Is your website a lead generation machine?

If you want your website to generate sales opportunities then you need to make sure it is focused on being a lead generation machine.

It sounds obvious but many website projects become distracted by competing or irrelevant objectives. Think about what your prospects need and what will drive them to begin a relationship with you. Follow these five key steps and make your website a lead generation machine.

Focus on who you’re targeting

Before you can create a website that functions as a lead generation machine, you need to know who you’re targeting. What’s their role? What’s important to them? Where do they look for help? How do they think and what types of communication do they respond to? What turns them off?

Once you have a really clear view of you marketing personas, you can start designing your website and thinking about your content.

Understand their pain

It sounds ever-so-high-fallutin but people are going to be most likely to engage with your business when they have some kind of problem, issue or pain. They will be at their most receptive if you can demonstrate that you understand the issue and can help them. Before you create your site map and write a single word of your website, be clear about the kinds of  issues would cause people to look for a business like yours.

Know how they might find you

Getting found is one of the most important parts of marketing. If you go back five or ten years, it was unlikely that you had any option but to broadcast messages into the world and hope that someone would see or hear them. Then you had to hope that, when they needed your service, they would remember that they’d seen or heard your message. Shouting is expensive and not that reliable a way of connecting with people when they’re in need of help.

Now people search or browse for help or relevant information. Or they reach out to their professional networks or a forum and ask if anyone has experience of their situation.

Encourage them to convert

To engage and convert prospects, you need to have answers and to show expertise. You need to have content and substance and you need to be responsive rather than just broadcasting your message. If you want to start a dialogue and earn the opportunity to talk about your products and/or services, you need to offer some value. If you want to capture their details so you can contact them again in the future, you’ll need to offer them considerable value.

Once you’ve identified what you need to do to generate leads, you can implement it into that website. And into your social media strategy, content calendar, SEO and calls-to-action. If you’d like to discuss turning your website into a lead generation machine, contact us now.