How do I generate leads from my website?

Think Campaigns, not Marketing.
Tell them your passion.
Make them an offer.

That’s it. I don’t believe in complicated.

Let me explain.

You’re not Nike!

If you’re a small to medium sized company (SME), you have very limited time and money for your marketing.

You’re not Nike.

You have to work smart.

Here’s the typical (bad) website-design thought process:

So you end up with a site the same as everybody else’s. No personality. No USP. Nothing to encourage a visitor to call you rather than the other 20 companies that they’re comparing you with.

You need to be clear.

Your objective isn’t to do “Marketing” or “SEO”. The objective is to generate high quality leads.

And to generate leads, you need to focus.

Go for the 10%

So, say 100 warm, ready-to-buy prospects visit your site.

Your current site lists everything that you do.

100 visitors can’t tell the difference between you and the next company.

What do they do? Probably read some reviews, ask their friends, check a few people out on LinkedIn. They may choose to call you, but it certainly won’t be the website that convinces them.

When they do call you, who will they be?

Well, they could be anyone. Maybe somebody who really wants that thing you did for a weird client 5 years ago that you thought you might as well list just in case, but you can’t really do anymore cos the person who did it left last summer.

A waste of everybody’s time.

Let’s look at the alternative.

You select a single product. It’s something that you’re very good at, that you love delivering, that makes you money.

You look at what types of client you’ve already delivered this to. You figure out why they bought it in the first place, and what they get out of you providing this.

You put this single product front and central on your website. You don’t talk about anything else.

Wooohhhhh – hang on

We’ve just lost 90% of the people who want something else.

Bear with me…..

You put this single product front and central on your website. You enthuse about it. You blog about it. You post about it on Socials. You get some clients to give you reviews. You host a webinar or make a video.

Now then.

100 people visit your website.

Only 10% of them are interested in this particular product.

That’s just 10 people.

But those 10 people look at 20 other websites, and none of them seem focussed on this one thing. To all of the other companies, it’s just 1 of 20 things that they do.

So who do they call?

And when they do call you, how much more likely are they to do business with you?

10 hot leads are coming your way, asking for exactly the thing that you love to do.

Market in Layers

The thing about campaigns is that you don’t have to do just one.

Marketing is about layers.

You can’t do everything all at once. You do one thing, do it well, embed it.

Once it’s embedded, you do the next thing.

You start writing a blog. You carry on writing a blog. The more you do it, the easier it gets. You start getting engagement on LinkedIn, so you start getting more active on LinkedIn. It becomes a habit. Once you’re active on LinkedIn, you have a go at making a video. The first time it’s horrific, but you persist. After a while, it actually becomes fun.

Or you start to market one product. You do all of things that you need to do to promote it, and you start getting leads. You carry on promoting it, but it’s easier after a while as the website’s set up, the articles are written, the reviews are coming in.

Once you’re regularly getting leads for this product, you start looking at the next one, and you go through the same process, adding another layer.

Tell them your Passion

Don’t be bland

So many websites are BLAND.

Here you go. I’ve just Googled “Solicitors” and this is the first piece of text from the first site I’ve clicked on:

Whether you are moving house, starting up your own company, negotiating a business deal, making a Will or administering an estate, you will need the help of a solicitor, and we are here to guide you.

Taking legal advice can sometimes appear to be a daunting task, but please be assured that you will find us friendly and approachable, we are here to listen, and your needs are our concern from start to finish.

Well, blow me down. You’re a local solicitor, you do conveyancing and wills, and you’re friendly. Well that makes you pretty unique. Must give you a call straightaway…. (I know – sarcasm is a poor habit:(

I met with a HR company last week. They offer a complete HR service, from recruitment, through to policy reviews and managing disputes.

I asked their MD about why they set the business up. She talked passionately for 5 minutes about how the business started as a recruitment company, but she got frustrated that she was finding good people who would then leave because her clients didn’t know how to look after them. So by offering a complete service, she not only can recruit good people for her clients, but helps them keep hold of them.

“We’re really good at recruitment, policy reviews, dispute resolution, and we’re friendly and approachable.” – That says only 10% of what they do, and nothing about who they are.

You can’t bore people into buying

How about:

“We set the company up because our clients were needlessly losing too many good people. We’re passionate about helping you build better relationships with your team, making your workplace into a great place to be, and driving your business to the next level.”

Or even

“Fed up with losing your good people? We help you recruit, motivate and keep amazing team players so that you can really power up your business.”

Remember what you’re passionate about, the reason you set this business up in the first place, the thing that you love helping people to do, the thing that your best clients love you doing for them.

Then tell everybody else about it!

Make them an offer

Somebody who’s just found your website doesn’t know you.

They don’t trust you.

They have no reason to trust you.

They don’t know if they even like you, regardless of (or because of!) your funky website pictures.

You need to make it easy for them to take the first step to working with you without risk.

Create a small offering for them; something that gives them real, proper, lasting value, but that doesn’t take you a lot of time.

Offer to review their policies. Offer a 2 hour deep dive session with follow up report that you have a template for. Maybe discount a half day training session.

Give them something that they can take to the decision-maker and get waved through.

You need to start to build a relationship with them to build trust, and ideally (but not necessarily) you will ask them to pay a small amount for this.

Asking them to pay achieves 2 things:

• It tells you that they are serious in engaging with you;
• It creates an obligation on their side to engage properly.

You can get new clients to sign off on a big project right from the outset, but it’s so much easier to start small and work up.

It also gives the big project a much better chance of success as you don’t start it until you’ve got to know each others’ businesses and figured out how best you work together.

Is that it?

Well, of course you can dig down into infinite layers.

But basically, that’s it.

– Figure out what you like doing and who you like doing it for.

– Create a specific service around this.

– Shout about it, with passion.

– Make it easy for people to engage.

The lovely thing about this is that you get to talk about something that you love to do. You don’t have to sit down every two weeks and write another boring blog that nobody will read.

You get to talk about your passion, about why you set this business up in the first place, about why you get up in the morning.

So much better!!!