Five ways to get your website generating sales leads

For any growing business, generating sales leads has to be a primary marketing objective. If the order books or client list aren’t getting bigger each month how can you expect to achieve year-on-year growth?

While many businesses focus considerable time and effort on outbound sales and marketing (direct marketing, telesales, events, trade shows and so on), far less emphasis is placed on attracting inbound leads (either new business calls or online enquiries). Inbound enquiries require less effort to generate, open up opportunities to work with businesses you haven’t even met yet and tend to have a higher success rate (as the person enquiring knows what they want and is actively looking for help).

The role of a website in generating sales leads

Your website will be used by the majority of potential customers for several purposes, including:

• Due diligence – finding out about your business, who you work with, your services, where you are based and whether you can help them
• Putting a face to the name – the prospective customer might have met one of your directors before or received some marketing collateral from the business and just wants to check on the website that they are talking to the right business and person
• Getting in touch – either by completing an online enquiry form or finding your telephone number

As a result, you need to ensure that your website maximises your lead generation opportunities. Here are five tried and tested ways of generating sales leads:

1. Make it easy to do business with you

Take some time to go through your website (not just the homepages, but sub-pages too) from the perspective of a customer and ask yourself two questions:

• How easy is it to get in touch?
• Is it clear what a visitor should do next?

Your website should clearly display contact details throughout the site (particularly telephone numbers and contact us forms) so that a user can get in touch without having to navigate through multiple pages. You should also use strong calls to action (e.g. arrange a callback, live chat with our team, download our brochure, register for updates etc) to make it clear to website visitors what you want them to do next.

2. Match up your offer to customer search intent

What do people search for before arriving on your website (or a competitor site)? Using Google Analytics and Google Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools) you can get a lot of valuable insight into how your site is being found. Couple this with the keyword tool within Google Adwords and you can identify the main search terms that need to be included in your website to improve traffic.

For example, if you are a law firm, you need to ensure that you are ranking for broad and generic search terms like ‘solicitors in Manchester’ but also more specific long-tail search terms:

• ‘divorce solicitor Manchester’
• ‘how do I apply for a divorce’
• ‘how are assets divided up in a divorce’

3. Drive relevant traffic to your website

Building a strong website and populating it regularly with great content isn’t enough. Rather than assuming or hoping that the right people are visiting your website you need to push them towards your site. There are a range of tactics you can use to do this – particularly e-newsletters to a client and target database, pay-per-click advertising, social media (including promoted posts) and online public relations. By focusing on your target audiences you ensure that your website visitors aren’t just ‘traffic’ but are genuine customers and prospects.

4.  Show why you can be trusted

The latest Acquity Group / Accenture state of B2B procurement study highlighted that 94 per cent of purchases of goods and service involved some form of online research. To ensure that your business passes the ‘procurement test’ you need to ensure that you show why you are a trusted and well-run business.

The main considerations here are:

• Ensure the website is legally compliant by having the registered company name, number and registered office address on the site – usually within the footer
• Have full contact details on the site including a telephone number and postal address
• If you are members of a trade association or have specific industry accreditations or awards – present these prominently
• Consider using testimonials and client case studies to bring your service to life and show satisfied clients (third party tools like Trustpilot can help you build credibility but are a serious investment of time and finances)
• Profile key members of your team on the site where possible – people buy people and are suspicious of ‘faceless’ brands

5. Keep a tidy ‘shop window’

Whether you sell products on your website or not, your website is your shop window, and you need to treat it like any successful retailer. Keep it tidy, attractive and engaging; refresh it regularly to appeal to customers and don’t be afraid to ask for feedback if you’re serious about generating sales leads.