Modern-Day Sales and Marketing Blog

Like it or not, your website is part of your sales team. It’s also part of your marketing team, customer service team, employee recruitment, operations etc. But this article is all about how it’s an important part of your sales team.

Think about it…Your web site operates 24 hours a day all year long, has the potential to connect with more customers and prospects than any sales rep in your organization AND will never leave your company to work for someone else.

So here are five simple ways you can attract and capture more leads online. Review this list and see if your site is following these best practices. If not, it’s time for a web site tune-up.

Targeting your website to a specific niche market or service is one off the most powerful things you can do to make your site truly effective as a lead generation tool.

Many businesses today make the mistake of talking too much about themselves, their services and how long they’ve been in business.  Today’s internet-empowered-customer wants to know if you’re a credible expert that can solve their problem – so give them what they want – show them that you’re the expert in their unique market.  

One of the best ways to do that is to create content around a unique problem (e.g. migrating to IP video) – or create landing pages on your site that cater to your service specialties within a vertical market (e.g. discuss a layered approach to securing school campuses). Targeting vertical markets or unique services is an engaging way to start conversations and build credibility with your customers.

Social Proof in the form of testimonials builds instant credibility.  Think about your own “web surfing” habits – aren’t you compelled to click and learn about what other customers are saying?  Establishing trust with new customers is critical – and a great way to do that is with the use of testimonials.

But be sure to avoid the ‘movie review’ testimonial:

“Great service – we really like their professionalism” – GB, Town, MD

“Highly effective solutions” – JW, Sometown, USA”

“Awesome team” – BQ, Anyplace , NC

These are too generic for today’s customers!

Instead, make sure your testimonials tell a story. Ask your customers three questions when you’re looking for testimonials to use on your web site.

• What was your problem before our company arrived?
• What was the immediate result of our solution?
• What is it like today?

This gives your site prospect a bigger picture of your complete solution and allows them to see you have staying power!

A call-to-action button is a large graphic strategically placed on your site that links to a lead generation form. Call-to-action buttons shouldn’t be buried in your navigation or hidden in a paragraph as a link. People need to be guided to these important sections of your site.

Some examples of call-to-action buttons:

1. “Stay Up-to-Date with Cyber Solutions – Join our List”
2. “Schedule a Risk Assessment”
3. “Request a Site Survey”

Again, make sure these buttons are large and linked to a form.  A form is great way to generate leads from your site, but people will never know they exist unless you give them proper attention.

What’s a thank you page? Typically, a webmaster will forward a prospect who completes a form on your site to a thank you page. Sometimes, the person gets redirected to the website’s home page. In other scenarios, it forwards to a page that just says “Success – Your Form was Submitted”.

However, the thank you page is a great opportunity to set the stage for the initial sell or even upsell. Remember, most people who submit a form online aren’t your customers yet.

So, the thank you page can be used in any number of ways to differentiate you from your competition, talk about additional services or better yet, promote a printable coupon that can be presented to your rep for an on the spot offer or value-added service.

5. Capture Visitors’ Emails with an Opt-In Box

A large percentage of your site visitors will not call you or fill out a request to schedule a consultation or service when they first arrive. The next best thing you can do is to offer an email subscription box on your site. But the trick is to ensure that you’re giving them a reason to subscribe.  “Sign up for our Email Newsletter” won’t work.

Instead think about using something like:

1. For Monthly Tips on Security Technology, Join our List
2. Join our List and Receive Instant Access to our Latest Case Study
3. Join our List and Download the Small Business Security Guide

Give people a compelling reason to subscribe and you’ll start growing your list of prospects.

Remember, online success is not about rankings or generating traffic.  Success is getting people to act with your business.  Your team’s job is to look at your site and think about how you can improve its ability to convert visitors into leads, and leads into sales.

Click below to Download a List of Tools to Help you Get there (And a few bonus tools that all Sales and Marketing Professionals can use).