It’s amazing to me how little people understand about this stuff — even experienced marketers. Practically every client that comes to work with us for PPC, we take a look at their site and say “We really should work on your conversion path first.” They say, “No – we need leads now. Let’s just get started.”

A few weeks later, they wonder why they’re not getting enough leads. You look at the analytics and show them that they’ve been getting plenty of click-throughs, but very few conversions. When your conversion rate for PPC visitors is on the same order of magnitude as your CTR, guess what? Your cost per lead is ridiculous.

But until you show them this with their own data, they don’t believe you.