If you answer yes to any of these website lead questions, be certain to keep on reading (you’ll thank me later for solving some very personal struggles that you may be having):
- Does a website obligate you to purchase?
- A website is a “safe place” for customers, right?
- A website is just information for research purposes, right?
- A website won’t impact my sales significantly… Will it?
- My customers aren’t online.
If you believe any one of those questions and statements are true (that a website can’t do that much in getting me website leads) Then, I am curious if these very personal questions are also true:
- Are you giving it your all, but having minimal returns?
- Are customers not answering when you call?
- Are you burnt out?
- Are referrals not calling?
- Are mailings and billboards ad campaigns giving you dwindling returns?
- Are you overcome by your competition?
Is your store gradually becoming more empty, void of customers, and finding your customer’s average age slowly growing older and older?
If you answered yes to some or most of those, there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope. Try it (or rather try it again)–your website. But do it right this time around!!
Here’s Why and How
Most website leads will visit your website before they ever call a salesperson, answer their phone, or visit your storefront. You know this. Prompt your visitors and direct them to the best area of your website that will solve their problems. The beautiful thing is that rather than interrupting your customers from their routine with a phone call, they freely explore your website instead.
Today, we know that a smart website will offer irresistible items, services, or solutions so that visitors will take some action. All in all, let us utilize your website, so it becomes the lead generation machine that builds enticement as the customers continue to explore. It is a process; here’s how to start.
Don’t Give Up too Soon
Realize that 63% of visitors inquiring about a brand will not buy anything within the first 3 months, and 1 in every 5 users will need a full year before proceeding to checkout. So, lead generation and conversion is a long process involving patience, multiple channels, and consistent efforts. There are tested and tried ground rules and principles that you should follow to convert your website into a robust lead generation machine. Let us explain them here. It isn’t rocket science.
Finally, the ABCs of Getting Leads from your Website
Attention-grabbing and clear messaging…
Wouldn’t you like steady sales conversions? You can get this by consistently addressing the customer’s needs with concise and clear messaging. Our customers are busy; we are busy… Why would we spend more than five seconds on a website if it doesn’t propose a solution for customer needs? Listen carefully here: a website should answer 3 customer questions within the first five seconds.
- What are you offering? As soon as a visitor lands on a webpage, it should clearly explain what you offer and what the users can expect from the respective website or web page.
- Show and tell how your offering will make their lives better. You need to clearly explain how it will improve their lives before the visitor finds himself in an indecisive and confusing situation.
- Show them how to take action. Push users towards activities like buying or choosing to get alerts for similar content. Explain the benefits of taking such actions and the steps to take such actions.
Beckon, those customers on the fence by…
Suppose your customers are bulking at your main service. Offer them a minor service to get introduced to your business. Offer them a piece of the puzzle. But only if it will help solve their needs. Don’t water down your product to something that won’t work for them. Give them only what will work. Give them enough to feel the value and experience it working for them. This “trail” of sorts will do the selling for you. So grab your pencil, write an attention-grabbing statement, and place it on a button that stands out. Then make a webpage about that solution—that piece of the puzzle. Making it time-sensitive will help.
Create an instantly engaging landing page and CTA…
- State your customer’s challenge/problem/concern/struggle. Include in less than a sentence how you address/resolve their challenge.
- Showcase studies on how and what customers you have helped. I’ll be writing about this in a later article. But this section should detail what you did to solve the challenge for the customer. What product of yours did the customer buy? What service did the client get from you? If you helped the customer choose their solution, share how and why you guided them toward that particular solution.
- Results: This is where the rubber meets the road. What did your solution do for the client? What was the ultimate benefit to them? Share that story here in the “Results’” section. Did the customer save money by switching to your product? Did the client save time by using your service? How much?
- Most importantly, you should include a customer testimonial in this section. Don’t just tell your audience what results from your customer got with your product or service – let the customer tell them.
- Include a Call to Action (CTA). An example of a subtle CTA would be a footer at the bottom of the case study with your contact information. An example of a bold CTA would be, “Want these results for YOUR business? Contact Jonathan Francis for more information about qualifying your leads. 570-486-5566 or [email protected].”
Determine your contact form will be short and easy to fill out…
Contact forms of all types, whether from websites or landing pages, should be simple and easy to fill. The contact form should ask for the minimum information your business team requires to follow up with the customers. For some form fields, you should opt for auto-filling the forms based on the information received through the login data or previous inputs. The shorter the contact form is, the more engagement you can expect from the users.
Allowing predictive text to fill up multiple fields where the user needs to write some text is extremely important to maintain ease and user-friendliness. Apart from quickly filling up forms, social media login is time-saving and easy for the user.
Engaging website visitors again after they have left…
Do you know 3 out of 4 customers now see retargeted ads (meaning customers who have come and gone see specific Google or Facebook ads catered to them specifically)? Retargeting matters, which is why many marketers give it so much importance. For any website visitor who didn’t take action on your website, show them countless ads on Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc. Get their attention again and bring them to your website again. Get them back to the specific product or service that they viewed. This is retargeting. It isn’t difficult. It isn’t rocket science. It happens when you are sleeping, and your customers are researching. It works.