Clifford Almeida

How to use website ROI calculators in your agency to close more deals

You should be using ROI Calculators as an interactive lead magnet on your agency website, to gather more leads and in your sales process to close more deals.

Over the years more web design and SEO companies have searched for more effective ways to engage prospects. This need and the popularity of interactive forms has led to the adoption of using website or SEO Return on Investment (ROI) calculators on websites as a resource, lead magnet and in many cases a tool that is leveraged in the sales process. Agencies are not doing it because they like mathematical computations... They’re doing it because it’s one of the most effective ways to generate more leads and close more deals.

The rationale that drives this in the sales process is simple and has existed for ions… To close a sale your product or service’s perceived value has to outweigh its price. Once you can effectively do that, you can not only close more deals, you can demand a higher price for your services.

Selling on Value: increasing the perceived value of your services, leads to more sales

One of the many reasons we leverage an ROI calculator in our sales process is because of human psychology. Humans, by design, want to get the maximum return for their efforts or investment. Whether it’s planning a marketing campaign or a website redesign. We rarely set out to just get mediocre results. We are planning and strategizing creatures, and we’re really good at it. One of the primary driving emotions behind our choice to invest or put effort into something is fear. Fear of failure or fear of not making a good investment are probably two of the biggest fears.

You telling them it's a great investment won't help in most cases.

Ultimately, we either find reasons to overcome our fear and move forward, or allow it to stop us from taking action. In order to overcome a prospect's initial fears or doubts, they generally need something to ensure them the results of the website redesign or marketing campaign will be greater than the proposed cost or investment. In simple terms, the benefits of working with your business needs to clearly outweigh the risk or investment they are considering making.

If you’re like most agencies you will focus on a nicely designed web site and content.  You then hope that when visitors read about your services they will inquire about working with you. Good design can go a long way to impress and great copy is definitely helpful with answering questions prospects may have about WHY they need your services or WHAT your services include. What it can’t do very well is help them answer one of their biggest and most important question...

Is this worth the investment?

A website ROI calculator easily allows web agencies to illustrate and justify the potential investment, by clearly articulating the potential gains in traffic and revenue that the prospect can expect based off of their investment in a website redesign or digital marketing campaign. Answering that question not only helps educate the customer on what they can expect, it also makes selling your services much easier if the numbers present a favorable ROI for them.

It can often help you reframe the budget conversation as well. A prospect who knows they can expect a growth of 40K monthly or 480K annually is much more likely to approve a 15K budget for a website and $3000 dollars for a monthly marketing retainer than one that has no clue what to expect from that investment. The calculated results can help mitigate common objections related to price, reduce the fear of failure, and helps you anchor the price of your services to the results you can provide their business. The more clarity you get, the easier it is to move the prospect down the sales cycle towards a close.

Reframe the conversation from cost to investment

The traditional lead magnet used by web agencies on a website is usually a PDF guide that offers generic information like 5 Mistakes When Hiring a Web Agency or 10 Things to Consider When Planning a Web Design. These types of lead magnets have done well over the years, but are starting to lose their luster. The problem is that these PDF’s  usually provide generic information that don’t speak to the customer’s primary concern – fear of making a bad investment. Not to mention, no one has time to read a  lengthy PDF these days, especially key decision makers.

ROI Calculators, on the other hand, are dynamic, take seconds to fill out and offers a real-time two-way interactive feedback that delivers immediate value that they can take action on. Your prospects are visiting your website because they need a good website or digital marketing services, and they need to justify the cost – the website ROI calculator does exactly that for them while collecting their information as a lead for you.

The best part is that the information generated can help them justify the investment for your services without you having to! That's huge! That's why this is a power lead magnet as well as an amazing resource to leverage in your sales process. When used you will have less selling to do because it puts the focus on the results they can achieve if they do work with you, while positioning this as an investment and not an expense.

Showing is better than telling

So is working with your web agency worth the investment in your services? The instant feedback they receive using their own numbers quickly answers the question and gets you closer to the sale.  It speaks directly to their unique situation and forces them to recognize how valuable working with you would be, even if you only increased conversion by 1% and web traffic by 30%. This is plays especially well in your favor if the prospect gets a lot of traffic or has a high customer lifetime value.  Let me SHOW you rather than explain…

In addition to answering their most pressing question, in the process, you capture valuable information about your prospect to help you better serve their specific needs. You’ve become data rich because your prospects, looking for real results, have filled in real data. You’ll have information like your customer’s:

• Website Address
• Monthly Website Traffic
• Current Sales Numbers
• Conversion Rates  
• Prospects’ Email
• Please refer to the image below as example of the information we ask for and how we present the ROI numbers to our prospects or customers.

Does adding an ROI calculator onto your site make sense for your web agency?

If you answer yes to at least one of these questions chances are you should implement a ROI calculator of some sort on your website:

• Are you looking to generate more leads from your site?
• Are you looking to stand out from the competition?
• Are you looking for a way to help you justify your rates in an easy to understand manner?
• Are you looking for an easy to implement lead magnet that is NOT a PDF guide?

Many people are hesitant to talk to a sales person. When they know they’re being sold to, they go into a defense mode and in various ways stop listening. The problem is they feel like they’re getting lied to on some level, or they’re missing out on some insider information that the salesperson is keeping from them.

What matters is what the prospect feels and thinks.

The best solution to get a prospect to listen and engage is to get right to the nitty-gritty numbers. Once they see the numbers they can relax. It gives them a sense that they’re coming to the table with information to work with instead of just having to take everything the salesperson or sales copy is telling them.

An ROI Calculator gives your prospect a sense of trust and less apprehension because the numbers don’t lie. And the result is they are much more likely to buy into your services.

Check out the interactive example below.  It's live and functional so feel free to enter your business information and check out the ROI report it creates.

Download Our Sample ROI Report

Are you ready to gather more leads and close more sales?

As you've learned in this article when you present numbers based on what your prospect enters into an ROI calculator, you effectively anchor your agency’s service to real results your prospects can expect. That is why it's  one of the most effective lead magnets and resources you should be leveraging in your web agency today.

If generating more leads, better quality leads, and converting more prospects into paying customers sounds appealing, then you’re probably ready to use an ROI calculator in your business.

So, are you ready? If yes, you can have your team develop a custom ROI widget for your website over the next few weeks, or you can set up one like the example above on your site within a few minutes by signing up for a trial of My Web Audit.  We even have professional landing page copy you can swipe and customize if you want! Seriously, we couldn't have made this easier for you to implement. We created My Web Audit with a core mission to help web professionals and agency owners generate more leads, and close more deals. Give it a try and thank me later!