There are loads of ways you can make your website work better. And, if you think it doesn’t need to be better, you’re in denial.
Today – and probably for the next post of two – I’m going to focus on one small thing you can do make your website start working (or work better) for your business. Even, if you’ve already got tons of people on your email mailing list, you’ll want to read this two-parter to make sure you’re getting it absolutely right.
It’s called Lead Generation – and that’s fancy talk for building (generation) a list of people (leads) who might be are good potential clients.
Who cares?
Your website is sitting there. Sometimes people call/email, sometimes they don’t. It’s your business’ face to the world, why not make it as efficient, effective and results-producing as possible?
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me tell you a story.
You’re hungry – not starving, but you could really use a bite to eat. You’re walking through the food court at the mall. You’re not in a mood for any food in particular. Then, a man walks up to you with a cocktail napkin, a toothpick (the kind with the swirly colored ribbon on the end) and offers you a sample of thai chicken.
You accept his offer, taste the chicken and head straight for the thai food restaurant.
Whoa, what just happened?
You got a taste. A sample. A smidgen. An amuse bouche (of sorts).
And, that was all you needed to help you make up your mind about what you wanted to nosh on. Notice, how they didn’t have to give you a whole skewer full of thai chicken. They didn’t have to tell you how they made it. They didn’t even have to tell you how much it costs. They just let you taste it.
Your lead generation tool is that piece of thai chicken.
It’s a small sample of what it’s like to work with you, your methodology, your style, your approach. Sort of a ‘mini-you’.
Also notice what they didn’t do. They didn’t ask you to do anything – other than accepting the napkin and toothpick – to taste the sample. They didn’t ask for a donation. They didn’t ask for you to fill out a comment card. They just gave it to you. It’s the time honored concept of giving to get.
How it works:
- You create your lead generation tool (your piece of thai chicken)
- Upload your ‘chicken’ to your server
- A potential client visits your website – they want to know more about what it’s like to work with you.
- They input their email address on a form on your website, and then your ‘chicken’ is delivered to their email box – with permission to contact/market to them again (more on that in part 3).
Take a look at a company that gets this right:
http://www.CherylMillerVille.com – Cheryl gives away a Wellness Pack. Yours doesn’t have to be this extensive, but as you get better and better at lead generation, you might want to make your lead generation tool as specific as possible (I’ll talk about why this is important on the next post.)
Bare minimum of what you need to make this happen logisitcally:
1) Create your ‘chicken’ and upload it to your web hosting server (more on how to do this next.)
2) Software to keep track of it all. I highly recommend Aweber (aff link). We use it.
Bottomline: How can you use your ‘chicken’ to increase your pool of prospects?
This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 8:56 am and is filed under Internet Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.2 Responses to “Your Website Needs to Get a Job – Part 1”
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September 24th, 2007 at 3:40 am
Hi thank you very much for your article, I’m almost in the same bussines as, http://www.CherylMillerVille.com with this advice you give me, I would sure make the difference,
would you give us more recomendations about hooking, techniques to hook clients to our websites? I am analizing hiring a SEO company to enhance my website and to promote it. what do you think about that? can you recommend me a company?
September 24th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Max:
How you get people hooked onto your site is with an excellent lead generation tool and quality content – articles, white papers, etc.
People want information. They don’t want to be sold or pitched. Give them enough information to position yourself as an expert – and then give them even more.
Many people are scared that if they give too much information, no one will call them. They are scared to ‘give away the store’.
When, in fact, that’s not how most people think. They read your information and then realize they cannot possibly do it all on their own — and then you sell them the system…the link that makes it easy for them to successfully put all the pieces together.
I can’t make recommendations without knowing more about your business but I would say that if you haven’t exhausted all of your bootstrapping/grassroots opportunities, why would you pay someone for SEO?
That’s kinda like paying someone to paint a house that needs external structural work, ya know?
Hope this helps,
Lena