No matter what type of business you own, you'd probably like to get more leads from your website. The future of marketing is online and your website is your number one sales and marketing tool (if it isn't it should be!). No matter how your website functions today, there are a couple things you can do to measurably improve your website's performance as a lead generation tool.

Turning your website into a lead generator

No matter how busy you are, there are a couple easy ways to get more leads from your website. The first thing you need to do is to stop thinking of your website as if it were an online brochure.  Your website is not a brochure!  Brochures are a lousy excuse for a sales rep, but that's exactly what your website is - a sales rep.

Your website is a virtual sale rep and lead generator.  It works 24x7 and never asks for a day off.  At the highest level, your goal should be to use accurate tracking to determine how well your website converts visits into leads.  Optimize your site to maximize its conversion rate and then focus on cost-effective marketing strategies that drive more (qualified) visitors to your site (e.g. put more qualified prospects in front of your sales rep). 

Step 1: Stop worrying about aesthetics and create remarkable content

There, I said it - stop focusing on the design of your website and instead focus on creating enormous amounts of remarkable content. Seth Godin said it best, "there are more than a billion pages on the web. Surely there's one you can start with?"  Few businesses need a totally original website design.  

Now, I'm not suggesting you use a product like GoDaddy's website by tonight or Yahoo's website builder.  "Platforms" like these don't offer the flexibility you'll need as you grow your web presence.  However, you don't need to invest the website layout of the future.  Instead of spending your entire website budget on design, pick a standard site layout and focus your time/money on creating awesome content. 

What is remarkable content?

It's difficult to define what makes content remarkable, but it's incredibly easy to tell if you've successfully done it! Simply put, content is remarkable when your visitors and prospective customers share, link to, reference and remark about it.  There's no magic formula available or secret guide to creating remarkable content, but there are a few things you can do to help your content stand out from the crowd:

• Honesty - Be brutally honest - even if it's not good from your immediate bottom line
• Value - Could you sell your content? Is your content so good that people would pay for it? Then give it away for free - now it's remarkable! 

Why remarkable content is so important

Search engines direct the majority of traffic on the web (although social media is catching up). When your prospective customers need something, they... GOOGLE it!  If your business is not found on the first page of the major search engines for keywords relevant to your business, you're losing business.

Search engines love unique keyword rich content. Frequently search engines reward websites containing large volumes of unique keyword rich content with high organic rankings. Increased organic rankings equals more traffic and if you rank well for keyword phrases related to your business, the quality of your new visitors is likely to be very high! 

Even if your website has a pathetic visit-to-inquiry conversion rate, you're guaranteed to convert some of these new visits into leads and sales. But what should you write about? There are a couple (relatively) easy ways to come up with things to write about. 

Tip #1: Add case studies to your website

Case studies and white papers are an easy way to add lots of high-quality, unique content to your website. Take a customer problem, detail it and then discuss what your company did to fix it - boom instant case study! Case studies don't have to be long; although, in-depth and extensive case studies can stand out as remarkable simply because so many case studies and white papers are just a single page or two. 

Tip #2: Start a blog

Just like the one you're reading here - add a blog to your website. Blogs give you an informal way to add lots of great content to your website. They are easier to link to and reference than the "standard" pages of your website because they are often less commercial in nature.  You can write about your industry, a new product, a customer or pretty much anything you feel like writing about!

While a blog tied to your main website might be preferable, you don't have to have your blog within your website.  If you are technically challenged, you can host your blog on a free blogging platform - something like blogger, blogspot or WordPress. 

Come back soon for part 2

You've just read one great way to get more leads from your website - create remarkable content (lots of it!). Come back soon for part 2 and 3 or check out our weekly online webinar where we'll be covering this topic in more detail LIVE! 

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