Creating Leads with Your Website

Like any good piece of equipment, the more versatile your website is, the harder it can work for you. If your website is little more than an online brochure, it won’t help you generate leads, so it certainly cannot help you increase sales. Creating leads with your website should be your number one marketing goal.

“Brochure” websites are boring, because they’re all about you. They might contain basic information, but your prospects are interested in themselves – what they want or need.

Everything about a lead generating website is specifically designed to attract prospects at every stage in the buying process, direct them swiftly to what they’re looking for now and inform or interest them so well that they want more. They become engaged, and it’s the start of a beautiful friendship.

Nurture them effectively, and a new customer is born.

Optimize.

SEO makes it easy for people to find your website. Concentrate on two things: keyword selection and usage, and ensuring you have a varied, continuous online presence that supports your website.

Create lead-appropriate content.

A blog and social media are invaluable because you can speak to prospects at every buying stage simply by changing up your content and delivery techniques. From your website, you can offer free ebooks, whitepapers or video links to attract early-stage searchers looking for basic educational information.   

Keep mid-level prospects interested, and build authority and trust, with webinars, fact or tip sheets, case studies, email. Content that interests or entertains as well as informs will keep existing customers focused on you and build repeat sales. Offer late-stage shoppers opportunities for an in-person demonstration or a consultation with your sales team.

Incrementally gather information that turns contacts into leads.

Offering some content with no strings attached creates good will. Trading a download or a blog or email subscription for a name and email address gets the two-way conversation ball rolling. You can ask more questions later, but always keep contact and inquiry forms as short as possible. Focus on capturing details your sales people need most to follow up strategically.

Give ‘em your phone number.

Put it where it’s easy to find, on every page. Better yet, offer live chat, or at least email Q&A with promised – and actual – 24-hour response. Bear in mind that the longer someone has to wait for a response, the more likely they are to look elsewhere for someone that can help them faster.

Build trust and affection by actively soliciting feedback.

Asking their opinion makes your audience part of your dealership and part of your “solution” — everyone loves that. You can use social media or e-mail to do this, but also your website itself. Create a pop-up or button that links to this week’s question – “what’s your biggest job-site headache?” – and ask why, because identifying your prospect’s motivation gives your sales people a hook to start a meaningful conversation.

Use your analytics.

Love those stats! You can perfect your targeting, refine your content, rank your leads. The renowned technology research firm Forrester says effective nurturing can increase sales-ready leads by 50%, at just one-third the cost per lead.

A side note about domain names.

They’re cheap. You should own variations of your official name, for two reasons:  to make it easier for searchers to find you, and to keep your name from being usurped by a competitor or even some unscrupulous entity. It happens, and it cuts into your ability to create leads with your website.

With a properly-designed website, you can attract leads, reinforce their interest, follow up with them in an individualized, engaging way and convert them via person-to-person contact when they’re ready.

You can leverage your online resources and your time, too, by adopting content management software. Something like our marketing software can help you manage all aspects of your inbound marketing, turning you into an efficient machine when it comes to creating leads with your website.