Thoughts about web design… Santa Rosa marketing geek discusses how small business websites can play a role in generating leads from prospective customers.
Unfortunately, business owners often don’t consider exactly how this will happen. Worse, they develop their site without keeping lead generation in mind. This means they miss a huge opportunity to develop the site’s structure, content and strategy so it supports their lead generation goals.
Even websites for small local businesses should be developed with some foresight about how their site can create website traffic and produce phone calls or emails (leads) from prospective customers.
To keep this discussion simple, think of it this way. To generate leads with your website, you must:
- Get people to your site.
- Engage them so they want to read content.
- Motivate them to take further action.
There are various ways to get people to your site, including:
- Organic Search
- Paid Search- Google Adwords, for example, pay per click advertising
- Online Display Advertising
- Print to Web- using printed material with an incentive to drive prospects to a web page)
- Email to Web- including a live hyperlink in an email that points to a website
- Affiliates
- Links
Once visitors are on your site, your content must answer their informational needs about you and what you provide. Avoid promotional hype and educate them. They want information—not a sales pitch. Make it worth their while to visit your site.
And last, learn the art of making offers. Extend an offer that makes them take a step in your direction—even if they don’t buy now. That “step” is a lead, and it gives you the opportunity to sell them or further market to them now or in the future.
For example, extend an informational offer (free report, how-to guide, buyer’s checklist, etc.) Visitors get this in return for entering their name and email address into a simple webform—generating a lead for follow-up marketing.
