Back in the day, the ones before digital marketing, a business was a location where people had to come to do business with you. Customers would make decisions in very different ways and were rarely armed with more information than the information that you provided to them as a business. Then came the early days of the internet, people thought of websites as brochures that were accessible online. Smart consumers could read these online brochure style sites and learn about your business and other businesses.
Fast forward to today and you have social platforms, email, blogging and automated software that can turn your site into a sales force. We’ve seen companies do this and leave their competitors wondering where all the customers went. How can you do this? In previous blogs I have talked about keywords, optimization, creating blogs and content in social media. If you want to turn all of that into leads, you have to convert your traffic into leads.
Every page on your site and every blog post can have an offer. Look for and create content that answers the questions that your customers are asking. Those are the phrases that go into search engines thus those are the phrases that can get you found. Then use the content as offers to engage people that are searching. The real key here is creating content/offers that people want.
Once you have content offers, you have to make eye catching buttons that we like to call “calls to action.” A call to action has to be crystal clear and describe the offer. For my company it might be “Download the Essential Step-by-Step Guide to Internet Marketing.” Then link your offer to a landing page with a contact form.
Your contact form should be name and email address for offers that focus on more general content. As your offers get more complex, and, as the prospect sees the offer as more valuable, you can ask for more information in a form.
Landing pages can be tricky. You need to be brief and concise. Just because someone landed here doesn’t mean that you are automatically exchanging information. There is still some engagement to do because you are asking for information. Your landing page needs to look like the offer page and show a picture of what you are giving. Be very specific about the benefits of the offer.
Once you have the contact information from the offer, you can invite them to your blog, send more helpful offers that would be relelvant to them, and hopefully do business together someday.