Managing Internet Leads Effectively (Morrison Homes)

Situation

Morrison Homes was receiving thousands of Internet leads from its own website, from Internet advertising sources, and from search engines. This 22nd largest homebuilder in the country (according to Builder Magazine) wanted to create a system to evaluate the benefit of its Internet lead generation strategies, as well as determine how to most effectively manage the leads that were being produced.

Services Provided

MLC New Home Marketing (MLC) first examined how staff in all divisions currently measured the success of the company’s Internet activities. The firm then helped Morrison analyze the value of its leads as they related to three goals: (1) Contributes to brand awareness, (2) Communicates company messages, and (3) Generates visits to the sales center. By breaking down Internet users’ activities into one of three categories and placing values on those categories as they related to the above goals, MLC helped Morrison develop a “Virtual Lead Score” for each media, which enabled the company to evaluate its return on investment for each outlet.

Next, MLC interviewed multiple sales staff in each of Morrison’s 13 divisions regarding sales processes and sales force structure.  MLC helped the company explore how its own internal processes would fit into a centralized lead management system, a decentralized lead management system, and a hybrid system.

Outcome

Today, Morrison is able to accurately evaluate the success of each Internet outlet and proactively tweak its Internet strategy to correspond with changing sales and marketing goals.

Morrison has created an Internet Specialist position in each division, and that inside salesperson is responsible for managing all Internet-generated leads. This organizational structure has improved the company’s efficiency in managing both its Internet generated leads and its conventional sales leads, and has also provided consistent management for its Internet generated leads throughout all divisions.