Let’s say you’re working on improving the performance of your website. If you’re a typical online marketer, according to the latest data from MarketingSherpa (courtesy of Hubspot),  you’re going to be working on search engine optimization (SEO) in an effort to accomplish three primary objectives:

1. Increased website traffic
2. Increased brand or product awareness
3. Increased lead generation.

Can you do all three at once? Do you really want to focus on the second goal when its measurement is tenuous at best?

Given modern marketing’s obsession with metrics, I’d argue no. That leaves us with #1, traffic, and #3, increased lead generation, the crux of which I think of as the conversion rate.

Top Two Objectives: Traffic and Conversion Rate

Can you tackle both of these at the same time? Sure, but you risk scattering your energies and not reaching your goal on either count. So if you’re going to work serially, which should come first?

We’ve had some debates about this internally. It boils down to who your target prospect is, what their online behavior looks like, and what your business priorities are.

Look at Your Target Prospect’s Profile

If you’re dealing with the type of prospect – let’s say a consumer – who’s willing to take the time to bookmark a site and come back to it, if you’re offering useful content that they will revisit again and again, focusing on building traffic makes sense.

If you’re targeting high-powered executives who tend to be more one-and-done, and your goal is to get them to engage, conversion has to come first. With these prospects, you most likely only get one shot.

One of the fun things about working here at IFMG is that we market to both types of prospects. We’re not just B2B- or B2C-focused, which means that we get to build content and websites that appeal to a wide variety of people. One tends to be a little more fun than the other, I’ll leave to you to decide which is which.

Amy Taggart is Marketing Manager for Interactive Financial Marketing Group.

We get into some interesting debates here in the halls of IFMG. As a marketing services company that has built a business around lead generation for auto finance, we understand a lot about how to reach out to prospective customers and get them to respond to a call to action.  But it also means that we engage in some animated discussions around the strategy and tactics we can use to do that. Recently we’ve been taking another look  at one of the fundamental concepts of marketing, branding.

Opinions vary, but what it boils down to is this: how do you define a brand?  Is it the word-association game you play when someone mentions a company’s name? Is it the logo? Their message? The tagline?

If it’s done well, it’s widely recognized like Apple or Coca-Cola. Their names conjure up full experiences, for better or for worse. It can help increase stickiness and determine any given potential consumer’s propensity to buy.

Personally, I like Seth Godin‘s description:  “If you’ve never heard of it, if you wouldn’t choose it, if you don’t recommend it, then there is no brand, at least not for you.”  (“define:Brand“, December 13, 2009)

If that’s the case, and there are no associations for a company name or a brand, then does changing a logo really have any effect on how a company performs in the marketplace?

Amy Taggart is Marketing Manager for Interactive Financial Marketing Group.