Whether prospective clients find you through a referral or come directly to your Web site, both are valuable sources for attracting new clients, and they serve complementary purposes.

When customers search for a product or service, most will ask their family, friends and business colleagues for personal recommendations. But once they have a referral to a particular business or a few businesses, they’re then going to attempt to validate that choice, and most will turn to the Internet to help them.

Your Web site is a virtual representation of your business – an online storefront of sorts. Most importantly, it can be a very cost effective marketing and sales tool. Even if your business hasn’t allocated as big a marketing budget as last year, it can’t afford not to spend some of that budget on re-vamping its web site.

Here’s how to get the most out of your web site without spending a bomb.

5 things you can do to make your web site a success

1. Expand your reach with online directories and links on partner sites

Both anecdotal and quantitative evidence shows that when prospective clients are looking for a particular type of new business, they seek out a referral, often from a trusted peer such as a business colleague or a friend, then use the Internet to research credentials.

It’s worth considering listing your site with relevant industry or business online directories. With unlimited online content about your firm’s expertise, you’ll get a high return on your investment and detailed tracking reports so your firm can measure performance and track leads.

It’s also worth negotiating mutual links between your site and those of businesses in aligned industries. For example, if you are a real estate agent, it’s worth aligning your business and Web site with mortgage brokerage, financial advisers and legal practices specialising in property conveyancing.

2. Create original and seductive content to get return visits

If your site is intended as an information source for existing clients, it should include content that is updated frequently, creating a reason for users to regularly visit the site.

Sophisticated marketers know that you don’t sell your services just by telling a prospective client, “Hire me” (though it is important to have a strong call-to-action in your marketing message). Each time you can impress a prospective client with your knowledge and expertise, you’re giving that prospect another reason to hire you.

Creating original content costs very little money for those that have the time. If your target customer is an individual or small business, you’ll want to write or speak in “plain English.” That means you should cut out the ‘shop talk’ and keep your message short and understandable.

3. Use your knowledge to generate sales leads

Closely tied to your Web site content efforts is the idea of creating custom content for e-newsletters, blogs, email blasts, white papers and other downloadable publications.

While content can draw visitors to your site, giving them a reason to return again and again, it can also be used to convert those site visitors into tangible sales leads.

The best way to do this is to get then to directly sign-up for something on your site (such as an e-newsletter or block) or require their contact details download something from it (such as a Whitepaper or publication). The very action of their subscribing or downloading tells you they are clearly interested in your products or services.

Of course, once you have an e-mail database, you can begin marketing to it.

3. Employ a variety of multi-media to keep your site interesting and fresh

Because not every visitor wants to read a news article or blog —some might want to watch a video, others might want to listen to a podcast—you should make an effort to use different types of media that appeal to different types of visitors.

Using online technologies, you can post content to your Web site, write a blog, post a podcast or video, create electronic newsletters, and send email updates to your customer and prospect list.

Regularly updating your site with new videos and podcasts that are interesting and informative—with a clear call to action—will keep your clients coming back to the site – and most importantly, calling or emailing you with sales inquiries.

4. Optimise your site to maximise visitors

If your site is intended as a lead-generation source, it must be easily found. Are you happy with the number of leads your Web site is currently generating? If someone doesn’t know your business’s name, are they likely to come across your Web site? If they type the name of your city and it does into Google or another search engine, does your Web site appear among the top listings?

If not, you may need to apply search-engine optimisation (SEO) techniques – loading up your web pages with strategic keywords so you can improving your ranking on Google or other search engine’s free search and/or paid search-engine listings, such as Google AdWords (pay-per-click advertising), to ensure maximum visibility for your business, and to increase the leads that come through your Web site.

Paying for placements on search-engine results is one of the quickest and most efficient ways to increase leads to your Web site. But buying keywords can be tricky. To maximize your return on investment, consider working with an online marketing expert who understands the nuances of SEO and pay-per-click advertising.

5. Consider pay-per-click advertising to optimise your site and generate sales leads

When thinking about how your customers will find your web site, consider the merits of buying clicks on search engines, such as with Google AdWords, versus getting ‘free’ visitors using organic search engine optimisation.

At first glance, free is certainly better than paid, but there are some big IFs that you need to consider first. Remember: you can only optimise a Web site for maybe ten words and phrases – not hundreds – so you need to choose very, very carefully.

But the most important thing is choosing the RIGHT words and phrases to optimise for. 

If you don't use a pay per click strategy to determine which words and phrases actually attract paying customers first, you will almost always choose the wrong keywords.  The words you initially think you want are almost always different than the ones that actually work.

Considering it takes 30 days to several months to see results when you're playing the search engine optimisation game, you CANNOT afford to target the wrong keywords.

When you do pay-per-click campaigns properly, there are almost always a few really productive words and phrases that only two to three businesses are bidding on, instead of 10 or 20 bidders.  What that means is that those people are not optimising their Web sites for those same keywords either.

Just like pay-per-click, search engine phrases have varying degrees of competitiveness. If you want a number one ranking for the phrase "Digital Camera" it's going to be a LOT harder than getting number one ranking for "Kodak DX6340", which is a popular digital camera. And the traffic will be much more targeted, too. When you do search engine optimisation, you must pick battles you can win.

So here’s the lesson: properly set up a pay-per-click campaign, determine which keywords are productive, THEN optimise your site based on what really works. Then you'll get all kinds of free traffic and sales leads from your Web site.

If you would like assistance turning your site into a lead generation tool, don’t hesitate to contact us. If you’d like to know more about how search engine optimisation and pay-per-click advertising works, check out our web site services.