Study of the online funnel conversion of strategic consulting companies in Spain

Abstract

The funnel conversion is the journey of an internet user from web surfer to loyal client, through intermediate stages. It consists of: 1. Acquisition → Convert visits into leads 2. Activation → Convert leads into prospects 3. Monetization → Convert prospects into Loyal clients The objective of the research is to study funnel conversion applied by consulting companies online, define alternative strategies and test them to understand how we could possibly improve the results. The results will be on both the funnel conversion techniques and tools that the companies examined could use. We will analyse each step of the funnel separately because, despite overlapping aspects, we cannot act on the three steps simultaneously. “You don’t turn cold prospects into leads, customers and multi-buyers all at once. A solid conversion funnel anticipates each step necessary to lead the prospect to the conversion.“ (Lindner, 2015) The actions performed to convert a prospect into a client are not the same, rather a good action in the wrong stage could reduce the effectiveness of our work. The existent research had only focused on products or services directly purchasable online. The aim of this research is to focus on a niche which is not directly sold online: Consulting services. Usually in the consulting activities the negotiation takes place in face-to-face meetings due to the complexity of the projects and the high value of the transactions, but the process of evaluating, or how a client decides, to go for a specific firm is not studied in depth in the literature, we will focus more on this topic. How consulting companies are attracting clients online, driving prospects to become clients and shape their online reputation between stakeholders, and how they could improve their process by using other techniques from different businesses.