How Organic Leads Differ from Direct Leads

The definitions of organic and direct leads used to be described pretty simply. Many digital marketers considered organic leads to consist of visits from search engines, whereas direct leads were thought to be made up of visits from individuals entering the URL of your company into their browser. However, these definitions are too straightforward and leave some digital marketers in the dust when it comes to gaining knowledge and insights from web traffic, especially organic and direct leads.

What is an Organic Lead?

An organic lead is the main channel that inbound marketing strives to increase. Organic leads are when visitors come from a search engine, such as Google. These visits are tracked by another entity because they have come from a search engine or other sources. Organic leads are considered non-paid visits because paid search ads are a category of their own. However, just because they are not considered paid, it doesn’t mean organic leads are not impacted by paid search ads, both positively and negatively. In general, people trust search engines which emphasizes the fact that people are tied to them. Therefore, paid searches, displays, and offline campaigns can motivate searches, which can increase organic leads while those campaigns are running.

All-in-all, organic leads have some gray areas. However, for the most part, organic leads are motivated by SEO. The higher you rank for competitive keywords, the more organic leads you will see. Websites that reliably come up with information optimized for search will see a steady rise in organic leads and an improved spot in search results. As a marketer, you want to make sure you look at your keywords and high-ranking pages to find new SEO opportunities every month.

What is a Direct Lead?

In simple terms, direct leads are any leads that do not result from a referring website or have tracking information. Direct leads come straight to your site. In other words, that means anyone who types in your URL or clicks to your site from a bookmarked link. Leads that are coming from an unknown source are also categorized at direct leads. However, direct leads are a little more complicated than that.

It is important to know that browsers do not always account for where visitors come from when they arrive at a website. If your analytics tool does not know where leads come from, then they just assume it is a direct lead. This can become a problem for you and your marketing strategy. The whole idea of knowing where your leads are coming from and working hard to minimize false direct leads is data. As a digital marketer, you know the best way to better your marketing tactics and attract more qualified leads is to know where your leads are coming from. If you are unable to do so, then you are missing out on a huge marketing opportunity because you are not able to see what keywords those visitors are using or what terms they are searching for.

The main thing that differentiates direct leads from organic leads is tracking. Direct leads have no tracking information, whereas organic leads are tracked by another entity. Understanding the difference between organic leads and direct leads can be confusing. If you want more information or need guidance, contact Intergetik on our website. We will be happy to guide you in the right direction.