How is your website a marketing tool?

The answer to this question is critical. The very success of your website depends on it. To harness the power of the Internet, it’s important to understand why your website exists and how it functions. Joe, an executive recruiter, answered this basic question. “My website is an online brochure of the services my firm offers.”  This is a pretty typical response for most service based businesses.

A product oriented business might answer, “Our web site has our features and benefits and also presents solutions.”

Both of these answers lose sight of the sales part of the equation. Plus, they don’t utilize the full marketing potential of business based websites.

If it’s there people will order; they’ll do business.

What often happens is business owners like Joe take their website for granted without fully utilizing it. They think it’s there of course, it will generate leads. To get a website fully functioning as a lead generator takes the wedding of marketing and sales functions. To understand how this relationship works you to need see how most people handle lead generation from their website.

Many website owners assume visitors on the home page will scroll to their contact button. If they have an immediate need for services or products chances are they will contact them. All this might happen if the need is strong enough.

Unfortunately, many people sit on the proverbial fence, not sure what course of action to take. A little contact button does nothing to get these people off that fence and talking about their interests, or getting closer to buying products and services.

How do you get web visitors off the fence?

1. Initiate dialogue.  Give them the opportunity to talk about themselves and make it easy on them. For starters provide an opportunity on every page for them to sign up and learn more about products and services that appeal to their unique preferences.

2. Recognize that you might not know when and where people will hop off the fence. Be ready when they do.  Have a mechanism on each page where they can express their tastes and request more information.

3. Present appealing content with multiple offers to learn more or receive financial benefits if they fill out the sign up form.

4. Offer incentives in the form of contests, newsletters, discounts, or coupons, which include signup mechanisms.

5. Get web leads working for you and not the only way around.

Start by understanding the demographics and industry of your preferred customers. Know what they like and admire about your products and services. Once you have this profile in mind, develop a few pre-qualifying questions and build these into your online sign up forms.