Sometimes businesses get all excited about the volume of traffic to their website. They are thrilled when the number of visitors to their site goes up. They’re proud of the number of “eyeballs on the page” and get ecstatic about an increase in the number of “clicks” they record.
Is that what you’re really after? That’s like having a brick and mortar store that has a lot of foot traffic coming in the front door—only to have them leave by the back door without making a purchase or even talking to a sales person.
Let’s be honest. Not every visitor to your site is going to make a purchase. In fact, depending upon your business and the cost of your product or service (custom homebuilding for instance) you may never make a sale online. But you still want visitors to take action. And you want your website to generate qualified leads. You want visitors to “ring your doorbell” and identify themselves.
That’s why your website pages and your blogs need to have calls to action. You want to get visitors to do something. You want them to interact with you and—if possible—to get them to give you information about themselves. But in order to do that, you have to offer them something they value in return. And when you make your offer (say a white paper or a special report), you’ll want to take them to a unique landing page that allows you to collect their information—and makes it clear that they’re getting exactly what they want.
Here’s an example. Let’s say we were offering you a FREE WHITE PAPER that showed you how combining inbound and outbound marketing strategies can increase your marketing effectiveness. If you click on the FREE WHITE PAPER link, you’ll be taken—not to our homepage—but to a page devoted exclusively to that offer. On this page we’ll summarize what you’re getting and we’ll ask you for some basic information.
It helps you because you don’t get lost on our home page trying to find the white paper we offered. It gets you to the information you want right now. It helps us because it tells us that you’re probably serious about improving the effectiveness of your marketing, and that you might want to hear more about this topic in the future. In effect, you rang our doorbell and told us why you were there.
Do you know who is at your virtual door and what they want?
Blog Post Written by Wes Powell
Wes Powell is the President of TMR Direct. TMR Direct’s desire is to provide you with the practical advice you need to be successful using direct mail and inbound marketing to generate traffic, leads, and ultimately customers.