Generating Leads from Your Website
How can you bring in more customers for your business than you’re getting through print, radio or local TV advertising? It all starts with correct planning and design. But, here are a few ways you can drive more sales, leads, and generate NEW business from your website.
Location, Location, Location – If you have products for sale then location does mean everything in business. You will want to be in a high traffic area and display signage promoting your products so people take notice. Online, this still remains true! If your website is on page six and not on page one through three then you will want to revise your content, and search engine optimize your website to give you the best results. Think about it, many people look on page one, two, or three then stop looking. In most cases they find what their looking for on page one. You can contact a professional search engine optimization specialist to help. The Internet isn’t a trend if anything online marketing will increase and people shopping online will escalate due to high fuel prices, and convenience.
Staying in Touch – Many business owners are busy running a business, but with the correct plan in place there is a way for generating leads, using other marketing vehicles. This is where your website comes into play. Starting a newsletter or simple e-mail blast regime will remind your current clients about your monthly specials, quarterly deals, and what you offer seasonally.
Fluidity – Your print, radio, local TV advertising, mailers, and other traditional marketing, and website needs to be constant, and must contain the same information or message. In general, a test is to see if it answers a few things who, what, when, where, why, and how. The way to use your website as a tool is to first be located where people find you but also you may want to blog, add an area to display online specials, coupons, or deals that get noticed. Make sure your website address is on all marketing creative, ads, or promotions.
Specials – People are looking for ways to save money and research their local stores and shops to get more bang for their buck. You will want to have a consistent plan across the board, and place the same message you send in your e-mail blast or newsletter in a noticeable area on your home page with a good call to action. As you begin to utilize newsletters and e-mail blasts in your business be careful not to bombard the customers with mail.
Contact Forms – When everything is in place you have a good call to action, you have a good marketing plan and your ready to execute the plan ask for peoples business. You can have one of two areas that may assist with this a long form for more defined information form request, or a quick contact form. Provide long forms for people with exact needs and short information forms for people that just want information now. Quick contact forms may contain very simple fields name, phone, e-mail, and a possible dropdown box the potential client can select. Keep it simple for people to buy, locate your products, and ask about what you offer.
If you need help with search engine placement, we can help any size business. NLH Solutions can find an affordable solution to get you positioned for success. You don’t want your competition to have the advantage of being on page one before you!!
Viewing Baby Boomer’s as Potential Customers
Nielsen released some great stats on the Baby Boomer generation. 78 million is a HUGE number and the spending power of this group is incredible. If you haven’t created a marketing strategy for this demo, you should. Here is a great excerpt from the report that you can find here:
Born between the years 1946-1964, the oldest of the Boomers are beginning to retire. But today’s middle aged and older consumers are different than their predecessors. The conventional wisdom that they spend little, resist technology and are slow to adopt new products needs to be re-assessed. Boomers are an affluent group who adopt technology with enthusiasm (think about the number of parents or grandparents who regularly send e-mails or upload photos to Facebook and other sites). They have also shown a willingness to try new brands and products.
Nielsen released even more interesting facts:
- Dominate 1,023 out of 1,083 consumer packaged goods categories
- Watch the most video: 9:34 hours per day
- Comprise 1/3 of all TV viewers, online users, social media users and Twitter users
- Time shift TV more than 18-24s (2:32 vs. 1:32)
- Are significantly more likely to own a DVD player
- More likely to have broadband Internet access at home
With statistics like this, it is hard to ignore this market. The next step is to understand how your product or service can influence this demographic.
5 Ideas That Will Make Your Small Business Succeed
1.) Social Media Widgets
Want to have a successful presence with an online marketing strategy? Try using your Facebook account with all of your other social media accounts. Adding a facebook feed box to your website is a great idea. Visitors will be allowed to review products and services on your website. Set up a Twitter account and visitors can also tweet about new products or services you have. Using that along with automatic Twitter and you will have a successful online marketing strategy that will beat your competitors. Having social media also builds credibility and brand identity for your small business. It shows new visitors and prospective clients to your website, how pleased with your company other people have been.
2.) SEO
Every business website should be optimized for search engines. If you don’t care if search engines can find you, well then, think again. Having a good “page rank” is necessary, if you want good search engine placement. All small business websites will benefit from search engine optimization on some level, and it should be among the top things to have done once a website is built.
3.) Videos
Having a video on your website is an easy way for customers to learn about what the website has to offer. Having video is a more convenient way for customers to learn about products and services than it is for them to read about it.
4.) Have a Blog
A blog gives you a connection to your visitors. It tells them what they don’t know about your company already, is a place to tell them about future deals, services and products, and gives them tips on how to use the current ones that you offer. You can also post links to your new blog posts onto your social media, making it feel more “personal” for your customers. Having a blog is going to give your business good public relations and as a bonus, help with your search engine optimization.
5.) A Guru Web Master
Technology changes. Plain and simple. Having a web master who can integrate code, knows how to select appropriate web hosting, knows several programming languages and graphic design as well as able to create neat looking graphics, gives tips on how to use services or products you offer, and perform successful SEO campaigns is essential for a small business website. Find a “guru” web master and stick with them. A good web master knows what’s going on in the online world and can give some needed advice to those who aren’t as informed.
Common SEO Mistakes
Check out these common mistakes that could cause your SEO to breakdown. Hopefully these tips will show you what to avoid in the future:
1) Excess Coding – tables are the past. Make room for divs when you are coding page content. Why? Because divs are flexible and clean. This makes for easier readability and successful SEO design.
2) Picture Site mapping – Yes, you’d like to make your sitemap pop, but using images is not the way to do it. Sitemaps are supposed to be simple to navigate. So, skip the images and instead link to pages using words that describe the pages accurately.
3) Duplicate Linking – no need to link to www and non-www versions of a site. Just choose one.
4) Confusing URL’s – your URL is the first clue as to what your site is actually about. Make sure you choose URL’s that actually make sense. Set up dynamic URL’s so that more information is passed or create a rewrite engine that will fix them for you.
5) Paragraph Linking – when it comes to linking it might make sense to use an entire paragraph as a link – that way you can pack a bunch of anchor text keywords into one link. Not the case – instead, use a few well chosen words when linking to different pages. Stay away from paragraph linking.
6) Multiple Linking – instead of linking ten pages to the same site, only link one page per anchor text that describes its content most accurately. This will save a lot of confusion for both Google as well as your viewers.
When it comes to effective SEO, there are more than enough rules and regulations that Google and other search engines enforce. However, if you do not follow these rules correctly, you could end up being blacklisted and your content dropped off the ranks completely. This is why it is so important to know how to use the correct SEO.
Contact us today for more information on how we can improve your business or create your company a web presence that search engines will love and give you the best results. Call today at (509) 240-0996 for a free phone consultation.
Follow Us!