/0.1 = 24 to 60 leads per month.
Then ask yourself the following questions:
If the answer to these questions is no, or you’ve simply got the queasy feeling your website is just not living up to its potential, it may be time to make a few tweaks to your marketing strategy.
Dissatisfied with the number of leads your website is generating? There are two ways to dial them up: Increase the traffic and increase the conversion rate.Â
Here are some quick ways to generate more leads…
Improve your SEO and rise up the search rankings to secure a lucrative top spot in the results pages. We’ve got a whole raft of information in our blog posts about how to do SEO for local businesses, but in summary:
It’s one thing to get the customer to your website; it’s another to make them fill out a form or make a call. Your website is more likely to convert traffic to leads if it:
Many customers reach your website via your Google Business Profile. Make sure it shows up in the search results by providing comprehensive information, posting regularly and obtaining lots of positive reviews. A well-optimised Google Business Profile will generate its fair share of leads directly, too.
Drive more potential customers to your site by writing a regular blog. Think how-to guides, FAQs and employee profiles to add a personal touch. A blog targets extra keywords and demonstrates your expertise. Include call-to-action buttons to capture the lead.
A snazzy website and a shiny digital marketing strategy are only as good as the number of leads they generate.Â
By combining the available search data with your objectives and budget, you can figure out what constitutes a ‘good’ and ‘not so good’ number of leads for your website in your specific trade and area.
Above all, ask yourself if your website is fulfilling your ambitions as a business owner. If the answer is ‘yes’, terrific. If the answer is ‘no’, you’ve got plenty of levers to pull.
Running a business can feel like spinning plates. Accounts, marketing, recruiting, inventory, prospecting – the to-do list goes on and on (and on…). And then on top of it all, another problem lands in your lap; a one-star rating on your Google Business Profile.
It’s 9 am on a Tuesday. You’ve barely touched your morning coffee, and already your inbox has three new messages….
At times, a Google Business Profile (GBP) can feel like a website in its own right. It appears when someone searches your business, it displays your hours, phone number, directions, reviews and photos.
Between managing your fleet, sorting permits, handling logistics and juggling customer service, marketing can easily slip to the bottom of a skip hire company’s to-do list.
Changing agency wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. Really, it wasn’t. But your incumbents have decided to drag their feet because – well, just because, and it’s all turned into a bit of a nightmare.
They flood your inbox. They clutter your browser. They ring you up when you’ve finally – finally – found a moment of peace.
That’s right, we’re talking about companies offering ‘cheap’ digital marketing.
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