How to Stop C-Suiters from Grimacing When Pitching for a New or Upgraded Website

Spoiler alert: talk about 3 ways that your company’s website is going to convert visitors into leads and sales

website_design_for_CPA Somewhere between getting proposals and quotes for a new website for your company and the roll of antacids you’ll be gobbling after you make your budget pitch to the C Suite, you’ll need to develop a strong message about the ROI you hope to achieve.

It’s not about “hits” (you’re in trouble right off the bat if they start talking about this concept that went out of use a decade ago), keywords you want to rank on (nobody can tell anymore), visitors to the site, or engagement stats like bounce rates or pages per visit.

If you want to talk ROI, you need to be talking about turning the website into a lead generation dynamo and how you’ll use the site to acquire leads that can then be nurtured into sales.

How Do Websites Convert Visitors to Leads?

With investments for websites growing ever greater, companies need to think about how to get a bigger and better return by increasing conversions from visitor to lead to customer.

There’s three basic ways that this can be done:

(1)    Let your brand story carry the conversion

The hope: your display of experience, expertise, services and capabilities compels a prospect to pick up the phone and request a consultation, quote or proposal

Every company that has a website that serves as an online brochure to some extent. This is a great strategy for a website directed to prospects at a point in the sales funnel where they’re looking for a vendor. The problem with these sites is that they make for a truly crummy visitor experience because the site is about the firm (Me! Me! Me!), and speaks very little – if at all – to the prospect.

(2)    Let your thought leadership carry the conversion

The hope: a prospect will be so impressed by the quantity, quality and depth of your website content that they are compelled to pick up the phone and request a consultation, quote or proposal

More progressive firms understand that unique content based on thought leadership is a key to differentiating the company and bring more visitors to the site. So firms are blogging, posting videos, white papers and articles, putting up checklists, etc. What they’re not doing is gating any content so that the prospect has to provide content information in order to get a piece of the firm’s thought leadership.

(3)    Use gated offers based on contextually relevant thought leadership for lead acquisition

The hope: prospect will fill out and submit a form for a thought leadership offer where after lead acquisition, they can be nurtured into becoming a client.

This strategy is at the heart of inbound marketing; prove ROI on the investment in a new or upgraded website. However, firm using this approach often fail to understand that they need different types of thought leadership and different type of offers for each stage of the buyer’s journey (awareness, consideration, decision) ... not just a bottom of the funnel offer for a free consultation..

And the Best Way is...

... use all three.

Today, the best performing websites – those that can demonstrate ROI – are those that have some elements of an online brochure, have ungated thought leadership, and where and when appropriate use gated thought leadership for lead acquisition.

Of course, in order to move your C-Suiters from grimace to smile, today we recommend using HubSpot and integrated tools like Invoca for capturing inbound leads that come via phone.

Begin Planning Your New Website or Upgrade with Goals and Objectives

Too often we see websites that are built on vanity issues alone rather than strategy. Sure, they’re beautiful and have a lot of gee whiz features, but they would be generating a much bigger return on investment if they had all three conversation strategies working.

In order to do this, consider building your website with conversion strategies in mind that are based on quantifiable goals and objectives like:

Number of conversion projected to come from the site
% of visitors converting to leads
% of leads coming from the website that convert to clients
Lifetime dollar value of leads that come in through the website

If you would like to discuss how to build a new website or upgrade an existing one to get more leads, give us a call. Together, we’ll take a look at your site, any metrics you have, and toss around a few ideas for getting those visitors to convert into leads and new clients.