Ok, let’s get right down to nuts and bolts…
You own a small business, with a website. You want that site to produce leads, generate sales, and make you money. But for some reason it’s just not happening. You’re not really sure why. Now what?
Well, you’ve come face-to-face with the dilemma of nearly every entrepreneur when you finally realize cold hard reality: Simply having a website will not guarantee you of making money or sales!
In fact, having a website only lumps you in with about 14 Billion other people. Yes, I said 14 Billion!
So let’s think about the process that one must go through before they will become your online customer. Now, before I do this, let me clarify one thing- the visitors I’m talking about are people who do NOT know you, were NOT referred to you, and who have NEVER done business with you. Here’s what must happen before a complete stranger will ever do business with you.
- They must first be able to find you, then…
- You need to quickly capture their attention.
- You need to offer something they deem valuable to keep them at your site.
- You need to build rapport so they will trust you.
- You need to create a compelling reason for them to take action.
- You need to tell them what to do next.
Think of your website like a huge intersection with cars arriving from all different directions. Without signs and stoplights, visitors would be confused, no one would know where or when to go, and chaos would erupt. Most websites resemble this traffic metaphor. Visitors arrive, see dozens of links and pages, and if they don’t quickly see what they need, they’ll click away and never return. You succeeded in getting someone to find your site, but all of that effort was wasted because when they got there you had no clear cut and simple plan for them to follow.
Despite common assumptions, there are times when people actually like being told what to do. One of those times is when they are searching for information (and that’s why 99{c55e560418ce770390e014a82a8daba02ae2bc5167395c1376161ff6ec3b989b} of people go online in the first place). Increasing leads, conversions, and sales online occurs when you clearly tell your web visitors “Here’s what I have and here’s how you can get it!” If you are doing anything less than this, you are probably wondering why you can’t transform your web traffic into paying customers/clients.
So let me tell you exactly how to accomplish this arduous task and, by the way, this strategy is proven to be the most effective way to convert traffic into sales. There isn’t a million different ways to market effectively online. Marketing experts actually agree that this method works far better than simply directing traffic to the home page of your current website. I’ll divide the information into two sections, “How They Find You” and “How You Convert Them Into Customers”.
How They Find You
Keyword Research
Did you do any research on specific keywords before you built your website? Most often, the answer here is “No”. Do you know what other sites are competing for the keywords you want? Most business owners make the fatal mistake of not understanding the difference between Keyword Competition and Product Competition. When I say “fatal” mistake, I really mean it. Not understanding this concept could kill your business. Here’s how the conversation usually plays out:
Me: “So what keywords are you trying to rank for?”
Owner: “Well we want to target blank, blank, and blank.”
Me: “Ok, have you looked at your competition for blank, blank, and blank?”
Owner: “Actually, we don’t have any competition because the sites on page one for blank, blank, and blank don’t do what we do or sell what we sell.”
STOP! This owner has just committed that fatal mistake and confused keywords with products. You absolutely must understand this concept- if the ABC Company is on page one for a search term that you want, then ABC Company is your major competitor. It doesn’t matter what they sell. They have a spot that you want and you are going to have to fight them for it! Therefore, you better make sure that you are equipped to take on the ABC Company’s marketing plan.
If you want success online, you absolutely must research your keywords, assess your competition, and plan accordingly. If you are fighting big boys with high ranking sites, then plan on it taking longer for you to get results with the search engines. Of course, working with an SEO expert will improve your chances.
Content Updates
The new Google Freshness Update demands that you consistently add fresh and relevant content to your site. I won’t address it now because you can read my article which clearly explains it. Suffice it to say that if you aren’t adding new material to your site on a regular basis, you probably will never hit page one and stay there.
Link Building
External links are critical for search engine rankings. This means potentially thousands of one-way links built on thousands of other websites with your keywords linking back to pages within your website and to your landing page (more on landing pages in a minute). I promise you that the sites you see on page one of ANY search have these links already. You must have them too.
Off-Site Content
It isn’t enough to just have good content on your website. The successful and savvy internet marketer will also publish high-quality content on hundreds of other sites all over the web. They then link this content back to their site. The search engines see this content (as do web surfers) and it results in higher rankings and increased traffic. Leave this step out and you’ll lose out to your competitors who are cranking out the web content.
How To Convert Them Into Customers
Ok, you took all of the measures above and you now have the search engine rankings, but it’s not converting into sales or leads. Why? Well, you are likely violating one or all of rules 2-6 that I outlined above and that probably means that any traffic you are getting is being lost rather than converted. My guess is that you are missing most or probably all of the following elements.
Use a Landing Page
If you haven’t reviewed my site “What is a Landing Page?” then now would be a great time to do so. The simple truth is that successful online marketers use landing pages to distribute high-value content, capture leads, build their database, and target niche markets. A landing page is NOT the home page of your website, it does NOT have dozens of links leading to a variety of other pages and topics, it doesn’t even have your phone number or email address, and gives the visitor only 2 options: opt-in to get the offered information, or go away. That may sound harsh but this is the beginning of your sales funnel, a funnel specifically designed to net you qualified customers who are interested in your product or service. The only way to do this is by strategically thinning the herd and identifying your true prospects.
If you are simply directing traffic only to the home page of your current site, you have no sales funnel, no strategy in place, and most likely no results to show for your efforts. This is a problem you need to fix immediately!
Have a Value-Added Proposition
Do your web visitors get a benefit from your site even if they never buy anything? Have you given them a reason to bookmark the page, tell a friend, or return later? Is there something “in it for them” that they can’t find anywhere else?
**Hint** Offering a free newsletter is NOT good enough. No one wants your spam and try to remember the last time you actually took the time to read one of those fancy eNewsletters sent to you from a business.
A great Value-Added Proposition would be a recorded webinar presentation that provides specific information that your target audience would be interested in hearing. For instance, if you are selling car insurance, a great webinar might be something such as “The Top 10 Ways to Lower Your Insurance Premiums”. Anyone looking for car insurance would want this information and you’ll know that anyone who registers to get it is likely to be shopping for your type of product.
Another great benefit is this… Your webinar, while it provides great information to a potential customer, builds credibility and rapport simultaneously. Think about it. Without ever meeting the prospect, you have just generated a potential lead who is now fully aware of your expertise in the field AND they have willingly given you their contact information. This is the power of a well organized and strategic online marketing program.
Video
If you are not incorporating video into your landing pages and websites, you WILL lose potential customers and decrease your results. YouTube is the #2 used search engine, behind only Google. The reason is clear. People love video! A well scripted and professionally produced video is likely to convert visitors into followers far more often than text only. Your video must be informative (not a commercial) and tell your viewer “what’s in it for them”. It then needs to end with a specific call to action explaining the next step to take. Remember, it’s not about you or your business, it’s about the viewer and the benefit they can receive simply by going through an informational process with you.
Summary
Having success with online marketing requires that you not only do certain things, but that you also do things a certain way. Google and the other search engines are becoming more demanding and more fickle in their rankings. As a result, you’ll need to spend a significant amount of time learning the rules, creating content, researching keywords, and providing consistent value to your online visitors. More often than not, leaving these tasks to the experts will get you better results, improve your sales conversions, save you time, and reduce your stress.
