What sort of goals and conversions are useful in b2b sector?

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

• 
  Dave Elliott: Everyone keeps telling me that goals and conversions are more important than traffic and keywords, and theoretically i agree.
  
  However, i work primarily in the b2b sector on non e-commerce sites. What sort of goals and conversions are useful in this setting?
• 
  Jon Tromans: Lead.
  Booking.
  Download.
  
  Probably a few more :)
• 
  Dave Elliott: booking & download are fairly obvious.... explain lead.
• 
  Federico Sasso: Most commonly leads, i.e. contact requests. Potential customers filling a form to have your sales dept. contact them and - hopefully - close a deal.
  And yes, as +Jon Tromans ;adds, downloads and other indirect stuff as well. Another example is the subscription to a newsletter or an rss feed: it might always make them to become customers after a while, and/or spread the voice.
• 
  Jon Tromans: Agree with +Federico Sasso ;- A lead for me is someone filling in my contact for and enquiring about one of my training services. ;
  
  I then treat this enquiry as a new lead, respond and follow up 7 days later, then 7 days later again.
  
  After that I ditch it...
• 
  Tim Capper: On a b2b that i look after :
  
  Contact
  brochures - 2 types
  request call back
  request quote on spec ( that they just specified )
  newsletter sign up
  magazine sign up
  
  With these guys, you cant really order online - it takes sales person, to start the process, quotes, specs etc etc to close the sale  ;- a single sale starts at 250K
  
  Oh, they also have me  ;track Brand Social signals and a few more rather bizaar metrics, but they are the client and want to see them.
  
  But yep, agreed, conversions in b2b cant really be quantified in a meaningful way
• 
  Edwin Jonk: Of course it depends on what you are looking for. But for b2b it is common to use forms and you want to track them. That is, you don't only want to track the submits but you also want to track when people leave the input field. Maybe something like this:
  http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2012/11/13/track-form-abandonment-google-analytics/
  will be helpful.
  
  P.S. keep in mind that bots do fill in input fields...
  
  Ping +Micah Fisher-Kirshner ;the data-marketeer.
• 
  Ryan Cramer: +Dave Elliott ;Considering you are talking about an ecommerce site, I'm wondering if you would want to add tracking when someone adds a product to the shopping cart, as well as when someone completes the order.  ;Not only would this help you track which are the more popular products, but it would give Google more insight into what clicks are more valuable to your site (a click to add, compared to a click for more info).
  
  This thread did give me an insight into an issue I've been having the past month on one of my bigger clients, that I'll put up for the community to chime in on, and I wanted to thank you for that!
• 
  Steven Ciccantelli: For me all I hope for is a phone call.But that is all my industry is about.
• 
  Tim Capper: Off topic Here.  ;+Steven Ciccantelli ;have you seen any changes to your local listings ( Map ) from the pigeon update ?  ;Good, Bad, No Change
• 
  Steven Ciccantelli: +Tim Capper good stuff so far.
• 
  Steven Ciccantelli: +Tim Capper I even wrote a short blog about my experiences as a small business and local seo.....I did not mention the Google animals tho.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: +Steven Ciccantelli To be honest I almost remembered the URL but I went to your profile to get the right URL:
  http://abraxitaxi.org/2014/08/05/taxi-confessions-and-local-seo/
  
  Ping +Tim Capper ;
• 
  Steven Ciccantelli: +Edwin Jonk I probably should have mentioned you as well.
• 
  Edwin Jonk: Your comment is awaiting moderation. ;-)
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  Steven Ciccantelli: +Edwin Jonk the whole point of that blog really was to use g+ is was the seo kitty after all that found the bad website
• 
  Edwin Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:54:55 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/what_sort_of_goals_and_conversions_are_useful_in_b2b_sector +Dave Elliott
  
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• 
  Dave Elliott: The different phone number thingy is pretty damn clever.  ;I like that a lot! Thanks stephane ;