Your website can be a goldmine for getting leads

Every business with a website should be using it as a source of leads - high quality, qualified leads from people who want to know more about what you sell. Visitors to your site are already interested in your company - now it's up to you to get the information you need from them and turn it into a sale.

Your website can be easily structured to provide you with hundreds of leads each week. Here are five ways you can turn it into a lead generating powerhouse.

Offer something that will encourage visitors to provide contact details

Prepare something interesting that relates to each product or group of products that visitors can download. It might be a guide about how to use a product to solve a particular problem, or perhaps some useful DIY instructions. All they have to give you is their e-mail address and they get something for nothing. Place your offer in a prominent position on your home page and make it easy to access. You'll know by what they download just which product or products have attracted their interest.

Offer free advice about specific problems

Invite people to contact you through the site with help requests relating to the jobs they will be doing using your products. Make this a separate but equally prominent offer to any guide or other download, for example by offering an e-mail link. Suggest a few common queries to make it easy for them to complete, but allow plenty of space for them to write out their own enquiry if it's not on your list. Tell them your "expert" advisor will respond within 24 hours and be sure you actually do this because there's nothing worse than a broken promise of assistance.

Use an autoresponder for enquiries

Regardless of what visitors download you can set up an autoresponder to send them back an initial message thanking them for their interest and requesting more information about them. The autoresponder can send either a general message or something related to the material they've just downloaded. You'll have to give them something else as a "reward" for providing this information; it could be a free product sample, a newsletter, or something else that will show your appreciation. The most important thing is that your response gets to them while they're still thinking about your company's products.

Ask for feedback about the website

As a general rule people will go from the home page directly to the part of your site they're most interested in. Ease of navigation is important so be sure to make their options clear when they first get to your site. Then, after they've selected a particular product page and before they can leave the site, have a window pop up asking them for feedback. A typical feedback request runs "Were we able to solve your problem with this information? Please tell us what you think about our site". This will then take them to a feedback form from which you can collect more information about them. You'll increase the number of completed forms if you offer a free gift or some other small token of appreciation. Be sure to thank them for completing the form after they've sent it in.

Invite visitors to participate in a survey

Most people like to give you their opinion. A survey invitation can go in several places such as on your home page, in your autoresponder e-mail, and in a follow-up newsletter or other communication. The survey should be brief and easy to complete, but the answers will indicate their interests in much greater detail. Ask them if they've tried any of your products or used any of the ideas in your materials; ask for any suggestions they'd like to make that might enable your company to be even more helpful to site visitors. A good offer to encourage people to complete the survey is a contest - "Give us your opinions and win a prize" - with the prize being something that is related to your product range.

Each of these ways of gathering information provides you with a qualified lead. At a minimum you'll get a prospect's e-mail address and an idea of what they're interested in. By incorporating all of these techniques into your website you'll have turned it into a valuable lead-generating tool that captures information you'd never have acquired from other sources.

For more information contact your RAN ONE business professionals at
Academy of Business Excellence Limited