How To Turn Your Website into a

Transcription

1 How To Turn Your Website into a LEAD GENERATION MACHINE

2 How To Turn Your Website into a LEAD GENERATION MACHINE Martin Zhel, CEO Orior Creative FROM THE AUTHOR Effective websites are more than design, coding and copywriting: they are custom tools built to accomplish business objectives. For reliable performance, you need to make your site a Lead Generation Machine. Orior Creative has refined this art to a science - and I m going to teach you how to implement our proven strategies successfully. Follow Martin on 1 +

3 Grow your business with Orior Creative Custom-built websites that convert. Best prospects identified, audiences attracted & traffic turned into customers. Strategy Website Developement Content Marketing SEO Social Media Marketing Lead Nurturing Looking for answers? Find them here book your complementary analysis & consultation today

4 Contents CHAPTER 1 Website Philosophy 5 A lot of websites are ineffective why? 6 What is the purpose of a website? 8 The customer buying cycle 10 Why do you need a lead generation machine? CHAPTER 2 The Process: Building Your Lead Generation Machine 13 Buyer Personas 14 Be specific 16 4 types of website visitors 18 Websites and relevancy 24 What s in a good design? 25 Converting visitors into leads CHAPTER 3 Next Steps 29 Why your website will never be finished 31 In conclusion 32 Getting help 3 +

5 How do I receive over 2000 unique visitors per month and still have zero sales?? 1 WEBSITE PHILOSOPHY 4 +

6 A lot of websites are ineffective. Why? First, you have the sites that are outdated, unorganized, confusing, unprofessional, complex to navigate and just plain ugly. Yeah, they suck but not only for those reasons. Even good websites, ones that hit home on some of those points aren t necessarily effective. There s really only one measure of that: results. A website sucks when it doesn t achieve the purpose of it s creation: when it doesn t produce results. Over [XX] years of careful scrutiny, I ve seen websites fail for 5 primary reasons: NO clear purpose NOT user-friendly ZERO value offered FLAWED approach to customer buying cycle LIMITED lead generation potential 5 +

7 What is the purpose of a website? Surprisingly, designers and web developers rarely ponder that question. But every website does (must!) have a purpose, and you would think that s the first thing you re supposed to consider when building one. Of course, really, it is. Although businesses build websites for many different reasons, one thing s always certain: you need to know want to achieve in creating your website. Be 100% clear on this - it s absolutely critical in any industry. Of course, every business is unique. But we all share similar goals: to sell goods and services at a profit. In today s commercial environment, it almost goes without saying that your website is one of the primary tools you ll rely on to make this happen consistently. REMEMBER: search queries, referral links and social media buzz all point back the core, most vital part of your online presence your website. Your website is the hub for all of your marketing activities. That s why no matter how impressive your other channels performance, you should place special focus on maintaining a high-quality website one users return to and share with friends

8 The best way to achieve this? BE RELEVANT, GET NOTICED Priority one: understand your market. Who are they? Where do they work; what do they do on weekends? Deep familiarity with your customers needs and time spent analyzing the related data is crucial if you want to be in the right place at the right time: in front of your prospects when they re ready to buy. Properly-structured content gets found, delivers a relevant message and directs users to take the action you desire (this structuring system is further discussed explained in Chapter 2). OFFER REAL VALUE TO USERS Priority two: offer what your target customers actually need/want. Do your homework; fully understand the kind of problems your business solves and how easy you can really make it to solve them. Ask yourself why would someone buy from me instead of my competition? 7 +

9 The customer buying cycle To answer that question (and best plan your website structure), you ll need to understand the customer buying cycle. This helps you create productive user flow, targeted messaging and effective, timely calls-to-action. Awareness Consideration Purchase Above: the 3 main stages of the customer buying cycle. STAGE 1: AWARENESS Target Customer finds your website (via search, referral link or directly) and visits for the first time. They are now aware of your company and its offerings. STAGE 2: CONSIDERATION Based on your content and positioning (as shown by your site structure and brand voice), Target Customer weighs what they see against competing offerings and, of course, what they re actually looking for to find the best fit

10 STAGE 3: PURCHASE You ve won them over your website s clearly shown that your offering is the best solution in their situation. Target Customer is ready to purchase. The customer buying cycle shows that visitors always need at least some time and exposure to consider whether what you re offering matches their needs. As you probably know, the higher your price point the more time prospects generally need to come to a purchase decision. For example, it s easier to purchase a pack of playing cards than a brand-new Lamborghini. There are exceptions to this (and really, no hard rule), however one thing holds true: people rarely make any purchase the first time they visit a website

11 Why do you need a Lead Generation Machine? Simply put, some people may visit your website and forget about it. Others might be initially interested, but may browse away and lose your URL. Unfortunately, this happens all the time - you should focus on bringing visitors back to your site with solid lead generation strategies that nurture prospects into customers. That s what a Lead Generation Machine does, and they re very good at it. A lead is a person or entity who has expressed initial interest in your products or services. Lead generation (in websites case) is the process of establishing connections with visitors by collecting information. This can be anything: name, , phone number, company name, website URL and so on (of course, the best info to grab is contact info: the kind you can use to further build on the relationship). These leads then convert to paying customers thanks to your promotional strategies: content marketing, special offers, newsletters and so on

12 Obviously, you ll find it tough to make sales if you don t generate and nurture some leads! AND THAT S WHERE THE LEAD GENERATION MACHINE COMES IN. A calculated, structured website designed and written with a singular core focus: to generate warm leads for you. So how do you build one?!

13 Got it! What s next..? 2 THE PROCESS: Building Your Lead Generation Machine

14 Buyer Personas People want things they can feel were created especially for them. We re always searching for the perfect solution to the situation; the circumstances; the specific problem we face. When we find something that looks like it was made just for us; that fills a gap precisely, we re much more likely to accept the offer. Here s a point to ponder: throughout life, the more personal something is the more universal it is. This means many people share similar characteristics, needs and problems. When we segment these people into groups based on this data, we re creating what are called Buyer Personas. A Buyer Persona is a delineation of a specific group of potential customers; an avatar representing the audience to whom you ll be marketing. The various Buyer Personas you compile thus become powerful tools to help you develop deeper understanding of your prospects true motivations. Again: it s all about knowing your best audience; their situations, needs, thoughts, concerns, hopes and habits. It s not uncommon to discover that the person you imagined as your ideal buyer is, in fact, uninterested resulting in a much more productive focus moving forward

15 Be specific Trying to optimize your website for everyone won t attract anyone. Trust me on this. Specificity is absolutely key to converting your visitors into leads and loyal customers. When defining your buyer personas, keep in mind that who they are is less important than why they visit your site. Demographics can be useful, but they won t tell you much about a specific individual. For example, let s say you re a plumber. A visitor could have several reasons to visit your site perhaps they re remodelling their bathroom. Or maybe they ve sprung a leak and need fast action to repair it. Their demographic tells you nothing about their specific situation, or why they re searching for you. That s important, because these two unique scenarios would involve similar search queries, but very different reasons for seeking you out. Remember: every search query is a request for information. Your specific customers are looking for specific solutions to specific problems. The more you know about them, the more specific answers you ll be able to provide (and the more traffic and sales you ll generate as a result)

16 To generate leads effectively, you might target a demographic(s) from multiple, situational angles because the solutions they require (and their reasons for seeking them) can vary widely. As an exercise, why not jot down a few scenarios in which your customers might find themselves in need of your product or service? This can be a great way to come up with successful long-tail search terms (for Search Engine Optimization, or SEO). Your business has 3 or 4 customers living at thousands of different addresses. - ROY H. WILLIAMS Triggers Matter More Than Personalities Emotional Logical COMPETITIVE SPONTANEOUS METHODICAL HUMANIST Quick Decisions Deliberate Decisions

17 4 types of website visitors Everybody s different, but the ways people make decisions fall into predictable patterns. At Orior Creative, we call these patterns Competitive, Methodical, Humanist and Spontaneous. Here s how we define each: THE COMPETITIVE A goal-oriented person who makes quick-but-logical decisions, the Competitive has a specific problem to solve, knows exactly what she s searching for and searches until she finds it. THE METHODICAL The deliberate, logical decision maker. A Methodical absorbs large volumes of information in order to carefully weigh every available option before taking decisive, informed action. THE HUMANIST A deliberate but emotional decision maker, the Humanist is the hardest type of visitor to convert. He wants to get to know the people behind the scenes; to be able to connect a face to a product, service or company

18 THE SPONTANEOUS Just like it sounds, the Spontaneous simply wants something here and now. The Spontaneous is not someone who performs much research (or puts a lot of forethought) into making quick, emotional decisions. Easily-converted, but fickle. What types of visitors are viewing your website? You can assess this in two different ways: by focus group interview of your target customers, or (more common these days because it s faster, easier and arguably equally accurate) by using Google Analytics. Analytics Personalities EMOTIONAL/LOGICAL Pages per Visit COMPETITIVE SPONTANEOUS TIME ON SITE Quick/Deliberate METHODICAL HUMANIST The 2 variables used to measure this: how much time visitors spend onsite and how many pages they visit

19 Websites and relevancy People don t buy things they don t need or want. For example, if I already have a new tablet, it will be impossible for you to sell me another one. This is relevancy. Relevancy means 2 things here: 1 TARGETING THE RIGHT PEOPLE All traffic isn t equal. You need to focus on driving relevant traffic to your site. Learn to do this through SEO, content marketing, social media management, PPC ads, campaigns, and other campaign tools. There are many quality courses available make the most of them. Remember to try to decrease revenue-diluting irrelevant traffic, too, as your resources are better focused elsewhere. 2 COMMUNICATING THE RIGHT MESSAGE This is where your buyer personas come in: if you understand why your visitors are on your site, it s much easier for you to present a message that s relevant to them, right now

20 REMEMBER: people want to feel like you truly understand their problems and needs. Show them you do, and you ll have no trouble growing a loyal following. Compelling value propositions A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. It s the main reason a prospect should buy from you (and not from your competition). It explains: How your products solves problems/improves situations What specific benefits customers can expect Why prospects should buy from you over your competitors Your value proposition should be the first thing your website visitor sees. If it s not clearly defined (preferably right there on your homepage), you ll generate far fewer leads per visitor. You can think of your value proposition as an expression of the combination of your unique selling points and the outcome of using your product or service

21 When creating your value proposition, it s also important to understand what it s not: IT S NOT A SLOGAN, TAGLINE OR CATCH PHRASE. Mantras like Just Do It, Eat Fresh and I m Lovin It are not value propositions. These slogans may express a bit of a brand s nature but they are not clearly defined; they do not explain the solutions provided to customers. IT S NOT A POSITIONING STATEMENT. Phrases like #1 Retargeting platform and the Airbnb for entrepreneurs are not value propositions, they are positioning statements. To be fair, there is some debate surrounding the precise differences between these two. Here s my take on the matter: A positioning statement explains where a product, service or company stands among its competition and how, ideally, a target audience should perceive it. A value proposition communicates core values with a strong focus on real benefits brought to the user

22 At this point it s probably easiest to provide an example: this is Orior Creative s value proposition, crafted specifically for our website: Above: Effective value propositions combine a short block of text with a compelling visual element. Value propositions usually consist of: A headline explaining the end benefit for the consumer A subheadline or paragraph further detailing the offering, market and brand position A visual element to help grab visitors attention (this could be almost anything relevant: photo, chart, video etc.). IMPORTANT: your value proposition should always lead directly into a call to action. Depending on your business model, that could be something like:

23 Subscribe to our blog Download our free ebook Request a free trial Request a Consultation Order now or something else entirely (more in a moment). The important thing is that a clear call to action is present otherwise, how will your visitors know what you expect them to do? Without clear direction to take, people simply browse away. When placing your call to action, keep your buyer personas in mind. Again! The most important question you can ask yourself is: Why are these people on my website? You ll always have a mix, but one or more of the 4 types of decision makers will tend to visit your site most frequently. This affects your ideal call to action: If visitors are more Competitive or Spontaneous the logical call to action would be something like Order now or Request a Consultation. These people are quick decision makers; depending on industry you may even try to sell them straight away

24 On the other hand, if your visitors are more the Methodical or Humanist types, this approach won t convert as well as something that works more subtly to warm them as leads before closing the sale. With Methodical and Humanist types, it s best to focus on building relationships. These people take time to get excited about becoming your customers, but they can be fiercely loyal brand advocates once you ve won them over. They re best served with calls to action like subscribe to our blog or download our free ebook. They seek real value; you need to deliver if you want them to hand over their precious contact information. Note that sign up for a 30 day free trial (etc.) is a call to action that requires a large perceived investment from the visitor. Methodical and Humanist types in particular will want to read everything they can find about your company and product to minimize their perceived risk before taking this step

25 What s in a good design? A good design is simply a good design. It s hard to explain it, to be honest, but I ll bet you know it when you see it. Quality design creates a subtle play on emotions and thought patterns. This is why the Spontaneous and especially the Humanist types are highly attracted to and motivated by beautiful design. Regardless of visitor type, though, what matters most is the feeling users experience while browsing your site. That means quality design is also about usability. Things work intuitively for the user; he knows without thinking how to take his your desired action. He s never frustrated and his mind never leaves your product because he always knows what to do next. Of course, quality design is always about effective communication. It draws the eye to the most important elements of a page by presenting information efficiently. For outstanding examples of design-integrated strategy, take a look at websites like AirBnB, SoundCloud and Unbounce these companies nailed it

26 Converting visitors into leads By now, converting visitors into leads is pretty easy for you because you ve taken the time to: Build accurate buyer personas Drive target traffic to your website Create a stream of relevant content Develop a compelling value proposition(s) Determine the appropriate Call to Action for each page Design a professional, functional website Back in Chapter 1, I described lead generation as connecting with prospects here, I d like to go a step further and call it the process of collecting information about your prospects in exchange for value. You can collect 2 basic types of information about your prospects: 1 CONTACT INFORMATION Obviously, this includes things like name, and phone number. You need this info to be able to reconnect with a lead and start building a relationship

27 2 ADDITIONAL INFORMATION Any other details beyond contact info this could include a lead s demographic, website, occupation or any other specifics related a prospect s current situation. To establish better understanding of your prospects (and begin to practice lead segmentation and target personalized offers), you need to collect their information. Of course, your website visitors will only share their information with you if you offer something valuable to them in exchange. Your offers of value could be anything relevant, including: ebooks Webinars Media Kits Templates Consultations Newsletters Guides Slideshow presentations Industry case studies Free tools, trials or demos Coupons Members areas The sky s the limit remember, though, your offers should reflect what appeals most to your buyer personas

28 Some visitors might be more interested in educational/informational content, such as ebooks, reports or webinars. Offering this type of (quality, relevant) content goes a long way toward establishing yourself as a thought leader in your niche and building trust/credibility in your market. Other visitors are looking for a quick discount, to win a prize or receive a coupon. That s easy! Though what you offer depends on your industry, business and market, it should always be described on a landing page designed for the express purpose of generating leads. This way, it s easier to draw focus to your deal (which is also easily shareable by you or your visitors). There are many effective ways to design a landing page, however with all of them adhering to a few simple principles can help convert more visitors into leads. This is one of the best pieces I ve read on this subject (read it!): THE 7 PRINCIPLES OF CONVERSION-CENTERED LANDING PAGE DESIGN

29 click LANDING PAGE convert WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? Ok my Lead Generation Machine is live! what do I do to keep its momentum going? 3 THE NEXT STEPS

30 Why your website will never be finished It s just one of those things: you can devote as much effort as you like to perfecting your website but it never quite gets there. That s because you ll continually uncover new ways to improve flow, boost your conversion rate and draw more traffic. To make sure you re evolving effectively, you need to carefully track your successes while testing new page versions. Tracking important KPIs is easy with tools like: Google Analytics Crazy Egg KissMetrics These provide all the information you need to identify your top p erformers: tracking which pages your prospects visit, what subsequent actions they take, what grabs their attention on-page and more

31 You can even implement your own split-testing program quickly and easily tools like these make A/B testing easy: Optimizely Visual Website optimizer WHATEVER TOOLS YOU CHOOSE MOVING FORWARD, THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO KEEP MOVING FORWARD. MARKET CONDITIONS CHANGE; YOUR CUSTOMERS NEEDS AND BUYER PERSONAS EVOLVE. GROWING AND ADAPTING WITH THEM IS THE KEY TO YOUR LONG-TERM ONLINE SUCCESS

32 In conclusion Your business needs a website with a clearly-defined purpose and value proposition. You need to build your site on a strong foundation of customer knowledge. Once you really know your audience, design a user-friendly site, fill it with engaging, relevant content and start attracting meaningful attention. That s a Lead Generation Machine follow this process, every time. It works like a charm. YOU CAN DO THIS. WE CAN HELP. Every tool you need to is easy to find, and many of them are free. If you have the time to invest in gaining the knowledge you need to wield them successfully, you can now safely go out and build a Lead Generation Machine of your own. But You probably have questions about all this. The Orior Creative team includes talented specialists across all aspects of digital marketing, focused on web development, targeted traffic-driving strategies and conversion optimization. We do this all day! And we d be happy to help you make informed choices about your business online future

33 SCHEDULE A COMPLIMENTARY ANALYSIS & CONSULTATION WITH Our team develops websites and strategies specifically tuned to achieve your business objectives. - MARTIN ZHEL, CEO of Orior Creative SCHEDULE YOUR COMPLIMENTARY CONSULTATION HERE