Most business owners, especially small business owners, don't know what to include in their website to help convert web visitors into leads.
Let's break this down.
In this blog, we're going to discuss:
Read and apply these tips to help you generate more leads from your website visitors.
What is a Lead Generation Website?
You want your website to be your silent sales partner. It should be doing three main things:
Educating web visitors about your service or product.
Qualifying them to determine if it's suited to them.
Moving them to the next stage of the sales process.
A website that is doing these three main things is helping to:
sift out the visitors that aren't suited to your offerings and
encouraging those that are interested to take the next step that you've laid out for them.
Why is a Website Necessary for Leads?
There are quite a few business owners who think: We just don't get new clients from our website. We never have and I just don't think that is who we are.
I'll shed some light on why this thinking could be flawed.
Roughly 70-80% (i.e., the vast majority) of consumers are researching online before they take action. That means, they're going to your website (if it even appears on a Google search) to determine if you're what they're looking for. If you have a poorly designed and messaged website, I guarantee you're losing business.
Your website is a validation tool. A website with a great design, user experience, and clear messaging that speaks to their problem and validates their needs has a much higher chance of getting the sale.
'Nuff said.
Now, let's get to the meat of this blog—what a web-visitor-to-lead-converting-website-machine looks like, a.k.a. a website that helps to generate leads.
Start with Strategy
Your website should be part of an overall strategy to help move visitors along a journey to doing business with you.
Your website sits at the top of the marketing funnel. You should be deploying a strategy to entice your target audience to the top of this marketing funnel, i.e., your website (which this blog doesn't get into).
But once they're in the marketing funnel, i.e., they've arrived on your website, the strategy you created for your website should be doing the hard work of moving them from a visitor to a lead to a client or customer.
These are two core questions to ask yourself when creating your website strategy:
What are the pages I'll have on my website? (For example, Home, About, Services, Contact pages.)
How will each page move them from being a visitor to a lead to a customer? (Not all pages should be moving a visitor to a customer. However, all pages should be moving them from a visitor to a lead.)
Here's an example to walk you through this process of a website strategy.
Let's say I'm a personal fitness trainer.
For the first question, "What are the pages I'll have on my website?" I've determined I'll have a:
Home page
About page
Two services pages: one for 1 on 1 training sessions and the other for group classes
Blog
Contact page
Pop up box
For the second question, "How will each page move them from being a visitor to a lead to a customer?" I've determined:
Home page: Because I really want web visitors to schedule a consultation, my primary ask (or call to action) will be Schedule Your Free Consultation. However, I also want to build my email list so that I can nurture and sell any specials or future offerings. Therefore, my secondary CTA (call to action) is to offer a 3-part free video series that answers a question that I get asked most often. In exchange for this free video series I ask for their email address so I can deliver it to them and build my email list. I'll also include client testimonials and list my two offerings on the home page and link them to the Service pages.
About page: I'll link to my service pages and reiterate my primary and secondary CTAs. I'll also include logos of my certifications and client testimonials.
1 on 1 training session service page: I'll offer a trial session at a 25% discounted rate with my primary CTA, as well as include client testimonials, certification logos, and FAQs.
Group classes service page: I'll offer a trial session for their first class at a 25% discounted rate, I'll provide all of the details of the classes, such as type, length, location, and packages. I'll also include FAQs, certification logos, client testimonials, and a CTA to Save Their Spot.
Blog: I know that regular blog posts can help keep web visitors on my site for as long as possible, which is great for SEO. I also know that blogging helps to optimize my site for search engines, and I can use the content for marketing purposes, like on my social media platforms. So I've decided that I'll write a weekly blog and always include a Johnson Box with a link to my secondary CTA, and will link to other pages on my website as it makes sense.
Contact page: I'll call it Schedule Your Consultation in the navigation menu and I'll provide my email, calendly link to schedule a 30-minute consultation, link to the FAQs on my service pages, and include a video that explains what will happen when they book their 30-minute consultation. I'll also include a Johnson Box at the bottom of the page that invites them to get the 3 free videos.
Pop up: The pop up will support my secondary CTA to get their 3 free videos.
Now that we've created a strategy around moving web visitors to a lead to a customer, let's start executing the strategy through our web copy.
Define Your Target Audience's Problem or Pain
Speaking to your web visitor's primary pain or problem helps to weed out the tire kickers from the serious buyers.
The best way to understand and then define your target audience's pain is to answer this one question—
What's keeping them up at night?
You might have a list of 3 to 300 answers. That's OK!
Narrow it down to one. Just one.
Which problem is THE most common complaint that you hear?
That's the problem you want to talk about on your website.
Connect Their Problem to Your Solution
Now that you've identified your target audience's most common problem, you must present your offering as the solution.
For example, going back to the personal fitness trainer, I've identified that the most common complaint I hear is, "I don't like how I look. I want to look like I did 20 years ago." The effects of aging is what's keeping them up at night.
As a personal trainer, I know that I can help them with that—to some extent. I can't remove wrinkles or firm up skin or give them a full head of luxurious hair, but I can help them lose weight and firm up their muscles so they'll feel great about how they look—they might even like how they look and feel more than they did 20 years ago!
Throughout the web copy, I'm going to frequently refer to their pain and present solutions to help them overcome it.
Ensure the Messaging is About Your Target Audience—Not You
It's common for many business owners to shine the light on themselves. They want to show to their web visitor that they're experienced, knowledgeable, and able to help them.
Showing your experience, education, and certifications are important to build trust with your web visitor.
BUT it should be done in such a way that you're still shining the light on your web visitor—not you.
For example, going back to the personal fitness trainer, instead of saying "All About Me" in the header of your About page, you could instead say "10 Years of Helping People Feel Great About How They Look" or "Transforming People's Lives Since 2012". You get the picture, right?
(Get more details on how to write the perfect About page that converts visitors into leads.)
Always read, and re-read, your copy to ensure that everything you write is positioned to help your web visitor.
Ask Your Web Visitor to Take Action
Remember that the purpose of your website is to move your web visitors through your sales funnel.
So naturally, part of that process is asking them to make a decision.
There's a quote that I love and taped to my wall as a reminder:
The goal of sales is not to get the prospect to buy; it's to get the prospect to make an informed decision.
I love this quote because it reminds me selling isn't the priority—my job is to help my prospective clients make an informed decision. This is SO un-salesy—which is something I'm most comfortable with (are you?)!
Because you've outlined your website strategy under the Start with Strategy section, and you've included what CTAs you're going to use, you've already done most of the work. Now you just need to execute it by ensuring you're peppering your CTAs—strategically—throughout your website.
This is an important part of converting visitors into leads into customers—by asking them to decide.
Offer a Freebie to Build Your Email List
If I were to identify one of THE MOST common and yet important lead-converting elements that are missing from the majority of websites, this is it.
They don't offer a way to keep in touch with their web visitors.
By missing this element, they're losing out on opportunities to generate more sales.
The purposes of a freebie are to:
Offer a secondary way to keep in touch with visitors if they're not ready to buy yet. It should be something they want in exchange for their email address.
Build your email list so you can continue to nurture those leads and occasionally offer them something to buy.
If you're serious about building your email list, this is an important element to add to your website. Offering a subscription to your newsletter doesn't cut it. In fact, it sucks—even more so if you're sporadic about sending out your newsletter. Would you really want another newsletter in your mountainous inbox? Neither does your web visitor.
Ask yourself this question:
Knowing what's keeping them up at night, what freebie can you offer to help solve it?
It could be a PDF download, a video series, a quiz, a combination of the above, or something else.
This is a fantastic opportunity to get creative.
Your Takeaway: Turn Your Website into a Lead Generation Machine
By:
implementing a strategy to your website
defining your target audience's problem or pain
connecting their problem to your solution
ensuring the messaging is about your target audience—not you
asking your web visitor to take action
offering a freebie to build your email list
you'll be way ahead of the vast majority of business owners. You'll be well on your way to making your website your silent sales partner by helping to convert web visitors into leads—and eventually customers!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
As a published children's author, StoryBrand Certified Guide, copywriter and marketing strategist, Sandra Beatty helps service-based business owners convert web visitors into leads by implementing a website and marketing strategy and getting clear on their messaging.
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