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How to Create a Website That Generates Leads for your Local Business By Justyn Faber, Local Lead Stream In this guide, you’re going to learn 8 simple ways to create a website for your local business that generates leads. You’ll discover what elements you must have on your website to convert traffic into leads, how to provide tremendous value so they are pre-sold on your company, and what to do with those that aren’t ready, willing, and able to buy just yet. This whole guide revolves around 2 main ideas. Ready? Here they are... 1. Give your visitors cool, free, valuable information that they can benefit from immediately, even if they don’t buy your product or service. Once you make this huge paradigm shift, your business will never be the same 2. Have an easy-to-implement system in place to capture, engage and convert leads into customers. Ok cool, well that’s the course. Hope you enjoyed it! I’m kidding obviously, but in all seriousness, just knowing and practicing the first one here, you will see big results. What kind of results? I don’t know for sure, but it will probably be much more effective than what you’re getting now. So let’s dive into what goes into building a lead-generating sales machine for a website! 1. Messaging Let’s start with the most important aspect that will dictate how successful your website will be when it comes to generating a high amount of leads, and that is your positioning and messaging. I know I know, not the most exciting part, but absolutely the most critical. If haven’t already, you really need to become crystal clear about who your target market is. Go beyond demographics. Create a typical customer persona. ...call him Bob or Sue, whatever. Ask yourself questions like: What is the typical age, gender, income, family status Where do they live? What do they do for work? What are their hobbies? What are they worried about? What do they do for fun? Do they have kids? How many Did they go to college? What websites do they go to daily? What groups do they belong to? Etc. Then make sure your product or service meets their needs emotionally and logically. What major problem does your product or service solve for them? What advantages and benefits does it provide? How does it make their lives easier? What are they going to gain in return for buying your product or service, i.e. more time, freedom, money, happiness, speed, efficiency, etc. Try to get deeper than just “Our product or service will help you save 40% on X” The absolute best way to get laser focused on your message is interview your best customers. Dig deep to find out what made them buy, and what problems were they looking to solve. You may already know why they bought or hired your company when they did, but here is a tip that will make your messaging way more powerful and instantly make you stand out from your competitors…Listen to the actual words they use. Forget about what you know about your product or service for a moment and really listen to them describe it. You’ll be amazed at what gold you can mine here. Now, your messaging should incorporate their words. This is an instant differentiator for your company. So, if you’re a one stop shop commercial property maintenance company, for example, you could say that your service does the following: Eliminate all the hassles of calling around for multiple project bids. Eliminates the worry of the job not getting done on time due to “no shows.” Saves you from unnecessary costs because the job is getting done right the first time. Frees your time to focus on other business operations. Gets you home quicker to be with your family. The point is to show them how good it will feel to own your product or to hire your company. 2. Persuasive copy- Once you’ve completed step one, “Getting laser-focused on your market”, this will now serve as the basis for your message. Copywriting is both a science and art and to cover all I know in this guide is way out of the scope here. Plus, to create truly unbelievable copy takes years and years of continuous training, trial and error. However, there are some tried and true principles that will help you immediately. You do not need to be a copywriting genius to generate more leads from your website. Once you nail down step 1., creating copy actually becomes much easier. You are basically, front-loading the work. There are two tried and true simple formulas that you can use: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA) or, Problem, Agitate, Solve (PAS). You really can’t go wrong with either. I think the easier of the two to follow in the beginning is PAS. Problem: What problem is your target marketing experiencing? Example. Unreliable maintenance service for their buildings. Agitate: Rub the salt in the wound a little. They know they need to change something, but are they motivated enough. They may not be, so get them to see how not solving this issue is going to continue to hurt now and in the future. Solve: Present your solution. XYZ Property Maintenance specializes in helping property management companies….. 3. Your web layout - This is the most misunderstood area of all when it comes to generating sales and leads through your website. Most business owners think that they need to include eeeeeverything about themselves, their products, project, and on and on. Remember, the goal of your website is to turn leads into customers. You do this by showing them that you understand how to solve their problem and or meet a specific goal. You provide them with awesome free information that they can benefit from immediately and you invite them to become a customer or client. It is that simple. Most websites are way too confusing leaving their visitors overwhelmed so they end up abandoning ship. First, make sure everything on your site passes the KISS test. (keep it simple). We are going for site that offers insight into the value you provide, proof that you can help, a free information piece, a blog, a clear call to action, About Us, What you offer, and how they can get started. homepage- Headline, Image or video that explains the value your business provides, testimonials, lead magnet, and email capture form, Call to Action About Us- Focus on them, not on you. Contact Us- Make this page compelling. Blog- “how-to” type posts, recommendations, and tips, (Pinterest is a good place for blog ideas) Testimonials- Video or text offers social proof Products & Services- Highlight the benefits of your offerings, with calls to action Phone number with tracking number Analytics- Google analyses so you know where traffic is coming from, help you make decisions. Most websites today are built on the free open-source platform, Word Press. WP is very powerful but can be a little overwhelming. There are other options like Weebly, Wix, Go Daddy, and others, however, WP is still the most flexible. If you don’t already have a WP expert helping you, you really should look into it if you don’t feel like learning it yourself. It took me a little while to get used to it, but once I figure it out, I was off and running. I’m not an expert but I know enough to build an effective lead-generating website that provides great information to my visitors. You can look on Craigslist, Upwork, or Fiverr for WP developers. Or feel free to reach out to me and I can make a recommendation. 4 Give first, then receive - The very best way to convert your traffic into leads is to give your visitors something of high value. The idea is to give them a free report or video that teaches something they didn't know related to a problem they are desperately looking to solve, which your company helps with. If you're like most of the business owners I speak with, you may have found it challenging to come up with effective ways to create a valuable piece of lead bait for your website. This short post will help help you crank them out fast and easily. I used to struggle with creating lead magnets for myself and clients until I learned these two simple strategies. One Simple Question: The best way to kick off your creative engine is to simply ask yourself this one question; "What is the number one piece of advice I can give someone that is considering purchasing what I'm offering?" For example, I asked myself what the number one thing I think all small business owners should know about online marketing, and I came up with a few topics that would help them build their websites that sell better, capture leads, educate, and automatically nurture leads that aren't ready to buy yet. Pinterest and other "How To" sites: Another really cool idea that I just picked up from a colleague is this; When trying to come up with ideas for a lead magnet or blog post, just hop over to Pinterest, and do a search for "Tips on X". So, if you're a roofer, you could search for "Roofing Tips" or something similar. You will come up with a ton of new ideas that you can use to start creating your content. For anyone involved in real estate or home services, It could be as simple as a "Top 5 Mistakes homeowners make when hiring a ____." You get the idea. Your lead magnet could be a free pdf guide, a checklist, a worksheet, a video, an audio program, etc. I personally like writing, so I usually offer a free guide or white paper. Whatever you feel comfortable with is what you should create. You can always re-purpose this content in other formats as well, which is really cool. Remember, the objective of this piece is to provide massive value to your visitors so they to opt in to your list and eventually decide to become your customer or client. The money is in your list, but your list has to be filled with people that make up your target market! Ok, so that's it and it really is that simple. Now, get your lead magnet created and put it up on your website. You can even hire someone to do it for you. There are a ton of options out there. You could delegate it to someone in your office who can write, hire a freelance writer on Elance.com or Craigslist, or hire a Marketing Agency like ours…whatever, just get it done 7. Autopilot- email marketing and automation- Build out your backend systems - Get Response - Create emails for new customers, current customers and inactive customers -Sequences -Blueprint Advanced- Marketing Automation Bonus: Revive a dead list A simple way to bring in Fast Sales. Ono, here is a quick step-by-step plan to get instant sales from those customers 1.) Investigate anywhere you may think you keep customer contact information. Some good places to start are Quick Books, old order forms, invoices, and excel sheets. 2.) Sign up for an email marketing auto-responder solution like Get Response, Aweber or Mail Chimp. I personally like Get Response because it's very user-friendly, and inexpensive ($15 a month for 1,00o contacts). You can’t go wrong with any of them. For businesses that have much larger lists and are using a CRM, you could use a true marketing automation tool like Infusionsoft or Act-On. I recently learned about Act-On and I think this may be the best marketing automation tool out there right now for small and medium-sized businesses. But, to keep it simple at least sign up for Get Response, AWeber or Mail Chimp. (It will be one of the best business decisions you’ll ever make) 3.) Now that you have your auto-responder provider, you’ll need to upload the contacts form step 1. into it. If you have your contacts in digital form, then this will be really easy. If you are working from hard copies, you have a bit more work to do. My suggestion would be to have someone in your office transfer the contacts to your auto-responder manually or hire an intern or high school kid looking to make a few bucks. 4.) At this point, you have a list of customers and inactive/past customers. You will want to segment them into two groups. We are going to be sending them targeted messages based on whether they are actively buying from you or not. You will be able to find out how to do this in more detail by taking a few minutes to go through your auto-responders tutorials. 5.) Once they are segmented, you now want to begin creating email sequences that will be sent to them automatically over a set period of time. For existing active customers, you’ll want to send them a quick ” thanks for being a loyal customer” message and then ask for permission to communicate with them via email. Be sure to let them know clearly that they can unsubscribe. Within this first message, you also want to inform them that because they have been a long-time customer, you want to offer them a special discount on a particular item. A sample email could go something like this: Hey Jim, It’s Mike from ABC Lighting and Electrical Supply. I wanted to first thank you for being a long-time supporter of our company, it’s Electrical Contractors like you that help us stay successful and enable us to continue to deliver value for all of our customers. For being such a great customer, I wanted to extend you a special offer. For the next 5 days, we will be offering 25% off our usual price for all GE Fluorescent bulbs. These will go fast so stop by soon! Thanks for your continued support! Mike Owner, ABC Lighting and Electrical Supply On day 2, 3 you’ll just want to give gentle reminders to them. On day 4, you will want to turn up the urgency a little and on day 5 you want to give one more reminder and let them know this is the last day. For inactive or stale customers you’ll want to take a slightly different approach. This group of people really isn’t paying much attention to you so, you want to be a bit more aggressive. Here is an example email you could start with: Subject: We miss you! Hey Tom, Mike here from ABC Lighting and Electrical Supply. I spent some time reviewing our customer orders over the last 6 months and noticed we haven’t heard from you in quite a while. We want to continue to provide the best value in the industry so please let us know if there is anything we can do better and improve. I also wanted to let you know that if you are looking at (widgets), we are offering a half off (widgets) for the next 5 days and we’d love for you take advantage of this offer. I’ll be sending a few reminders to you over the next several days so be on the lookout. If you aren’t interested in hearing from us, no problem at all. You can simply unsubscribe below. We hope you don’t though, as our customers have been pretty excited about some of our recent offers. Thanks and hope to you from you! Mike Owner, ABC Lighting and Electrical Supply Of course, you’ll want to create follow-ups to these initial messages and set them in your auto-responder to go out automatically at set times. I don’t have time to go into each message, and this is something you will have to play around with or get help with. One other thing that is a bit more advanced; you will also want to send these people to a dedicated landing page that asks for more information. For example, each email you send out will contain a link to the landing page that has one clear call to action, which is to sign up to get your offer. If your goal is just to create awareness and want them to stop in or call, then you may not need to go this deep. However, if you want someone to take additional action to further qualify them, you can send them to your dedicated landing page. (again not necessary at first). The most important thing is that you start communicating with these customers. Now, you have a list that you can continue to provide offers. Please remember though. No one wants to be pitched to on every interaction with you. So, make sure you are also sprinkling in pure value content messages as well. You could offer tips and tricks, checklists, seasonal reminders, recommendations, etc. You know your business better than anyone so use your best judgment. Just by doing this, you’ll be way ahead of your competitors, and you should see great results.

The new season is a great reason to make and keep resolutions. Whether it’s eating right or cleaning out the garage, here are some tips for making and keeping resolutions.

There are so many good reasons to communicate with site visitors. Tell them about sales and new products or update them with tips and information.